[theme-reviewers] A Question About Theme Review/Submission

[Shawn Grundy]

I completely agree with Otto. This is definitely what I would consider the best way to go. Like Chip mentioned previously, I too would love to see some of the "niche" ideas come to life as they truly allow developers to showcase their creativity, but more importantly provide users with tools that can be applied for specific applications when needed. My point earlier about creating the "basic theme" and then extending it with a plugin (or multiple plugins for various functionality) is right in line with Otto's suggestion below. 
If you are in the process of creating several of these "specific functionality" themes, perhaps you can move in a direction that allows users to combine these functionalities into a single theme. For example, we are currently talking about a "ticket" system which, I am assuming (without looking) this is some sort of support ticketing system. This would be great functionality for a plugin that could then be grouped together with other plugins. This is where the power of plugins comes in and separates itself from the theme, in my opinion. 
Rather than utilizing a theme for support tickets, a theme for product post types, another for portfolios, etc., a user can have one theme (the "basic" theme), then add these additional plugins allowing theme to "build" a "complete" site based on their needs. This is what makes WordPress so powerful. Your theme could include support for all of these plugins (including styling that matches that particular theme). Sure, a user may elect to use the plugin with another theme, and they may have to add their own styling, but they would be aware of this up front, and if they choose to move in that direction, they do so with advance notice that styling will be a requirement. 
As Otto mentioned, you can then offer various themes that include styling support for the plugins. This is no different than themes providing styling for wp-pagenavi or other commonly used plugins. It's certainly worth exploring and I hope you consider these options, as I would love to see more of these "targeted functionality" applications come to life.
- Shawn

> From: otto at ottodestruct.com
> Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 19:02:27 -0500
> To: theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] A Question About Theme Review/Submission
> 
> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 5:24 PM, Ryan Frankel <ryan.frankel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree.  We had an internal debate on which way to go with this and it was decided that since we were including styling it would be a theme.  What we saw with a lot of plugins is that while they give you the functionality you still have to do all the styling yourself (see any calendar plugin).  We wanted to create something that required absolutely no end-user interaction or coding so the theme was born.
> >
> > It is even more of a grey area then I realized though.
> 
> I would consider separating theme from functionality here. Sure, a
> theme can do anything a plugin can, but limiting themes to a stylistic
> model, where only functionality that affects the display of things is
> included, makes the most sense. While I get that's it's hard to
> separate the two in this case, perhaps making a sort of generic
> "ticket" plugin and generalizing the concept might be useful.
> 
> No reason you can't make both a theme and a plugin which work
> together. This also gives you the side benefit of being able to create
> many different themes for the same basic ticket system.
> 
> 
> -Otto
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