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

[Otto]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Shawn Grundy <smgrundy at live.com> wrote:
> 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.

I would point to the recent beta of the bbPress plugin as an example
of why this is better suited to a plugin than a theme.

If you haven't looked, the bbPress plugin includes mods for the
twenty-ten theme to add the bbPress specific bits. Now, while this
isn't necessarily the best approach, since it requires themes to
support specific plugins, it is along the same sort of lines as what's
being discussed here. It might be worth examining that theme/plugin
linkage to see how to do it, or to figure out a better way to do it.

I have no doubt we'll start seeing themes with bbPress support
submitted eventually. If your ticket/portfolio/whatever plugin is
generic enough to allow it, and popular, then themes or theme-mods can
start being made for it by anybody. Just a matter of defining your
functions/actions/filters correctly in the plugin.

-Otto