[theme-reviewers] Theme Check - ever changing policies

[Otto]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Bruce Wampler <brucewampler at gmail.com> wrote:
> The last time I used Theme Check, WARNINGS did not ban a theme from
> submission. Apparently it does now.

This went into effect several months ago. Theme check was not required
at all before, but it was run and the errors were displayed. The point
of having it run then was to a) warn people about possible problems
and b) get people used to the idea.

About 3 months ago, it became mandatory to pass theme check to submit
your theme. This has greatly increased the quality of the theme
submissions, without reducing quantity too much.


> The Theme Check plugin itself should be more clear about this. I think it
> should have a
> "Your theme will FAIL submission" message, which I don't see now.

Really, it seems rather obvious to me. Anything in red is a fail.
Warnings have always been failures.

And if it says "One or more errors were found in the plugin", then the
theme failed.


> Last time I submitted my theme, which wasn't all that long ago, the WARNING
> for fopen did not automatically ban the theme, but now it does. It would be
> much more helpful if the Theme Check plugin matched the theme submit Theme
> Check as far as issuing a FAIL notice.

The theme check plugin and the theme check being run on the upload are
identical. The code is in fact shared between the two. A fail in the
plugin is a fail on the uploader.

Sometimes the uploader is slightly behind the times from the plugin. I
sync them manually every so often.


> What makes a theme fail submission seems to change fairly rapidly - it would
> be nice if there were an easy to find, concise list of the new things that
> make a theme fail.

That's why we have the plugin. You can run it yourself and see whether
or not a theme will make it through the uploader. It's the same code.


> And there may be a change list somewhere, but I can't find it. Maybe Theme
> Check could include a link to the latest set of changes, or even better, a
> link to the specific requirement (I know - that's really too hard because
> the links would be hard to keep constant - but it would be nice.)

http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/theme-check


-Otto