My slides for the WordPress Theme Reviewers Team, presented at WordSesh 1

1. WordPress.org Themes
Directory – Behind the Scenes
Mario Peshev @no_fear_inc
WordPress Engineer DevWP.eu

2. Contents
• About WPORG themes directory
• About WPTRT
• The Process
• How does it Work

3. What is the Themes Directory?
• The directory hosting all themes on WPORG
• http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
• All free, all GPL

4. Some Numbers
• 1700+ themes
• 67,700,000+ downloads
• Most popular themes:
• http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/responsiv
e/ – 550,000+ downloads
• http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyten
/ – 1,252,000+ downloads
• http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyele
ven/ – 1,179,000+ downloads
• * April, 2013

5. WordPress Theme Review Team
(WPTRT)
Who are they?
• Team of WordPress community members
– all volunteers
• Mostly self-directing, under the WPORG
umbrella
• Varying degrees of WordPress
experience/expertise

6. WordPress Theme Review Team
(WPTRT) (2)
What is their purpose?
• Review and approve Theme tickets as
quickly and as completely as possible
• Provide an educational resource for the
WordPress Theme Developer community
• Encourage and establish community
standards for Theme quality and best
practices
Anyone can get involved!

7. Can I get in with my theme?
Sure, you can!
However, you need to be aware of the Guidelines
http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Review

8. Theme Reviews
• http://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/11250

9. Template Hierarchy
• http://codex.wordpress.org/images/1/18/Template_Hierarchy.
png

10. Theme Unit Test
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Unit_Test/

11. Theme Development
WordPress Themes:
• files that work together to create the
design and functionality of a WordPress
site
• each Theme may be different and offering
many choices for site owners
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Develo
pment

12. Theme Queues
• Trac provides a list with several priority queues
• Reviews are conducted based on a specific
order

13. Purpose of these guidelines?
• Outlining best practices for theme
development
• Less conflicts
• Improved compatibility

14. What’s the best way of building
my theme?
Follow the flow from Theme Development
page
• Build a theme with valid markup and
styling
• Enable WP_DEBUG during development
• Test with the Theme Unit Test data
• Support all core features
• Don’t forget the edge cases!

15. Cheats
display errors
error_log ( from my wp-config.php )

16. Plugins
• Theme Check
• Debug Bar
• Log Deprecated Notices
• Debogger
• Theme Mentor
• Monster Widget
• Developer
• Regenerate Thumbnails
• WordPress Beta Tester

17. Theme Check
• “A simple and easy way to test your theme
for all the latest WordPress standards and
practices. A great theme development tool!

18. Log Deprecated Notices
• “Logs the usage of deprecated files, functions,
and function arguments, and identifies where
the deprecated functionality is being used.”
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/log-deprecated-notices/

19. Debogger
• “A simple tool for debugging themes.”
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debogger/

20. Theme Mentor
• Cousin of the Theme Check
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-mentor/

21. Developer
• “A plugin, which helps WordPress developers
develop.”
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/developer/

22. WordPress Beta Tester
• “Allows you to easily upgrade to Beta releases.”
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/

23. Can I join the team?
First you need to do:
• Learn the guidelines
• Setup the right enviroment
• Do several test reviews

24. Guidelines
• Learn the guidelines thoroughly
• Apply in the make/themes group
http://make.wordpress.org/themes/about/how-to-join-wptrt/

25. Discussions
• Not everything set in stone

26. Chime in
Mailing lists
• Subscribe
Make site
• Make Themes site
IRC
• #WordPress-Themes (not actively used)

27. Arguable topics
• Removing Default Widgets
• Replacing Widgets with customized ones
• Theme vs. Plugin territory
• Using shortcodes
• Post-content shortcodes are Plugin
territory
• http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-
reviewers/2013-March/012114.html

28. Arguable topics (2)
• front-page.php and home.php behaviour
• PHP version for Themes
• Browser compatability
• Should we support 100% IE?
• Custom Support Forums

29. Make Themes org
• Home for official resources to help people
developing WordPress themes
http://make.wordpress.org/themes/

30. Licensing
• “The license under which the WordPress
software is released is the GPLv2 (or later)
from the Free Software Foundation. A
copy of the license is included with every
copy of WordPress, but you can also
read the text of the license here.”
• http://wordpress.org/about/license/

31. 3rd party scripts
• Be careful with images licenses
• Beware of additional item licenses
• It’s important 3rd party items to be GPL
compatible

32. On Quality
Quality
“The goal of the theme directory is not
to list every theme in the world, it’s to list the
best ones. We want a reasonable number of
themes we can point to that embody the
best and brightest of WordPress
development, and that users can choose
without compromise.” – Matt Mullenweg

33. Child Themes
• Theme that inherits the functionality of
other theme.
• Recommended to use for making theme
changes
• Easy to use
• Great opportunity for expanding the
business
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

34. Child Themes Structure
• site_root (www)
wp-content
themes
*your-theme
*your-theme-child
style.css – required
functions.php – optional
template files – optional
other files – optional

35. style.css
Template is your link to the parent theme

36. Shortcodes
• Shortcodes should be carefully added (if at
all) to your themes
• Content changed by shortcodes is useless
when a theme is switched
• Themes should be used for presentation
layer only and not adding functionality
• Custom Post Types and Taxonomies could
be a stopper if embedded in themes

37. Questions?
Tweets as @no_fear_inc
Mario Peshev on LinkedIn
nofearinc on WordPress.org
GitHubering via mpeshev
DevWP.eu - blog