[theme-reviewers] Theme submission fails on WARNING

[Bruce Wampler]

My theme is Weaver, and it consistently has been one of the most popular 
themes available on WordPress.org. Until the past few weeks or so, it 
has consistently been top 20, even top 10 occasionally - all without 
ever being a Featured theme.

Weaver has advanced capabilities, and allows extreme customization by 
the user. The most current version in the repository, 2.0, has been 
extraordinarily stable, with no significant bugs. In fact, I worked 
extensively with Chip to make sure 2.0 was as robust as possible, while 
still allowing the advanced features my users have become accustomed to.

I would claim Weaver is one of the most advanced free themes available, 
and I want to continue to have Weaver be available as a free theme to 
the WordPress community.

So I just tried to submit a new version. The new version has no 
significant logical changes to its basic structure from the extensively 
reviewed 2.0 version. It provides a few new features and fixes a few 
minor issues.

To my shock, the latest version of the theme was rejected by the 
standard upload process with only one WARNING. In the past, WARNINGS 
were just that - something that need further review before approval. Now 
apparently, WARNINGS cause automatic rejection.

In this case, the only WARNING issued by the submission process for 
fopen. As I said, Weaver is an advanced theme. It allows users to make 
all kinds of customizations. It also does things users really want to 
do, like save their theme settings to export to other sites, support 
page/editor styling based on their settings and otherwise create backups 
of their work. Weaver creates several files on the fly in the upload 
directory to accomplish this user friendly behavior. These features are 
very popular with my users, and the theme really can't exist without the 
capability. The theme has been downloaded over 50,000 time, and I 
suspect is in use by several thousand users. I have not received a 
single report of any issue caused by creating files. There are no 
security issues with the way Weaver uses file operations.

So, what is going on? How do I get the latest version of the theme 
submitted? I've not been following the day to day discussions on this 
group, but have you really banned fopen? Do you really want to take away 
advanced features that require it from WordPress users? Does any WARNING 
cause a rejection, and if so, they should be changed to an ERROR.

I really believe in my theme, and have spent hundreds of hours 
developing it. My work with Chip on the theme represented a huge effort 
to be sure Weaver was both robust, safe, and had the advanced features 
WordPress users wanted. I need to know what I need to do to keep this 
theme available to the WordPress community.  I think WordPress users 
deserve access to a free, advanced theme that lets them take control of 
their sites.

Or perhaps there is some other issue. Whatever, I can't submit my theme 
using the standard upload process.

Awaiting feedback...

Bruce Wampler

-- 
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Bruce Wampler, Ph.D.

Software developer
Creator of first spelling checker for a PC
Creator of Grammatik(tm), first true grammar checker
e-mail: bw at brucewampler.com
blog: brucewampler.wordpress.com