Nominations Call for the themes team representatives: 2024 Edition

The Themes team is looking for team representatives for the year 2024. It’s time to nominate team representatives. We would like to request you to comment in the below comment section about your nomination. Based on the nominations, 2 themes team representatives will be elected.

Currently, @acosmin, @shivashankerbhatta, and me (@kafleg) are the team representatives

What are Team Reps?

Team reps are responsible for communicating on behalf of the team. 

In the WordPress open-source project, each team has on average one or two reps (i.e. an abbreviation for team representative).  

Read here to learn more about team reps.

Responsibilities:

  • They represent the team
  • Communication with other teams
  • Post weekly updates
  • Mentor theme reviewers 
  • Transfer themes, suspend or delist themes (if necessary)
  • Conduct team meetings, write meeting agendas and meeting notes 
  • Guide theme authors and reply to their questions 
  • Regularly check themes team email and follow-up etc. 
  • Maintain Theme Check pluginPlugin 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
  • Review Patterns and set live or delist them, etc.

What are the qualifications?

A representative should be an active member of the WordPress Community. Someone reliable and trusted, familiar with WordPress theme development.

How to nominate someone? 

The deadline for nominations is Friday, December 15, 2023.

Nomination text sample: “I would like to nominate @nominee_wp_username”. Or you can also nominate yourself. You can write “I would like to nominate myself”. 

If you get nominated but if you are not ready for the reps, you can decline it as well.

How Will the Election Work?

If we get more than 2 names and can’t decide on reps by acceptance, then we will go with the voting like an election. We will write another post with detailed information about the voting process. (if necessary). 

Once the results are done, the new team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts.(s) will be announced in a new blog post. 

If you have any questions, comment below. Happy Nominating!

Themes team meeting agenda for December 12, 2023

Hello world! Welcome to the last meeting of 2023.

The themes team meets regularly on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. This session marks the first meeting of December, also serving as the final one for the year 2023. Given that the next meeting falls around Christmas and New Year, we have decided not to schedule the gathering during the holiday period.

The meeting takes place in the #themereview channel on WordPress 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/. and you need an account to participate. Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday, December 12, 2023, 15:00 UTC

In addition to the scheduled agendas, we reserve time at the conclusion for an open floor session, providing an opportunity for you to pose questions or share any themes-related information.

We strongly encourage the active participation of all members and anyone with an interest in the discussion. If you have particular agenda items you would like to propose, please feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Meeting Agendas

  • Weekly updates
  • Nomination for team reps 2024 edition (Final Call)
  • Requirements for the settings/onboarding functionality
  • The year 2023 review
  • Open Floor

Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting!

#agenda, #themereview, #themes-team

Themes team meeting agenda for November 28, 2023

The themes team convenes on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. The second meeting for this month is scheduled for November 28.

The meeting takes place in the #themereview channel on WordPress 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/. and you need an account to participate. Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday, November 28, 2023, 15:00 UTC

In addition to the predetermined agendas, we allocate time at the end for an open floor session where you are welcome to ask questions or share any themes-related information.

We highly encourage all members, as well as anyone with an interest, to participate. If you have specific agenda items you would like to include, please feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Meeting Agendas

  • Weekly updates
  • Nomination for team reps 2024 edition
  • Handle custom settings screens in 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. themes
  • Call for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Asia 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/. table lead
  • Open Floor

See you at the meeting!

#agenda, #themes-team

Discussion: How to handle custom settings screens in block themes

In 2015, the Themes Team implemented a guideline that required all theme settings pages to use the Customize APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. This was after the API had been in WordPress and stable for nearly three years.

There were two primary reasons for this:

  • It meant that users could expect a standard options interface from any theme in the 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/ theme directory.
  • It simplified the review process because all the code was built on top of the exact same API. This made it easier to check for security issues, in particular, and shorten the time it took to review a theme.

Over the years, this guideline was generally accepted as the best path forward by members of the Themes Team.

In large part, the decision single-handedly cut out the vast majority of insecure settings pages that were being implemented in themes (mostly from a couple of copy-paste scripts that were popular around the web). That was a big win for theme authors, reviewers, and users. The importance of this change is not to be taken lightly and is very much at the forefront of any discussion around theme settings.

Fast forward to today—now eight years later. The Themes Team is at another pivotal moment that could partially shape what the theming landscape looks like for years to come.

A new era: 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. themes and custom settings screens

When the customizerCustomizer 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. guideline was introduced, it was during the classic theming era. There was no concept of block themes at the time. While it is possible for a block theme to use the Customize API today, it is no longer part of the expected user experience for users who have activated a block theme.

In fact, there’s no real expectation that a block theme will have any settings screen at all outside of what’s possible via Appearance > Editor in the admin.

