[theme-reviewers] Suggestion for Theme Support Plugins

Weaver Theme weavertheme at gmail.com
Wed Jun 25 23:05:15 UTC 2014


As I noted in my last post, an increasing number of themes are recommending
a companion support plugin to get optimal theme functionality. Some are
using TGM, others other ways to load the related plugin.

My users have just reported a fairly severe issue with my own theme's
companion plugin, and I've confirmed that at least some other themes with
companion plugins suffer the same issue: when people deactivate a theme,
they often forget to deactivate the companion plugin. This may or may not
matter - but I would guess most often people would want to deactivate both
the theme and its companion plugin. Since there is no deactivation hook for
themes, it would be up to the plugin to detect the situation.

While it would be somewhat difficult to check and enforce, I would like to
suggest that it be RECOMMENDED that companion plugins for themes detect
that their "parent" theme has been deactivated, and display a notice that
the plugin should be deactivated as well.

This sort of goes along with my suggestion that there be some more formal
guidelines for theme companion plugins. It is important that the end user
gets an easy and optimal experience for this increasingly common
theme/companion plugin scenario.

Bruce Wampler
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