New requirements

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We are a group of volunteers who review and approve themes submitted to be included in the official WordPress Theme directory.

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#themereview

Following our meeting conversation, we have new requirements:

Child themes must include more than minor changes (such as font and colour changes) to the parent theme to be accepted. To make it easier on the reviewer, make sure you describe what modifications/features you did on top of the parent theme (in a ticket comment). – req –

readme.txt – Use this format for your readme.txt file. New themes need to follow this rule as of October 25th, 2018. Old themes have a 6 months grace time from this date. – req –

Trusted Authors:

You can only upload one theme per week if you are a trusted author, no matter how many theme author accounts you are affiliated with. Doing otherwise or getting caught will result in a permanent ban from TA and all themes removed for all users involved.

The CSSIgniter Team 9:43 am on October 25, 2018

Is the readme.txt format finalized?
From the discussion below the linked post, it seems there are a lot of redundant pieces of information that are already included in the theme’s style.css, as well as some useless such as “Stable tag” which will always be the same as the current theme’s version.

Also, what about the “Resources” licensing format? Most resources are more than one file, and sometimes they include multiple licenses. For example, how we attributed FontAwesome until now:

* Font Awesome 5.1.0 – http://fontawesome.io
Copyright Dave Gandy
Font files licensed under SIL OFL 1.1 – http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. files licensed under the MIT license – http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Should this be changed to something like:

* Font Awesome (c) Dave Gandy, OFL, MIT

?

Also, the version number (which is missing in the rule’s readme) is important. In the case of jQuery mmenu, it was MIT licensed until v5.5.3 (which we can use), and then switched to CC BY-NC 4.0 (which we can’t use). Not stating the version can be misleading. The reviewer might decide to check on the validity of the stated license, visit the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party’s website, see that it’s latest version is CC BY-NC 4.0 and reject the theme for improper attribution.

I hope there is some clarification, or even an updated readme.txt we can follow.
Justin Tadlock 12:49 pm on October 25, 2018

Child themes must include more than minor changes (such as font and colour changes) to the parent theme to be accepted. To make it easier on the reviewer, make sure you describe what modifications/features you did on top of the parent theme (in a ticket comment).

The intent is to stop bad actors from flooding the theme directory every week with a new child that really offers no value on top of the parent in an attempt to game the system. Focusing on the *current* kind-of-sort-of loophole that they’re using just kicks the can down the road rather than addressing the underlying issue.

My fear is that enshrining this as a rule is going to hurt legitimate child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/. authors who have “minor changes” that offer real value to end users. Depending on how the parent theme was developed, a child theme could change 2-3 color values and a font to create an entirely new experience.

With the way the TRT review system is set up, reviewers use the guidelines as hard rules rather than guidelines to make smart decisions. Highly subjective rules tend to be inconsistently and unfairly applied in a system like this.

The only way to truly address the problem here is to have real consequences for any type of gaming the system.
- Rinku Y 1:52 am on October 26, 2018
  
  If ‘flooding the theme directory every week’ is the problem, we can treat child themes as a new theme for everyone including TA’s. no different queue for child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/. and TA only for parent themes.
  
  If a author wants to develop a child theme for default theme and want to give different color to some sections and text, then this theme will not pass requirements, according this rule. but child themes are for these types of changes.
Andre 10:29 pm on October 25, 2018

Looking at the example readme.txt (from 2015) what is the difference between “Changelog” and “Upgrade Notice”. They way I see it, they are the same. One thing to keep note of, is that eventually these readme.txt files will become a mile-long with additional info being added, especially a changelog. I generally keep the changelog as an md file in the theme so it’s standalone.

Welcome to the Themes team!

Handbooks and review requirements

Coding standards and plugins

Code Packages

Communication

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