The 5 minute review

This is step 12 of our onboarding guide to becoming a reviewer

Sometimes, we don’t have enough time to review an entire theme. But there are still ways that we can help.

Open the New queue on the themes tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.: https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/report/2

Scroll to the end of the queue, where you can find the newly submitted themes.

-What we are looking for here are themes that have a lot of problems, and need to be closed so that they do not 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. the queue.

This can be themes that use underscore.me as their theme URI, themes that are missing a screenshot, or themes that are using the wrong screenshot, like a mock up or logo.

From the bottom of the queue:

  • Open the newest ticket. View the screenshot.
  • Visit the theme and author URI and check if the sites follow the requirements.
  • Click on the SVNSVN Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/. or trac browser link. Open header.php and look for any scripts or styles that have been added. In the example below, we can find that font-awesome is included via CDN, so this theme already has one issue:
<!doctype html>
<html <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<head>
	<meta charset="<?php bloginfo( 'charset' ); ?>">
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
	<link rel="profile" href="https://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" />
	<?php wp_head(); ?>

Next, open functions.php. Look for functions that are not prefixed. For example, if the theme name is Hello World, we expect the prefix to either be hello_world, or a similar unique prefix. In this example, the file included several functions that were missing prefixes.

function get_hero_image()
function main_scripts()

Now lets open footer.php. Here we are mainly looking for copyright options that are not escaped, but also additional scripts added in the footer, and text that is not translation ready. In the example I found when writing this guide, there was also a social media link option that was not escaped.

echo get_theme_mod('copyright');

echo "<a href='".get_theme_mod('facebook_page_setting')."'><i class='fa fa-facebook'></i></a>" 

So now we have opened 3 files, and we have already found at least 3 problems, and it has not taken us more than a few minutes.

It is now up to you as a reviewer to choose if you would like to continue the review, or if you think the ticket needs to be closed.

Either way, please add the information about what you have found in the ticket, so that the author can improve their theme.


We are also looking for themes that have been uploaded by mistake. Themes that have been uploaded by mistake are easily spotted by their names, for example “Twenty Seventeen My Blog 1” or similar.

When you find a copy of a theme that is already in the directory, you can close the ticket directly (If you have the access), but leave them a message with a link to the documentation, so that the user can learn how to upload the theme correctly to their own website.

Example:

Hi!
I am closing this ticket as not approved since this is a copy of a theme that is already in the theme directory.

If you meant to add this theme to your own website, please see https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/work-with-themes/#adding-new-themes

Last updated: