On 22 Sept 2021, @kafleg from the themes team organized a call with Nepali theme authors. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the new requirements.
At first, the themes team would like to thank all theme authors for their attendance and valuable suggestions.
In this post, I am going to share what we discussed during the meeting. We went through the requirements one by one and discussed them.
Accessibility 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) requirements
Theme authors want to remove the accessibility requirements. Currently, we have Skip Links, Underline Links, and Keyboard Navigation as accessibility requirements. One theme author says, “there is already an accessibility-ready tag for themes. These requirements should only apply to the accessibility-ready themes. Or, we can add a new tag for this case”.
Allow design based block 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. in themes
Theme authors want to add design-related blocks in themes. Currently, custom blocks are not allowed in themes. They suggested “If we are allowed to have design-related widgets, why not custom blocks? If we are allowed to add custom blocks, we can make even better themes using blocks. The available blocks are not well enough to make the design better”. “Making a plugin 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 for custom blocks and recommending is a solution but it’s not better”, they added.
Give priority to the block-based theme
Theme authors said, “The themes team needs to find a proper way to encourage theme authors who want to make block themes. Either by making a new tab in the themes repository or using other methods. With that, we can see more block themes”.
Affiliate Links
Allowing affiliate links is a good move. However, they are concerned about the number of links they are allowed to add.
Bundled demo file in the theme
The theme authors want to include bundling demo files in the theme. “It will make the usage of theme simple. Users can import the demo data directly from the theme instead of installing recommended plugins”, they said.
Suggestions from theme authors
They suggested switching the popular and latest themes tab in the theme repository to give more exposure to the new themes. They said, “The themes team is giving more priority to the popular themes instead of new ones. If a new theme is not getting exposure, theme authors will be discouraged from making more themes and the number of submissions will be reduced”.
“Reducing the requirements is not the ultimate solution for increasing the theme installation. If themes are more functional, easy to use, and perfect in design, the number will increase”, they added.
Conclusion
The rest of the requirements are fine to them. Theme authors want to get more exposure and more flexibility in the requirements.
Note: The session was held in the Nepali language and it wasn’t recorded.
