[theme-reviewers] Submitting a One-Page Placeholder Theme

[Chip Bennett]

I don't agree. A site that doesn't have a blog doesn't constitute a "niche";
rather, it is a use-case that is built-in to core. Using WordPress "as a
CMS" (nb: I detest this phrase; WordPress IS a CMS, no matter *how* it is
used - and it is almost always intended to mean "without a blog") requires
nothing more than creating a static Page to serve as the Front Page,
changing the "Front Page Displays" setting to "static page", assigning the
appropriate static page, and then NOT assigning a posts page. Easy peasy.

 We don't need special handling for this use-case. Every Theme in the
repository should handle it without problem. By default, repository-hosted
Themes are expected to handle this use case; that's why we have Guidelines
related to display of post metadata and "no comments" type text on static
pages.

I see no practical reason for a publicly distributed Theme NOT to account
for the blog use-case. If we've not adequately covered the non-blog use case
in the Guidelines, we can always revisit them.

As for the definition of "niche" Themes: they really do need to be an
extraordinary use. At this point, it's probably a "know it when we see it"
kind of thing. I think the "landing page" use case and the "ticket system"
use case are good, instructive examples.

Chip

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Kirk Wight <kwight at kwight.ca> wrote:

> What distinguishes "niche" themes from "regular" themes is often one thing:
> only partial or no implementation of blog functionality. As far as I can
> tell, most of the checks from Theme Check and the uploader rely on the theme
> being usable as a blog.
>
> This summer, we found out from the user survey that a lot of developers use
> WordPress for sites that don't even have a blog component (just a "CMS", for
> lack of a better term) . To me, niche themes are simply themes that, for
> whatever reason, choose not to implement full blog functionality.
>
> We could add a tag filter under Features that is just "blog". If this tag
> exists, the uploader and Theme Check plugins check according to the current
> criteria. If not, a simpler context can be used (presence of readme.txt,
> etc). Obviously this would require rewriting the uploader and theme eval
> plugins to react conditionally, but it would seem simpler and more elegant
> to me than getting in to theme slugs, white-listing specific users, and
> trying to create specific tag filters for each non-standard use-case.
>
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