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

Tammie Lister 1:58 pm on October 15, 2014

What should we put in a theme review…

What should we put in a theme review test theme?

As part of the move to get a contribution pack together and make becoming a theme reviewer more accessible, we are creating a theme that does it all wrong. Code name doing_it_wrong theme needs your input. We want to be sure we have only required guidelines in there as a starting point.

So, what would you as a theme reviewer think of the guidelines are important we have in the theme? There are bonus points for things we can put in that trip people up and are frequent issues.

Tracy Levesque 2:02 pm on October 15, 2014

Scripts and styles hard coded in the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes..
John Wilson 2:19 pm on October 15, 2014

Credit links, Author URI & Theme URI, usually the latter when used, are issues which I’ve come across in the past. Most noticeably the Theme URI not being specific to the theme. Oh, and hard coded scripts/styles.
Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) 2:22 pm on October 15, 2014

Hardcoded scripts and styles. Your own copies of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-bundled scripts. Not escaping output.
- Josh Levinson 2:52 pm on October 15, 2014
  
  +1
Sakin Shrestha 2:39 pm on October 15, 2014

This checklist https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2014/04/07/how-to-ensure-your-ticket-passes-final-approval-audit/ by @chipbennett should help in creating doing it wrong theme.
jancbeck 3:54 pm on October 15, 2014
- Bundle-in JS and font resources that use *tricky* licenses that claim to be GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. compatible but actually are not (looking at you, Isotope.JS).
- Deregister coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. libraries and overwrite them with new ones
- Display intrusive up-selling premium theme offers.
- Has analytics tracking code inside to measure theme usage without user consent.
- functions.php’s sole content is an include of some mysterious PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. “framework” that does nobody knows what.
- query_posts
- Jose Castaneda 6:32 pm on October 15, 2014
  
  I like the idea of query_posts a lot actually. I’d like to see a good example being utilized in a theme.
Christine Rondeau 4:43 pm on October 15, 2014

Items that fall under 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 territory, like SEO title, google analytics.
Julie Kuehl 5:14 pm on October 15, 2014

Non-escaped, non-sanitized, non-translatable
Ulrich 6:24 pm on October 15, 2014

Undefined variables, non prefixed functions and stylesheet handles. Incorrect Screenshot.
alex27 8:04 pm on October 15, 2014
How about those:
- Theme URI being a demo site
- Loading scripts from CDN
- Adding Custom headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. or background via Theme options
- Wrong anchor text for credit link (SEO seeded)
- Theme using a bunch of remove_action() calls to ‘cleanup’ WordPress header
Stanko Metodiev 8:30 am on October 16, 2014

Manual include of jQuery from their site or CDN, probably covered from the above comments. Also Custom Post TypeCustom Post Type WordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. and content shortcodes, which is 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 territory
Justin Tadlock 3:45 pm on October 16, 2014

Two of the things that definitely need to be focused on are theme options (both an admin screen and in the customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.) and widgets with options. Each of these should have a variety of options so that the data can be validated, sanitized, and escaped with different methods. There’s almost so many problems that I’ve seen with this that it might be more beneficial to see a “doing it right” theme.

I second what folks have said about scripts/styles. One thing I didn’t see above: Incorrect addition of conditional styles to headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. (this can be done with WP methods).

The use of post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. boxes and post meta to create content (like add video URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, gallery, etc.).

We need a variety of license/copyright issues. Also, it’s worth noting that we shouldn’t simply be looking at third-party scripts/styles for licenses. Many themes use third-party PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. libraries and scripts that need to be appropriately credited.

Missing `esc_attr()` (or appropriate escaping function) on the front end. The use of `the_title_attribute()` vs. `the_title()` in link attributes.

Half internationalized theme and half not internationalized.
- Jose Castaneda 5:55 am on October 18, 2014
  
  We need a variety of license/copyright issues. Also, it’s worth noting that we shouldn’t simply be looking at third-party scripts/styles for licenses. Many themes use third-party PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. libraries and scripts that need to be appropriately credited.
  
  I like that! I’m also in agreement with widgets and the options. A really good example would be using sane defaults. 🙂

Welcome to the Themes team!

Handbooks and review requirements

Coding standards and plugins

Code Packages

Communication

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