[theme-reviewers] So many themes are still not live

[Ulrich Pogson]

"Basically, don't use custom post types, taxonomies, or metadata to allow
the theme's users to create content."
This should be covered mostly with the latest update of Theme Check

"Maybe our focus should be on building tools for theme authors to submit
better themes."
I know people are working hard on the Theme Developer Handbook
<https://make.wordpress.org/docs/theme-developer-handbook/>. Perhaps we
could make a page which is specifically for theme authors what they should
so before submitting a theme.
Also the Theme Checklist plugin
<http://wptavern.com/theme-checklist-helps-prepare-developers-to-submit-a-theme-to-the-wordpress-theme-directory>
looks like something that could be useful to recommend.

"The content of the guidelines are fine, but finding a specific guideline
kind of sucks."
I am working with Sam to improve the guidelines. I have also created a
custom search that we could add to the guidelines.
https://www.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=015032766720193378129:vtk5vhovo90

On 12 October 2014 21:51, Justin Tadlock <justin at justintadlock.com> wrote:

> Personally, I'd love to make things a little more consistent and fair.
> But, I want to make something clear to everyone.  We're not here to promote
> your theme or to make sure your theme gets its time in the spotlight.  What
> we do here is for the benefit of WordPress users.  Your reasons for
> submitting a theme don't necessarily need to be altruistic, but we have to
> treat it as such.
>
> With that said, there are ways of making things more consistent.  This all
> starts with reviews.  The reason we (the admins) get backed up is because
> we're still having to perform full reviews on themes that are already
> approved.  In a more ideal scenario, we'd do a check to make sure things
> look pretty good and mark the theme live.
>
> But, we don't have an ideal scenario at the moment.  I can't remember the
> last time I didn't reopen an approved ticket.  Our initial reviews are
> overlooking major things, even just outright broken code.  I rarely have to
> activate a theme to see these problems.  I just open up the theme files,
> and they're right there in my face.
>
> If we want to talk about "fairness" and so on, let's talk about the real
> problems first.  What can we do to improve our review process?  Any
> improvements here will trickle down and improve the entire system.
>
> A few of the areas I see that both theme authors and our reviewers could
> improve in are:
>
> 1) Security.  This is particularly relevant with theme options and custom
> widgets.  Is there something we can be doing to improve this area?  It's a
> major blocker for themes.  If it were up to me, we'd ban anything that
> didn't use the theme customizer (except in special cases).  I believe that
> would cut back on so many problems because it'd limit a lot of custom code
> used to build settings pages.
>
> 2) Understanding the difference between "content generation" (plugin
> territory) and "content presentation" (theme territory).  Basically, don't
> use custom post types, taxonomies, or metadata to allow the theme's users
> to create content.
>
> 3) License/copyright.  We've improved leaps and bounds in this area, but
> there shouldn't be any reason one of the admins should be reopening a
> ticket for a license/copyright issue.  This is probably the first thing
> reviewers need to look at.
>
> And, these are just some of the major things.  I'd love for us to be at a
> point where we're pushing for better things like proper translation
> support, accessibility, and so on.
>
> Let's focus on continuing to improve the overall process.  Are there
> tutorials that y'all would like to see to help improve things?  I'd be more
> than happy to write those or dig an existing one up.  Can we make things
> clearer in the guidelines?
>
> Maybe our focus should be on building tools for theme authors to submit
> better themes.  Any plugin ideas to help with this?  Or, are we simply not
> putting the existing tools into theme authors' hands?
>
> Other things I think we need to improve is the theme guidelines
> themselves.  The content of the guidelines are fine, but finding a specific
> guideline kind of sucks.  I don't even know what page each guideline is
> on.  I just happen to know most of them by memory and rarely need to look
> them up.
>
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>
>
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