[theme-reviewers] How to request "grandfathered" exception to WP 3.9 Theme guidelines?

Thu Mar 6 21:32:21 UTC 2014

Thanks, Otto, for a more rational approach to this.

1. I can guarantee that there will be sites broken if I have to immediately
implement this requirement. There even is a popular child theme that uses
the scripting features in question that will break. Lots of side-effects.
There may not be that many themes with this kind of option, but disabling
the feature without some kind of phase-in will give serious grief to many
of my users. And this is kind of unexpected when going from say 3.8 to 3.9.
I think users are more willing to put up with grief for what is
traditionally a bigger step - like to 4.0. But causing serious breaks in a
decimal change just encourages users to not upgrade - and that is a really
bad idea!

2. I tried to argue my case on the make site, and lost that argument,
although I *still* contend that the idea that this particular feature
(JavaScript in the site header and footer area (not <head>, but in the
header.php and footer.php) can *not* be handled by an independent plugin of
any sort, and that there is a need for users to insert script in those
areas (e.g., scripts from small, perhaps unknown, but important to users,
to add various critical site functionality). If it can't be handled by a
general plugin (and it can't - really...), then it has to be a theme issue.
So it isn't in the theme directly, the *only* alternative is a *theme
specific *plugin to do it, and that seems intellectually dishonest to me. I
wish there were more hooks/filters to handle this, but there simply is
nothing when it comes to dealing with the header area - including content
surrounding the header image and menus - which are usually defined in
header.php, or site copyright and credit information, found in footer.php.
Sorry to bring this up again, but Chip asked why this wasn't discussed in
the make site, and it was.

3. So, I'm just asking for some kind of grandfathering so I people's sites
won't break immediately. I don't know if there ever will be a way to force
people to update to a plugin properly - maybe several months of a warning
on the admin panel. And the ability to work both ways for at least a while
- saving the options via a plugin, or using the existing setting.

Thanks for listening...

Bruce

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Philip M. Hofer (Frumph)
<philip at frumph.net>wrote:

>   Make no mistake, if I were able to have updated the theme itself and
> fixed bugs and kept it code compliant with core it would have been far
> better for the users and myself.   Along with having the plugin/comic easel
> as something to migrate to when the users were ready, not being forced into
> it.
>
> As it stands, I lost more money then I made in this last year helping
> people fix their sites, regardless of how many video's, tutorials and tools
> I made to help them migrate.
>
> ...and it still goes on and on;  that and WordPress doesn't have all of
> the functionality available for common things to co-sync custom post types
> as regular post types, so functionality was lost between theme and
> plugin.
>
> Yeah, .. I was and always am in favor for the 'anything new needs to
> adhere to the requirements' - but if it's a theme that's been in
> circulation for a number of years; don't force it - let it work it's way up.
>
>  *From:* Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 06, 2014 11:03 AM
> *To:* Discussion list for WordPress theme reviewers.<theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [theme-reviewers] How to request "grandfathered" exception
> to WP 3.9 Theme guidelines?
>
>  I thought you migrated people to the plugin for that one. The plugin
> route is a much better experience for your case, I think.
>
> Regardless, migration takes time. 3.9 is coming out in 6 weeks, so that's
> realistically not enough time for theme authors to migrate users to a
> better way. 4.0 in August or 4.1 in December might be a better timeframe to
> start that level of enforcement. Require authors to start building in
> plugin-migration, sort of thing. Maybe provide a plugin that will handle
> the case for them if necessary, and code to add to a theme that eases that
> migration.
>
> -Otto
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Philip M. Hofer (Frumph) <
> philip at frumph.net> wrote:
>
>>   ^ yay otto.   Little too late in my case with ComicPress, but yay for
>> this now.
>>
>>
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