Data Shows 24% of Themes Hosted on WordPress.org Support the Customizer

Aaron Jorbin, who contributes to WordPress core on a regular basis, has published a script called WordPress Theme Directory Slurper. The PHP based script downloads and updates a copy of the latest stable version of every theme in the WordPress.org theme directory. Devin Price put the script to good use and has published a series of data points related to the theme directory.

It took Price 112 minutes to run the script and download nearly 4GB of theme code. In his report, Price answers the following questions:

How many themes are based on Underscores?

How many themes are on WordPress.org?

How many themes have lite in their name?

How many themes use the latest WordPress functions?

How many themes add an options page?

How many themes use a bundled options framework?

How many themes use TGM Activation?

How Many Themes Support the Customizer?

Last week, we reported on a significant change to the WordPress theme directory guidelines. Beginning on April 22nd, themes submitted to the WordPress.org theme directory will have to use the customizer to build theme options. Themes already hosted in the directory have six months to comply before the Theme Review Team will enforce the new requirement.

By searching the directory for themes that use $wp_customize->add_control, Price was able to determine that 761 themes or 23.8% currently support the customizer. The low number coincides with Justin Tadlock’s assessment that adoption has been slow, especially when you consider that it was added three years ago to WordPress 3.4.

One thing to keep in mind is that after the six month cutoff date, themes not using the customizer will still be able to be downloaded from and hosted on the directory. However, the theme code can not be updated unless it follows the new guidelines.

It will be interesting to see what the data looks like three months from now as it would indicate how many and how fast, themes are adopting the customizer. Price is taking requests for what data you’d like to see, but if you want to do the research yourself, Jorbin’s Theme Directory Slurper is available for free on GitHub.