Now that the block theming system and the Site Editor are about seven months out of betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process., it means that theme authors will continue building more and more block themes. And with that, the Themes Team should expect to see more experimentation around this new paradigm. There really is no guidebook on what to expect as theme authors try to solve both old and new problems in a world that is heavily based on the block system and modern JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/..

In particular, the expectation is that theme authors will begin trying new things with ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/.-based JavaScript components that are bundled with WordPress. Not only are interfaces changing, but the underlying programming language now involves much more JavaScript.

The discussion: feedback wanted

In the October 10, 2023 meeting, the Themes Team began the discussion on what to do about the settings page requirement going forward. The decision from that meeting was to open the discussion up for feedback from the wider community.

The Customize API requirement is well established for classic themes, so this discussion is solely focused on block themes.

The questions:

  • Should the team loosen the requirement on the current settings page requirement for block themes, allowing experimentation with React components?
  • If so, what guardrails—if any—should be put in place on what themes can do?

It’s also important to frame this conversation within the overall guidelines and not get into the weeds of unrelated topics. For example, settings would still need to fall within “theme territory” (i.e., they should be related to design). The decision that needs to be made is focused solely on the settings page guideline:

Use the Customizer for implementing theme options.

The other thing to be aware of is that any decision to loosen that specific guideline can impact active reviewers. That means making sure that they are up to date on modern WordPress JavaScript coding standards and can handle an upward trend of more themes with heavier JavaScript code bases. Otherwise, the progress over the last few years to have a faster review queue could also be lost. With that in mind, it’s important for any active reviewer to voice any concerns about any potential changes.

Now the floor is yours. How would you handle the settings page guideline for block themes going forward?

Props to @kafleg and @ndiego for feedback and review on this post.

#discussion-topic, #guidelines

Themes Team Meeting Notes – October 10, 2023

Howdy Mates! 

The meeting notes are from the themes review team discussion.

Attendees:

:one:Weekly updates


In the past 7 days
,

  • 625 tickets were opened
  • 637 tickets were closed
    • 626 tickets were made live.
      • 32 new Themes were made live.
      • 594 Theme updates were made live.
      • 3 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 11 tickets were not-approved.
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

Note: These stats include both the new theme tickets and updated theme tickets as well.

For now, 12 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. themes are currently being reviewed. In the last 7 days, 9 block themes are live.

Note: These stats include both the new theme tickets and updated theme tickets as well.

The themes team published weekly updates about tickets and HelpScout emails. Here is the theme statistic for the past 7 days. The most current stats can be found here.

Thank you @acosmin@fahimmurshed@vowelweb for reviewing themes this week.

:two:Handle the themes settings page requirement

During the meeting, we talked about various things about this. You can read the entire conversation here. During the meeting, @shivashankerbhatta said, “We could greatly simplify the process of using WordPress by assisting users in selecting and configuring themes for their websites. :slightly_smiling_face:

@greenshady is interested in helping theme reviewers to review the JS part of the theme setting/onboarding page if necessary. Also, he is interested in running mentorship for theme reviewers.

@kafleg was worried on, “All of us saying that theme settings page will add value to the theme users. How we can track that? It is really adding user experience of just adding extra workload for reviewing themes?”

@poena added, “I will repeat that it is not up to a theme developer or pluginPlugin 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 developer to solve the onboarding issues. CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. issues should be fixed in core.”

Before deciding to allow or disallow the theme setting page, @greenshady will write a blog post to get feedback from everyone and the themes team will decide after checking the input.

:three:Evaluate requirements of themes

@poena said, “It has been two years. I think the team should evaluate them regularly.” So, during the meeting we all agreed that, we need to evaluate the theme requirements.

Once we get into the #2 agenda final, at that time, we need to work on this #3 as well. Some requirements are really outdated or some need to be added.

:four: Create a skills inventory for reviewers

During the meeting, there were questions:

  • How to create a skill inventory of reviewers’ skills and find and address areas of improvement?
  • How to do it in a way that reviewers are comfortable with it and don’t feel bad if they are not experts on everything?

@greenshady is interested to work alongside folks and help build any training system we might need. He would like to see a Make Themes post to discuss what such a system might look like.

@kafleg added, “We can also divide the work based on the reviewer expertise. Like we are doing for code review and 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) review.”. Also, he added, And we can also run mentorship sessions for reviewers?

We’ll discuss about this idea in next meeting as well.

:five:Open Floor

A few events happening over the next month that will be related to theming:

  • Hallway Hangout on block themes on October 12.
  • Hallway Hangout on WP 6.4 features October 12. Sign up here.
  • Developer Hours on November 2 will cover the Twenty Twenty-Four theme

#meeting-notes, #themes-team