[theme-reviewers] theme-reviewers Digest, Vol 12, Issue 6

[Chip Bennett]

I think it is going to take a fair bit of discussion (and persuasion) to
move from the current general stance of Plugin *enhancement* to one of
allowing actual Plugin *dependence*.

The point about "niche" Themes is probably the most relevant with respect to
potential need for Custom Post Types or Custom Taxonomies. I agree that we
ought to have some way of accommodating such Themes, but at the same time,
we need to ensure appropriate data portability.

Perhaps the answer is requiring the developer of such a Theme to implement
the CPT functionality via Plugin, released in the Plugin Repo, so that users
who wish to change Themes have some means of using their data outside of the
original Theme. But, we'll need to consider, and mitigate, any
intended/unintended consequences of such a requirement.

Chip

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Josh Stauffer <joshstauffer at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks for this, Ryan.
>
> What about an admin notice with a link to the plugin repository. Something
> like... "The Whatchamacallit plugin is required for this theme to function
> properly. Install now <http://#>."
>
> Anyone have any thoughts on this approach?
>
> Josh
>
>
> On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:02 PM, Ryan Hellyer <ryan at pixopoint.com> wrote:
>
>> Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 09:42:59 -0500
>>> From: Josh Stauffer <joshstauffer at gmail.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Bundling Plugins
>>> To: theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
>>> Message-ID: <BANLkTimh4ifTLqW_iw3qG5ydUFvEXHRECw at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>>
>>> Just as Chip described is how I am going about it in my theme
>>> development.
>>>
>>> Although, I am interested to find out more about the "automatic install
>>> and
>>> activate" that Ryan is referring to. Any tutorials on this?
>>>
>>> Josh
>>>
>>
>> David Gwyer asked me about that a while ago:
>>
>> http://www.wptavern.com/forum/themes-templates/2120-installing-plugins-during-theme-installation.html.
>> The solution I posted there isn't optimal and I think copying the plugin
>> directly from the plugin repository would make more sense to ensure only up
>> to date versions are included.
>> <http://www.wptavern.com/forum/themes-templates/2120-installing-plugins-during-theme-installation.html>
>>
>> I think allowing themes to install their own plugins is important to
>> allow. Otherwise it creates a situation in which the theme authors are
>> either limited in the scope in which they can build themes, or are forced to
>> jerry rig plugins into the theme itself. Neither of which I assume anyone
>> wants to see.
>>
>> Imagine a theme which requires custom post-types to perform the task it
>> was designed for. That theme would either be ineligible to be in the
>> repository, or would be forced to put plugin functionality into the theme,
>> despite it making far more sense for that custom post-type to be implemented
>> as a plugin. That isn't a common situation, but I wouldn't like to see rare
>> situations like that being blocked from the official theme repository.
>> Another solution would be to require the user to manually download a plugin
>> to use the theme, but then you have a situation where a theme on it's own
>> will not function without forcing the user to dork around installing a
>> plugin just to make it work.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> theme-reviewers mailing list
>>
>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> theme-reviewers mailing list
> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/attachments/20110503/9cf9a5ab/attachment-0001.htm>