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

[Doug Stewart]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 4:05 PM, Ryan Frankel <ryan.frankel at gmail.com> wrote:
> We had the same discussion regarding the ticket tracking themes.  I still believe that ideas like this have a place as a theme as opposed to a plugin.  While the same functionality could be installed as a plugin many users have a specific purpose in mind and want the ease of only having to install a theme that directly relates to that purpose.  A landing page is a great example of that.  Many micro and small businesses only want a landing page and are going to look for a 'Landing Page Theme'.  As many WP users are new to the system, this significantly simplifies the process because they find a theme with the functionality they want, hit activate, set the options and they are done.  If you move the functionality to a plugin you have to expand the design to allow it to work in any theme and with that theme's styling which seems, at least to me, like a lot more work and less useful to the end user experience.
>

Here I disagree with you. What's the functional difference between
activating a plugin and setting its settings vs. activating a theme
and setting its settings? And why not simply intercept the request
early on in the process and just decline to process the template
hierarchy as long as !is_logged_in()?

-- 
-Doug