Howdy Mates! 

The meeting notes are from the themes review team discussion.

• Date: September 12, 2023
• Time: 15:00 UTC
• Location: #themereview channel
• Agenda: Themes team meeting agenda
• Agenda Prepared by: @kafleg
• Meeting facilitator – @kafleg
• Notes taker – @kafleg
• Full transcript –  #themereview channel

Attendees:

• @bijayyadav
• @sereedmedia
• @aslamnaik 
• @shivashankerbhatta 
• @greenshady 
• @luminuu
• @poena

1. Weekly Updates

In the past 7 days,

• 712 tickets were opened
• 709 tickets were closed
  • 696 tickets were made live.
    • 22 new Themes were made live.
    • 674 Theme updates were made live.
    • 4 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
  • 13 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, 23 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, 5 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.

Number of reviewers: 7 (@kafleg, @acosmin, @ShresthaRaaz, @fahimmurshed, @vowelweb, @bijayyadav, @greenshady)

2. Community Summit Discussion – Building trust in WordPress CMS security

For the community summit discussion, we have a dedicated blog site now. Check it out here. There are so many post that is useful to read and participate in the discussion as well.

One of the topics from the community summit was building security trust in WordPress. And themes team is always concerned about it.

You all know that,

1. We review the theme code line by line and if there is a security issue, we ask the theme author to fix them. (This is how themes teamwork from many years)
2. Sometimes, the themes team checks popular themes if they did anything wrong in the updates. (But very often)
3. We check the themes team email regularly and if there is any email from these users about the theme security, we immediately check that theme and take action.

To make things simpler, we also wrote the Theme Security Issues page. If you have any feedback or suggestions regarding the above-published page, please let me(@kafleg) know or contact other theme team reps.

@greenshady wanted to add new pages to the handbook overhaul outline so new things don’t get lost or out of sync. He added a note already.

I said during the meeting “We always look forward to the help on how to make themes more secure. As a themes 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., I always look forward to the active participation of the theme authors in this type of conversation.” I also shared a blog post about WordPress CMS security as a recommended reading.

3. WordPress Default theme Twenty Twenty-Four contribution

WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. bundled theme Twenty Twenty-Four is currently under development. This theme will be bundled with WordPress 6.4, the last major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. of 2023.

You can also contribute and learn how core themes are developed. This theme is a complete Block theme(FSEFSE Short for Full Site Editing, a project for the Gutenberg plugin and the editor where a full page layout is created using only blocks. theme) and if you want to explore a block theme, I highly recommend checking this.

More than 45 contributors already contributed this theme and you can be the next one. If you need any support, guidance, or ideas, join the #core-themes channel. Also, we’ve core themes meeting weekly.

4. Open Floor

i) Theme SnifferTheme Sniffer Theme Sniffer is a plugin utilizing custom sniffs for PHP_CodeSniffer that statically analyzes your theme and ensures that it adheres to WordPress coding conventions, as well as checking your code against PHP version compatibility. The plugin is available from GitHub. Themes are not required to pass the Theme Sniffer scan without warnings or errors to be included in the theme directory.

The open floor discussion was started from the comments in the meeting agenda post. @poena purposed to retire the Theme Sniffer 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 from GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/. She said to retire this plugin since the team has no means to maintain and support it.

@greenshady is also in favor of archiving it. Active contributors of Theme Sniffer @dingo_d and @rabmalin also agree to archive it.

Please comment in the below comment section if you are in favor of archiving it.

ii) New Handbook

Justin also shared, Chapter 3: Global Settings and Styles (theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.) of the new handbook should be fully drafted in the next week.

Once this is fully reviewed and edited, I’d like us to move on to “phase 3” of this project and begin publishing new content to the handbook. Then, publish the next two chapters, Templates and Features, as they are written and reviewed.

We won’t be able to publish the earlier chapters until more of the handbook is ready (because of broken links), but these newer chapters are self-contained and can go live whenever we’re ready.

I’m happy to write up a P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. on the next phase and have the handbook reps review this and offer feedback. I wanted to bring this up in case there were thoughts/objections to moving forward.

So you can check the draft and suggest if you find anything. He wanted feedback from non-native English speakers, especially to make sure the language is readable for them as well.

iii) Recommend to Check

Here is one theme in the tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. and it is currently under review. https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/149883

I would like you all to check this theme once. For me, this theme will add value and show the possibility of block themes. I would like to see such themes in the themes repository. I want to see your views on this.

Justin added, “In particular, on the theme, any thoughts on the onboarding/settings screen is welcome. I too think it adds value.”

#meeting-notes, #themes-team