Getting a theme approved for the WordPress directory can sometimes take months, depending on the number of corrections required and reviewers available to handle the queue. As part of a larger plan to make things more efficient, the WordPress Theme Review Team is making progress towards automating many of the time-consuming checks involved in reviewing submissions and updates.
Ulrich Pogson, who is leading the effort, published a list of requirements that might be good candidates for automated checks. Each item is now an issue on GitHub where contributors can discuss implementation and help build the checks. A few examples include “Use the Customizer for implementing theme options,” “Don’t include any plugins,” and “Don’t include admin/feature pointers.”
During the most recent meeting, the team approved a list of 13 requirements they are aiming to automate. They will need to write checks for each one and are inviting collaboration on GitHub.
“It could be making a pull request, helping write the regex, or contributing ideas how to implement the check,” Pogson said. “Once the checks have been written we need help testing them for false positives.”
Check out the issues queue for the Theme Check plugin if you want to help the team automate more checks.
Thanks for posting this and getting the word out, Sarah. This is one huge step toward full automation. Now, we need folks with mad regex skills to help turn these guidelines into checks for the Theme Check plugin.
Other than the long-term goal of automation, these checks are good for the short term too. Getting those checks in will mean that reviewers will not have to manually perform them, making the current review process quicker.