[theme-reviewers] Theme selection is great frustration

Emil Uzelac emil at uzelac.me
Thu Sep 18 04:21:47 UTC 2014


Once upon a time, I was convinced that Demo URI is something that we need
and I even brought that up with this very list, was it last year? not sure.

We host our themes at WPORG and that is the place where demo should be as
well. WordPress depends on it and we should honor that.

Anyways, theme section is in the process of getting better and as noted
before it does not happen overnight.

So far many great things are changed and redesigned.

It's on someone to-do list, I assure you :)


On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 8:40 PM, Yentl Bresseleers <hello at design311.com>
wrote:

>  I understand that, but there's no way for the preview button to tell if
> the link is a demo page or something else.
> We can add whatever we want to the style.css header? That's interesting.
> Going to add a "Demo URI:" / "Preview URI:" from now on then, we'll see
> where that goes.
>
>
>
> On 18/09/2014 03:37, Edward Caissie wrote:
>
> There is also this in the guidelines:
>
>  Theme URL, if used, is required to link to a page specifically related
>> to the Theme. *If a demonstration site or page is being used*, the
>> content must be related to the theme itself.
>> http://wordpress.org/themes/theme-name is reserved for default themes
>> only and no longer accepted. (*Bold* mine)
>
>
>  Although it would be interesting, and there is nothing stopping you from
> adding more to the theme style.css' header section the functionality is
> basically already in place.
>
> Edward Caissie
> aka Cais.
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at uzelac.me> wrote:
>
>> It takes time, work and patience.
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, September 17, 2014, Yentl Bresseleers <hello at design311.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>  Totally agree, the "Preview" button doesn't really show anything
>>> decent in 99% of all themes.
>>> Even for default themes these preview button doesn't really show
>>> anything useful:
>>> http://wp-themes.com/twentyfourteen/
>>> Wouldn't it be better if that link got replaced by the demo url, which
>>> you can find here?
>>> http://twentyfourteendemo.wordpress.com/
>>>
>>> Another comparison:
>>> http://wp-themes.com/twentythirteen/ vs
>>> http://twentythirteendemo.wordpress.com/
>>>
>>> Most probably this is out of our hands but I really think we should add
>>> a "Demo URI:" to our style.css file.
>>> That link can then be used on the Preview button rather than the link we
>>> currently have.
>>> This seems like a really easy fix.
>>>
>>> Maybe we should add the Demo URI in *style.css* and *readme.txt* even
>>> if we have no control over the preview button.
>>> People looking at these files will at least get an idea of what is
>>> possible with the theme.
>>>
>>> What do you guys think? What do you propose?
>>>
>>>
>>>  On 18/09/2014 02:46, // ravi wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>  Hello all,
>>>
>>>  this is a bit larger than theme review, so apologies beforehand if it
>>> is misdirected, but I want to relate my experience in trying to help some
>>> friends choose a theme for their site. In this effort, searching on
>>> wordpress.org using the provided filters is a very frustrating
>>> experience, mostly stemming from a disparity between the filter selection,
>>> the theme preview image, and the actual theme preview.
>>>
>>>  First, what shows up in the preview is a far cry from what is in the
>>> screenshot. It is understandable that the screenshot was carefully crafted
>>> with various features enabled in order to display the theme at its best,
>>> and therefore some discrepancy is inevitable. But what one sees in the
>>> preview at times has almost no relation visually to the screenshot.
>>>
>>>  Next, what appears in the preview seems to have no relation to the
>>> selected filters either. Say I select “left sidebar”… well, in many cases,
>>> the preview has none.
>>>
>>>  Having written a few themes myself, back in the stone ages, I realise
>>> that there are reasons behind all of this, but consider the experience from
>>> a regular WordPress user’s perspective. Selecting a theme is one of the
>>> first, and certainly the most defining activity, for a new user. Whatever
>>> the underlying reasons may be, their experience has to be better than what
>>> occurs today.
>>>
>>>  Apologies if I have missed some obvious steps that would have improved
>>> my experience.
>>>
>>>  Regards,
>>>
>>>  —ravi
>>>
>>>
>>>  P.S: background: this was for a self-hosted blog, not one on
>>> WordPress.com.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> theme-reviewers mailing listtheme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.orghttp://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
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