The WordPress.org Themes Team announced an open discussion and date for a Zoom meeting with theme authors. The team is proposing a new set of guidelines that reduces and simplifies what is currently in place. Comments on the proposal are open through July 26, and the meeting is set for July 28, 2 pm CET.…
In yesterday’s twice-monthly meeting, the WordPress Themes Team made a couple of important changes to the official theme directory guidelines. They removed a requirement of some CSS classes that have long been sitting on the chopping block. They also implemented the third stage in their long-term plan to make all WordPress themes accessibility-ready. For years,…
Last Friday, the WordPress Themes Team announced the release of its new Webfonts Loader project. It is a drop-in script that allows theme authors to load web fonts from the user’s site instead of a third-party CDN. The secondary message included in the team’s announcement is that it no longer plans to allow themes to…
The Themes Team suspended Astra from the official theme directory just a few short weeks after it became the first non-default WordPress theme to surpass one million active installs. The reason: the theme was breaking the directory’s ban on affiliate links. The theme has since been reinstated. However, it has been delisted from the popular…
Last week, the official Theme Review Team (TRT) decided to change its name. The re-branding was mostly about fixing a naming mistake for a team with multiple responsibilities outside of reviews. The hope is that it also shifts the public perception about what the team does. The idea isn’t new. The team has tossed the…
Denis Žoljom, the automation representative for the WordPress theme review team, proposed moving much of the theme review system over to GitHub. The idea is to move the interactive parts of the review away from the current system. The proposal claims such a move would streamline the process via automated tools and make the manual,…
The WordPress theme review team (TRT) is kicking off a review weekend October 5 and will begin at 10:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). These events, called “review shindigs,” are marathon sessions where the team joins together to review themes and teach best practices. The current plan is to hold the event on the first Saturday…
The WordPress Theme Review Team (TRT) restructured its administrative duties and laid out its new team organization after yesterday’s semimonthly team meeting. This is not the first time the TRT has restructured to meet the growing demands of the official theme directory over the years. The team is moving toward a flat structure that spreads…
As part of the WordPress Theme Review Team’s plan to curb obtrusive admin notices, the team pushed version 1.0 of its Admin Notices package to the public. The new package provides a standard API for theme authors to display admin notices. Ari Stathopoulos took over as the packages project lead in late August. Stathopoulos is…
The WordPress Theme Review Team (TRT) met today and agreed to put new accessibility requirements in place for themes hosted in the official directory. These include some of the items that are required for theme authors who want to add the accessibility-ready tag. A handful of these requirements will soon be added to the standard…
The WordPress Theme Review team has implemented a controversial change to its Trusted Authors Program that puts a hard requirement on participants to join the theme review team and perform a minimum number of reviews in order to continue having their own themes fast tracked through the review process. “As we can’t figure out a…
In this episode, John James Jacoby recaps his trip to WordCamp Chicago and explains the thought process behind his presentation, The Fourth Wall of WordPress. We highlight a new project that gives developers a guided path to migrate functionality from the Classic editor to Gutenberg. We discuss the pros and cons of the trusted authors…
The WordPress Theme Review team (TRT) has turned a corner and is approaching a major milestone of getting the review queue under 100 themes. As of today, 189 themes are lined up in what was previously a 1,000+ backlog. Key reviewers are confident that number will be closer to zero in the near future. Emil…
Today Jetpack announced that its users now have access to a collection of 165 free themes from WordPress.com. Jetpack users can browse, preview, and activate themes by visiting the WordPress.com Theme Showcase. WordPress.com has also added the ability for Jetpack users to upload a theme from its interface as well, a feature that targets those…
In October 2016, Zerif Lite was suspended from the WordPress Themes Directory after failure to comply with the Theme Review Team’s guidelines. The suspension left 300,000 users (including those using Zerif Lite child themes) without maintenance and security updates. After five months of fixes and several rounds of review, Zerif Lite has returned to the…