In an effort to inspire WordPress theme designers and add a variety of new themes to the directory, the WordPress Theme Review Team is hosting a Design Challenge Weekend, December 13-14th. The challenge is meant to do the following:
- Raise the design standard of the WordPress.org theme directory.
- Match developers to designers.
- Encourage designers to create themes.
- Offer resources for designers to learn how to make themes.
- Educate developers in design.
Leading up to the event, the team will hold a few learnups on Slack. Learnups are mini classes related to theme design. Dates have not been set but three individuals have been chosen to act as teachers.
- @greenshady aka Justin Tadlock on making a child theme.
- @karmatosed aka Tammie Lister will do one on the Underscores framework.
- @melchoyce aka Mel Choyce on design principles for developers
Starting next week, things will get underway to establish a series of relationships between the following:
- Designers looking for developers.
- Developers looking for designers.
- Designers doing it for themselves.
Work will begin on a theme once pairs are established. Throughout the event, Slack (#themereview) will be used as the primary communication method to provide design critiques and updates. As Lister points out, “The main focus of the weekend is going to be helping each other and reveling in theme design.” If you have any questions or concerns, the best place to ask is in the comments of the official announcement post.
3 responses to “WordPress Theme Design Challenge Weekend December 13-14th”
This will happen few days before my birthday, oh guys how nice of you
I love this idea and intention of this, but I question if .org has the resources to pull this off?
As the largest theme author on WordPress.org, it takes months to get a theme approved on .org.
If established theme authors can’t get new themes live in a reasonable time period, bringing on new designers and authors when you can’t reasonably support current authors seems counterproductive.
The theme review team should be focusing on improving operations and scalability before actively encouraging even more authors to throw their hat into the mix. This is just an invitation to create even more scaling issues, and delays for everyone involved.
Again, I really like the intention behind this, but this creates more problems then it solves given the state of the theme review team as it is today.
If people read the guidelines before submitting, the reviews would be a lot faster.