Requirements project March 23

Our next project meeting will be on Thursday at 19:00

We have a few more short term fixes to discuss:

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/. names
Theme URI and footer credit links
Admin bar menu items
Screenshot

There is also one recommendation that perhaps should be removed:
Themes may optionally unregister coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Widgets. This is allowed, but is it recommended?

As a reminder, we also have the Trello board.

Those who have time after the meeting are welcome to continue, with the purpose of defining what a “Letting users decide” approach would be for the team. We need to define it before we can continue any productive discussion on the topic.

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Child themes should not include the name of the parent theme.

Suggestion: Child themes may only use the parent theme name if both themes are made by the same author.

Suggestion 2: Remove it (again).

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If the theme adds a footer credit link, there should only be one (link to 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/ does not count).

Suggestion: There can only be a single footer credit link, which is either the the Theme URI or Author URI (link to WordPress.org does not count).

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Theme URI:

Using WordPress.org as theme URI is reserved for official themes.

This was brought up on 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/. this weekend:
“The purpose of the Theme URI is to point the user to a page specifically about the theme that we are hosting here on WordPress.org. That means that the majority of the info on that page should about the theme that we’re hosting.”
“Theme URI needs to be a) under a domain you control, not “wordpress.org”, and b) unique to the theme. Not unique to the theme and version number or anything else, just unique to the theme. ”

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Themes are not allowed to add a menu item to the WordPress admin bar.

I believe this is used in practice but it is not currently listed on the requirement page. Is this something that we want to add or is it something that we would consider allowing?

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The screenshot should be of the actual theme as it appears with default options, not a logo or mockup.

Suggestion: The screenshot should be of the theme, not a logo or mockup. The screenshot may optionally show plugins, settings and templates. The user should be able to make the theme look like the screenshot.

Ulrich 10:31 pm on March 21, 2017

Themes are not allowed to add a menu item to the WordPress admin bar.

I would instead change to
“Themes are not allowed to modify the WordPress admin bar and add menu items.”
- Rinku Y 11:37 am on May 9, 2017
  
  Auto focus link to options panel added by theme May be exception. Please consider once again !!
  - Carolina Nymark 4:23 am on May 10, 2017
    
    Hi -I don’t understand. Do you mean that custom option pages should be allowed, what is an “options panel added by the theme” ?
    “Auto focus” is an absolute no go for accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) reasons.
Joy 5:02 am on March 22, 2017

Child themes:
As a user, I would prefer that all child themes had the word Child in the name. It would be nice if they were consistently identifiable, so users could either avoid them or search for them.

Footer link:
I’ve seen a few themes where the author just wants his name there, and it isn’t linked to anything. And most are hard coded, so the user has to edit the theme to get rid of the link.

Screenshot:
I prefer the existing requirement. Surely it was written that way for a reason. If the author wants the screenshot to look different from the defaults, why doesn’t he change the defaults? And saying that the user should be able to make it look like the screenshot means to me that the image used should be supplied with the theme, which it often is not.
- Ulrich 10:53 pm on March 22, 2017
  
  Child themes: I think a better way would be to make the Child themes better identifiable in the design then forcing themes have the word child in them.
  
  Footer link: As the themes are 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. any of the themes can be modified and the text can be removed. If the user does not like it they can use another theme, ask someone how to remove it, buy the pro version where there may be a simple checkbox or hire someone to do it for them. By requiring the footer link to editable just creates more work for the reviewers and the theme authors.
  
  Screenshot: The default can be different from case to case. How is the front page setup, what plugins are installed, how posts exists on the site, what featured images are set.

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