These statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, since the numbers does not assure statistical accuracy for the entire theme directory.
While we can follow the graph and even search live themes, that won’t tell us what the reviews contain, so this was done manually, human errors included.
Out of 531 themes that were closed as not approved between December and February, I looked closer at 100 tickets. Out of 100 tickets, 21 tickets were closed because the themes were copies of a theme that is already in the directory.
- 14 tickets where closed because the author did not reply within 7 days.
- 9 tickets where closed on author request.
- 9 tickets where closed because the author already had an open ticket (the one theme rule).
The reviewer did not complete the review and the ticket had to be returned to the queue on 8 occasions (Not necessarily 8 separate themes).
The most common problems mentioned by the reviewers were:
- Missing escaping or using the wrong functions: 23 themes
- Text that is not translation ready: 21 themes
- Missing prefix: 20 themes
- Scripts or styles are not enqueued: 18 themes
- PHP 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. notices, errors or warnings: 12 themes
- Style tags does not correspond with theme functionality, or are deprecated: 10 themes
You can find the numbers for the not approved themes here.
In an attempt to compare the results of the two categories, I also looked at 100 out of 177 new themes that went live between December and February.
The reviewer did not complete the review and the ticket had to be returned to the queue on 45 occasions (Not necessarily 45 separate themes).
37 of the tickets were reopened as a second reviewer found additional problems.
One of the more alarming results was that in 51 out of 100 tickets, the reviewer pointed out that escaping was either missing, or the wrong functions were used.
The most common problems mentioned by the reviewers were:
- Missing escaping or using the wrong functions: 51 Themes
- Text that is not translation ready: 44 Themes
- Missing prefix: 39 Themes
- Missing license or copyright information for included assets: 34 Themes
- Unused code or files: 25 Themes
- PHP notices, errors or warnings: 20 Themes
- Missing sanitization, or using the wrong functions: 18 Themes
- Options in the customizer 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. that are not working: 18 Themes
On 15 occasions, the reviewer asked the author to remove demo content.
On 12 occasions, the reviewer asked the author to remove or reduce content creation.
Compared to the themes that were not approved, only 11 themes had scripts or styles that were not enqueued.
In a couple of tickets, the reviewer asked the author to replace the following custom functionality and use WordPress functions instead:
- Logo: 11 Themes
- Custom CSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.: 10 Themes
- Custom excerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox.: 8 Themes
- Custom pagination: 6 Themes
You can find the numbers for the live themes here.
I also wrote down how long it took for the themes to go live:
Live after 13 months: 1
Live after 12 months: 1
Live after 11 months: 4
Live after 10 months: 8
Live after 9 months: 9
Live after 8 months: 17
Live after 7 months: 23
Live after 6 months: 22
Live after 5 months: 11
Live after 4 months: 3
Live after 3 months: 1
We will be able to repeat this in a few months, to make sure that these numbers are going down.
