Theme Review Incentive: November 2013 Winners!

Welcome to the Themes team!

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

We do license, security, and code quality reviews.

We help build and maintain default themes.

The primary focus of the team is to help theme authors transition to blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based themes.

If this sounds interesting, read more about the team here. Check out our guide for new reviewers and the frequently asked questions.

Handbooks and review requirements

The team maintains the official Theme Review Requirements, the Theme Unit Test Data, and helps the documentation team with the Theme Developer Handbook.

Coding standards and plugins

We maintain the WPThemeReview Standard for PHP_CodeSniffer, the Theme Sniffer plugin and Theme Check

Code Packages

We have code packages for themes available for use on Github and Packagist

Communication

Meet us in the #themereview SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.

Meetings:

Twice monthly at Tuesday @ 15:00 UTC.

#themereview

Congratulations to @rohitink, @ZGani, and @alex27; you three have completed the most new Theme approvals for October through mid-November!

Please post your Featured Theme selections in the comments, with a link to the Theme’s WPORG Theme Directory listing. The Themes that will be cycled out are: Destro, Iconic One, and StrapVert.

A total of 84 new Themes were approved by 12 reviewers during October and the first half of November.

While we do not have a formal incentive program for Theme Updates (Priority #1 Themes), we have decided this time also to recognize @tskk, who completed 129 Theme update approvals during October and the first half of November. @tskk, please also post a Featured Theme selection in the comments, with a link to the Theme’s WPORG Theme Directory listing. The Theme that will be cycled out is: Responsive.

We’ll announce the next winners after the New Year!

#featured-themes, #review-incentive

tskk 7:51 pm on November 18, 2013

Thanks Chip, Emil and other admins for the early and unexpected Christmas gift 🙂
I will continue with Destro.
- Christine 8:21 pm on November 18, 2013
  
  Thanks tskk.. I think that you reviewed my latest half a dozen or so theme submissions.
Rohit Tripathi 8:11 pm on November 18, 2013

Thanks Chip. Reviewing themes at WordPress has been a wonderful experience for me. By, reviewing the themes have the code quality of my own themes have improved a lot. You, Emil and others have been a great help with my reviews. I will continue reviewing themes and contribute more to the community, and possibily help out upcoming theme reviewers 😛

I am selecting my Sixteen https://wordpress.org/themes/sixteen/
StyledThemes 8:14 pm on November 18, 2013

First, I can say congrats to the reviewers…always nice to win something 🙂

On the flip side, there is one caveat to mass reviews and approvals which affects the hard work of theme creators who look forward to submitting their theme, getting reviewed and approved, and finally being able to sit on the “New Themes” list for a while to get a nice bit of exposure. The problem is, that with so many releases done at once, there are many times the new theme creator gets pushed off extremely fast.

One good example is the recent release of 28 themes on the 16th of November. The New Themes list displays only 15, which means 13 are already on page two. This also means new upcoming releases will push these new releases off on to page 3, then 4 very quickly.

So for the hard work of theme creators, especially any new ones, they get approved, only to be lost off the New list page 1 almost instantly. Sometimes I see themes stay on the front page of the New List for 2 weeks while others 1 week, and times, just a few days and they are gone.

Just something to think about how many and how fast themes are released considering other topics talking about losing developers and discouraging new ones to join in 🙂
- Zulfikar Nore 8:38 pm on November 18, 2013
  
  +1.
  
  This is something that really needs to be given some thought, especially the New Themes section.
  - Chip Bennett 9:05 pm on November 18, 2013
    
    Not that I disagree with you, but I’ll point you back to today’s previous post: those lists are something that we have no control over.
    - Zulfikar Nore 9:16 pm on November 18, 2013
      
      I totally understand that Chip 🙂
      
      Just throwing some ideas around in the hope those who have the control will catch one or two maybe?
    - StyledThemes 9:32 pm on November 18, 2013
      
      Hi Chip… I don’t want to have your announcement of the reviewers who won this Month be side-tracked, but to close this added topic off and to get back to the winnders, it’s always being said “we have no control over”. Is there someone that does and be able to make contact with ideas?
      - Chip Bennett 12:50 pm on November 19, 2013
        
        I would recommend starting a “Theme Directory Wish List” type discussion on the mail list.
- Rohit Tripathi 9:03 pm on November 18, 2013
  
  I have personally been a victim of this. Maybe Randomizing the order of First 30 Freshly submitted themes, will solve this problem to some extent.
  - Zulfikar Nore 9:14 pm on November 18, 2013
    
    That is one way to get new themes some exposure.
    
    Had a look at the directory and thought, maybe moving the new themes section to the left sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. which will bring it up near the fold plus increase the numbers of themes displayed.
    - Rohit Tripathi 9:22 pm on November 18, 2013
      
      Yes, That’s a solution. But, displaying large no. of themes under one section, wouldn’t look nice on the theme directory. Secondly, themes would loose focus.
      
      With the current design and arrangement of themes, atleast all themes get similar exposure. With the no. of themes on homepage increasing, this feature would be lost.
- Ulrich 1:30 pm on November 19, 2013
  
  Just as an idea, what if the new theme themes were released in smaller batches. So that there were only a certain number of new releases per week.
  
  Otherwise from what i have heard is this is place to open a ticket for a change on the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ website. https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/
- Justin Tadlock 6:46 pm on November 19, 2013
  
  Could the admins not just push the approved themes live every one or two days instead of once a week or so? I’m not sure how complicated of a process this is. I figured it’d be just a few button clicks. Of course, I know you guys get busy too, so I’m not sure if that’ll cut into your normal lives.
  - Chip Bennett 8:12 pm on November 19, 2013
    
    We try. With Theme Updates it’s much easier. But for New Themes, we have to perform a review audit, to ensure nothing was missed. That takes more time than simply pushing the Theme live.
    - WC Master 7:24 am on November 20, 2013
      
      Dear Chip Please do something for me i have a theme for review.I am new but i have very good interest !My WPORG User Name:WC Master
      My Theme https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/15304
      - Chip Bennett 3:23 pm on November 20, 2013
        
        Your ticket is in the review queue, and will be reviewed accordingly, in its turn. Please be patient.
    - Justin Tadlock 12:41 am on November 21, 2013
      
      If you guys need any help in that department, I’ll be more than happy to audit some of the new themes a couple of times every week.
  - Jose Castaneda 10:43 am on November 20, 2013
    
    I was wondering that too earlier today. I hate to be that person but what does your review workload look like?
Zulfikar Nore 8:32 pm on November 18, 2013

Awesome and my congrats to the other winners – well done guys 🙂

My nomination for this month is https://wordpress.org/themes/hueman

Of all the themes I’ve reviewed this one is top of the crop and well deserving of a place on the featured list.
- StyledThemes 9:35 pm on November 18, 2013
  
  Good choice actually…I like the Hueman theme. Getting good downloads since it was released.
alex27 9:19 pm on November 18, 2013

Thank you Chip and congrats to everyone on TRT! I’m gonna go with Corpo: https://wordpress.org/themes/corpo

Comments are closed.

Welcome to the Themes team!

Handbooks and review requirements

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Code Packages

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