[theme-reviewers] Bundling Plugins

[Ryan Hellyer]

There are situations in which it makes sense to build a theme which relies
on specific plugins to function, but it is often not a good idea to
incorporate the entire code base into the theme since the plugin may be
under active development. In this situation I tend to have the plugin
automatically install and activate the plugin(s). I think it would be a good
idea if this sort of situation was allowed in the theme repository.

Simply bundling the plugins zip file into the theme and requiring the user
to copy the files over seems counter productive though and shouldn't be
allowed IMO since the user could just as easily get the plugin from the
repository instead.

There are some excellent themes in the repository which incorporate large
amounts of "plugin like" functionality so I would assume that seamlessly
integrated functionality would be deemed appropriate for the repository.

Just taking something like Yoasts SEO plugin and dumping it verbatim into a
theme would be plain weird and shouldn't be allowed though IMO, as it would
include a bunch of text unrelated to the theme and create confusion for the
user. However if it were integrated seamlessly and cleanly, then I don't see
any problems with that approach, albeit I personally would never roll that
much SEO functionality into a theme.

Ryan,
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/attachments/20110503/7647df4b/attachment.htm>