Share your best review tips

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 #themes 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

@poena had a great idea on a post where we can all get involved and I wanted to share it with you today.

Every reviewer has their own preference on how to best review a theme; where to start, what plugins to use, what platform and browser to test on. We want to encourage new reviewers to find a workflow that works for them. Reviewing themes is not only for the benefit of the user and the theme author, but is also a way to learn more about theme development and give something back to the community. This process should be enjoyable, but the process and the guidelines can seem overwhelming for new reviewers and it can be difficult to get started. In order to make that less difficult it’s great to share what we’ve learnt.

Lets do just that and collect a list of tips for future and current reviewers. Do you have tips and tricks that you would like to share? Ways to make a review easy for the author to follow, or perhaps ways to speed up a review?

Emil Uzelac 9:26 pm on February 12, 2016

Awesome, here’s what I wrote about the subject long time ago, still stands.
Blair jersyer 10:35 pm on February 12, 2016

I am doing review in two steps. Exploring code first and testing the theme on Google Chrome with his awesome Web tools. Some time i use wp svn or Adobe Dreamweaver.
Jose Castaneda 11:17 pm on February 13, 2016

I use regexp to look up function definitions in the theme’s folder by using: function\s.*\(
David A. Kennedy 4:02 pm on February 15, 2016

I wrote a blog post with my collection of tips.
- Mahesh Waghmare 9:09 am on January 14, 2017
  
  @davidakennedy Nice Collection of WordPress Theme Review Tips for theme review startup.
kevinhaig 5:26 pm on February 15, 2016

Make a checklist of each requirement (I use a spreadsheet). Under each requirement add comments or decisions as you continue to review. Over time you will have a great tool for comprehensive reviews. Keep the list up to date 🙂
Carolina Nymark 6:00 pm on February 16, 2016

My best advice would be to remember to check every file, but also “don’t be afraid to ask”. That includes asking the theme author about their code if something is not clear.

I scan the folders, functions.php (and any other setup files) and header.php before I install the theme.
I use my code editor to create a list of all functions/classes, but also to find get_theme_mod and script tags. This search will help me see prefixes but also hard coded scripts and theme options that are not escaped.
An editor with syntax highlighting also helps you spot things like htmlHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. errors.

I also keep the page with the requirements open during the review.

I mostly use chrome and test locally, but have a live install prepared if I need to show the author something specific.

-Sometimes it is tempting to do a quick review, but remember that if you are not specific enough, it will be more difficult to check if the author has fixed everything in their update.
Jon (Kenshino) 4:44 pm on February 20, 2016

Write a theme yourself 🙂
kafleg 6:00 am on July 27, 2017

I prepared a small blog post about how i review theme and how other can review theme easily. Here is the collection step.
imonly_ik 12:40 pm on August 12, 2017

I start reviewing theme from front end to backend, I check test data and 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. support as much as possible, then I go to my editor(atom) and check each file in theme, starting from top to bottom in atom list within the folders, I check functions, escaping etc. by going through each file. For user help and better understanding, I give screenshots.
- imonly_ik 12:42 pm on August 12, 2017
  
  I forgot to mention very first step, “Theme check 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”

Welcome to the Themes team!

Handbooks and review requirements

Coding standards and plugins

Code Packages

Communication

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