[theme-reviewers] A RE-EXAMINATION OF THEME REQUIREMENTS - AN ESSAY

[Bruce Wampler]

GRANDFATHERING EXISTING THEMES - NEW POINT

One more important argument for grandfathering themes, pointed out to me 
by one of
my thousands of users:

For the many many thousands of users of existing themes, it is critical 
to allow them to
be updated. One of the most important things for users is the theme they 
use. Being
forced to change themes because it is not being updated is one of the most
traumatic experiences a typical WordPress user can face.

It is beyond doubt that the new, very restrictive submission rules will 
prevent a large
number of existing theme authors from updating their themes. Thus, 
strictly from
the end user's stand point, it is unfair, even devastating to prevent 
long existing themes
from submitting updates or to be forced into extensive re-writes to meet 
the newest
requirements. And unless I totally misunderstand the point of WordPress 
coders,
plugin authors, and theme authors, the reason we are all here is to 
provide a great
free web building tool for people all over the world.

So, I repeat my suggestion that there be a fairly liberal update policy 
for previously
approved themes - perhaps requiring only support for the most important 
new features
of new versions of WP (such as the 3.0 custom menus), or provably severe 
security
issues (such as nonce). Otherwise, thousands upon thousands of WP users 
are likely
to be negatively affected as more and more theme authors are unable to 
modify
their themes to meet the latest requirements of the month. The fact that 
many of
the newest requirements have only been enforced since March likely 
indicates the
fact that I'm having such difficulties updating my previously approved 
theme is only
the leading edge of a big issue.

Bruce Wampler


-- 
-----------
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