[theme-reviewers] external style sheets

[Otto]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Angelo Bertolli
<angelo.bertolli at gmail.com>wrote:

> Is it ok to reference external style sheets in themes, for example:
>
> http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/
>
> Or rather even having the style sheet stored where you host the theme?
>
>
External links to content that will thereby be included on the user's
website are not permitted (with special exceptions). So no, stylesheets
external to the site are out.

This is partly a security issue (we don't like it when plugins include
external files either), but mostly it's really a compatibility one. Not
everybody runs a website on the public internets. A surprising amount of WP
use is used on internal intranets, where the people viewing the site don't
have unrestricted access to the internet. So it's no fun for them to use
your theme and then have it look like total crap because they can't get the
stylesheet.

This does apply to external CSS stuff such as Google fonts too, although
I'd tend to be more lenient on that. It's not a security issue to link to
content served by Google, but again, your site's fonts won't be right when
it's used outside of the public intertubes. If using something like Google
Fonts, then you should consider it to be optional and perhaps design
without them at first, but allow the user to select them? Or maybe even
give them instructions on how to get the fonts from Google (they're all
freely available) and have CSS to link to them locally instead, perhaps.
This is not as easy as including just a couple lines of CSS, I know, but
it's worth considering.

-Otto
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