Running a Theme Review Session

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

Information for contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. organizers

When running a review session, we recommend that you first present the team and what we do, and introduce contributors to the Theme Team’s blog on https://make.wordpress.org/themes/.

During the introduction you will not need to or have the time to go through the entire requirements page, but emphasize that we review license and security first. We do not review design.

After this short introduction, a lot of your time as a group leader will likely be spent helping people set up a local environment, which is step 4 of the Become a reviewer guide.

Set up a local installLocal Install A local install of WordPress is a way to create a staging environment by installing a LAMP or LEMP stack on your local computer. of WordPress.

Import the recommended theme unit test.

Install and activate the plugins:

When this is done, the contributors need a theme to review.

-Normally when someone starts reviewing a theme, they are assigned to a ticket in the themes TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/., they post a review, and wait up to seven days for the theme author to reply.

We know that this format may not be suitable for a contributor day where the time is limited and where contributors may want to meet and try different teams during the day.

-Contributors should not be expected to complete a full review or to feel pressured into having to continue working on their ticket after the contributor day is over.

We recommend that you either:

Select a theme from the top of the queue, and review the theme together as a group. Make sure that everyone is included in the discussions.

Let contributors pick a theme each from the queue, but without being assigned to the ticket. By leaving the ticket status as new they will be able to add the result of their review, but will not need to do the follow up review. Contributors can also pair up and review a theme together.

Let contributors review their own theme with the help of the plugins, and show them how they can upload it to the theme directory.

Let contributors request a theme to review via the Theme Review 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. -Depending on who is online to see the request, this may take some time, so we encourage organizers to prepare ahead of time and request a couple of tickets to review before the contributor day starts.

Trac tickets that have been assigned during a contributor day will often need to be reassigned, so we would like to ask that you create a list of 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/ usernames (or a list of ticket numbers) and send them via slack to either:

@kafleg

@acosmin

To help with the actual review, we are writing a “How to do a review” guide. We also have documentation about using the themes Trac.

We would love to hear what we can improve to help contributors get started, if you are able to write down frequently asked questions about the process, the requirements or anything else, that would be very helpful.

Last updated: June 6, 2023