[theme-reviewers] Trainee Feedback: Theme Check Results

[Chip Bennett]

Good evening, all!

Just a quick bit of feedback on reviews, primarily for the trainees,
regarding Theme Check results.

For anything other than "Warning" or "Required" (which we shouldn't see,
anyway, as the uploader should filter out Themes that return
Warning/Required-level errors), the results are primarily for *your*
information and reference. These results should help point you in the right
direction regarding things to look for.

These results do NOT necessarily need to be output in the ticket.

The reason that I say that is because simply copy/pasting Theme Check
results into the review comments can distract from the REQUIRED issues in
the review, and can be misleading for the Theme developer. I've seen several
instances where RECOMMENDED/INFO results were added to the ticket, but were
not actually applicable to the Theme - and then the Theme developer got
dinged in the subsequent ticket, for wrongly implementing changes based on
those results.

For example:

   - The get_template_part() include function only applies to
   *template-part* files (or code output in template-part files), and NOT
   (generally) to functions.php, or including library files (such as
   theme-options.php, etc.) within functions.php.
   - Hard-coded links are not inherently prohibited. This INFO output is
   only intended to help you review the Theme, by collecting all such links in
   one place, so that you can review them for appropriateness. If all such
   links are appropriate, then this INFO result should NOT be included in the
   review comments.


The RECOMMENDED results, especially the ones regarding Theme
features/functionality, may be useful to include. But if you include them,
be sure to delineate them such that it is very clear that they are NOT
required. I would suggest placing them *after* listing all of the required
issues. (I generally leave them out altogether. The Theme developer sees
them in the uploader output, and also when testing locally using Theme
Check.)

In the end, remember that our ultimate goal is to communicate to the Theme
developer the specific deficiencies in the Theme - the specific things that
the Theme developer needs to address, in order for the Theme to pass the
review.

Thanks, again, for all of your help and contributions with reviewing Themes!

Chip
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/attachments/20110502/53fe0f51/attachment.htm>