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It’s been three months since I joined the WordPress Theme Review Team (WPTRT). Today, Simon Prosser and I were granted moderator privileges to the Extend/Themes forum at WordPress.org.
Our privileges at WordPress.org allow us to: take a theme submitted for review “live” if it passes all of the Theme Review criteria; “mark as old” if it does not; or, suspend the theme, if necessary or requested.
Our latest bump allows us to now be directly involved in selecting which themes are listed under the Featured Themes heading on the main page of the Extend Themes repository page.
The Theme Reviewers intent is to involve the community as much as possible in the selection process. There are currently no set guidelines we will be using, aside from the requirement that themes being considered will need to meet current Theme Review guidelines and standards … with the emphasis being on currently released themes.
Now, as community members ask how are Featured Themes chosen I would like to extend to the community the opportunity to recommend the general guidelines for choosing the themes to be shortlisted … perhaps additional related criteria the WPTRT should consider … or maybe even who should be choosing the actual themes to be featured?
As the WPTRT Lead I am not looking for which theme you want to recommend, yet, but I am looking for why any particular theme should be recommended. What criteria would you use?
Take advantage of this opportunity and leave a comment. Share your thoughts and ideas on choosing Featured Themes.
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Interesting question and thanks for considering community input here. The most important criteria that I would suggest to use is “How well it looks”. IMO the Featured Themes section should highlight the best looking, professionally designed themes that the directory has to offer.
@Micheal – These are some of the same ideas I have on this as well … the “wow!” factor.
Would definitely prefer to see themes that had a more outside-of-the-box design, something that really showcased what you could do with WordPress. I’d hate to see a bunch of themes that have the same ol’ header/content/sidebar/footer pattern that pretty much screams “cookie cutter.”
At the same time, would be nice if the themes were easy to use for a WordPress noob. Shouldn’t require a ton of customization, required plugins, etc.
Finally, “featured” should never mean “sponsored.”
@Justin – I am a big proponent of original designs. This is a great idea to have Featured themes that “showcased what you could do with WordPress.” I’m thinking along the lines of themes that don’t “look” like WordPress.
I’d agree with Justin, one of the questions I get asked is ‘does it have to have the side bar?’ or does it have to be on the right hand side, showing what can really be done with Word Press would be a really nice feature
@Phil – Absolutely! Themes that come from the “I Can’t Believe It’s WordPress” files would definitely be on my personal short list to be consider as a Featured Theme.
It’d be cool to show all “live” themes at least once in the featured list to allow people to discover themes maybe they hadn’t seen before. Otherwise I’d say interestingness is the biggest factor, being a combination of creativity, popularity, and… just plain old cool.
@Lance – Now that is a great idea: “… show all “live” themes at least once in the featured list …” Although this may require a little extra code, I will put it forward to see if it can be done. I’m thinking have at least one, maybe two or three “slots” for randomly picked themes from the existing current repository.
You can add additional checks to the featured themes like, they should be xhtml, CSS valid, search engine optimized, should follow coding standards and should use css sprites if possible.
@Satish – I would expect the Featured Themes to be great examples of quality code and standards compliance. Although the use of CSS sprites would also be a great reason to have a theme short-listed for consideration as a Featured Theme, I do not necessarily agree it should be used as a general guideline for recommendations.
yeah, SPRITES need not be a general guideline, but their use should be encouraged.
Great idea of a debate on the subject! It reminds me of the general idea behind Open Source.
One criteria I didnt see mentioned above is the theme “age”. Although good themes never die, good themes that are not frequently updated should eventually die.
I am thinking of a 3-6 months or so as a frequency for updates. Not considering the WordPress core updates frequency but the “community update”. This way you might encourage new ways of thinking “WordPress”. Also, very popular themes, updated or not, will get enough attention even without the featured listing, why recommend them anymore?
Going further, I totally agree with Lance on the theme discovery opportunity. “Interesting”, “cool”, “beautiful” are meant to be subjective and not objective criteria. My question is: how do we measure the “coolness” of a theme? Should great looking, colorful designs be considered “cooler” than the minimalistic ones or the other way around?
Above all, all WordPress developers should stop thinking as developers and start thinking as users. Only one way to sort it out: encourage the users community to speak their minds somehow.
About Phil’s sidebar: “should a theme have a sidebar?”, oh well, the WordPress users say “Yes”. And it should be placed on the right side also :). Please take it as half-joke and half-serious. I have got your point.
About the CSS sprites, although I am not a big fan, I recon the power behind the concept. But should it be a criteria… I think not and I agree with Edward.
MHO on the subject
@Radu – My idea is to insure all Featured Themes are being regularly maintained and revised as needed, which I tried to loosely write with “the emphasis being on currently released themes.”
The subjective nature of this process is one of the major reasons we would like to see community involvement choosing the Featured Themes as everyone has their own opinion of what is “cool” and as some things will “wow” one person, they may only be “ho-hum” to another.
The community involvement is definitely open to all individuals and groups making use of WordPress, everyone is part of the community not just developers or designers but especially the end-users as they far out-number the former group.
Also to consider: Featured Themes will be “rotating” as new themes are chosen and “older” themes may be “un-stuck” back to the general repository listings. I would imagine these themes will still maintain a high-profile through their popularity and historical download numbers.
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