On Wednesday, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy posted the next steps forward for themes and reviews for the official theme directory. In the post, she describes the tools and types of access the Themes Team needs. She also laid out some other goals for the system. The timeline is to have much of this in place by early 2022.
Two months ago, things were coming to a head. Project lead Matt Mullenweg saw much of what we have all been seeing. Creative contributions to the free directory were few and far between, many of the submissions merely being stripped-down “lite” themes with commercial interests.
There was some disagreement on why the directory was not producing the high-quality projects users should expect from an official source. Mullenweg cited the rules and update mechanism as problem areas.
However, others like Joost de Valk, the CPO of Yoast, said the reality of the situation is that money is now a part of the equation. Producing high-quality products, maintaining them, and supporting them is not sustainable without the financial resources in place. Because WordPress.org provides no path for developers to make money directly, upsell-motived themes are the result. Eric Karkovack expanded upon this in his piece for Speckyboy, Are High-Quality Free WordPress Themes a Thing of the Past?
Some of the Themes Team members disagreed that the rules were the problem. At the heart of the team’s handbook is the idea that themes should be GPL-compatible, secure, and not break things.
The problem is not necessarily specific guidelines but the process. Mullenweg wanted to switch to a post-commit strategy that would see themes move into the directory more quickly. The goal is to be a little more like the plugin directory and let users guide others through the star-rating review system.
However, themes and plugins are different beasts. Themes must follow some standard patterns and do some specific things to actually work. The best way to make that happen is with automated tools performing the grunt work that humans have been doing for the past decade. Many guidelines could become a line of code in a script. Each new line would lighten the burden on volunteers.
The Themes Team agreed with his assessment of the theme quality. However, some did feel like the theme system was the oft-forgotten stepchild who received all the hand-me-downs from its preferred sibling, the plugin directory. They needed resources from the community to drive any sort of change. Team members had little power outside of their gatekeeping responsibilities and were short on volunteers.
Changing Hearts and Minds
Haden Chomphosy published notes on the meeting in February. The post detailed the ideas and what took place. However, much of it seemed vague in terms of actionable items. It was the groundwork phase.
In a private discussion with one of the Themes Team reps, they said the meeting was productive not because of action taking place but through the changing of outlooks. More of the team reps warmed to the idea of reducing the requirements and moving forward with a change. The meeting was more about winning hearts and minds, which was a necessary first step.
This changed outlook did not mean throwing caution to the wind and flipping the switch overnight. The team wanted to set some guardrails in place, particularly surrounding high-priority issues like proper licensing.
“In the meeting, we discussed the need to change the review process,” said team rep Ari Stathopoulos. “All guidelines have a reason they exist. They were all added after some things got abused. But the process followed had an unfortunate side-effect; the rules that were added to avoid abuse by a few bad apples are the same rules that hinder innovation and deter people from submitting a theme in the repository.”
He brought up the universal rules of not doing evil things, disrespecting others, or abusing the system. Citing them as the foundation of what the guidelines should be. “But then, of course, everyone has a different definition of evil, disrespect, and abuse, so something a bit more verbose may be needed but obviously not as verbose as the dozens upon dozens of guidelines we currently have.”
The Next Steps: Tools and a User-First Strategy
The first goal is to have access to a functional meta environment for testing. One of the team reps currently has this. However, others would need access in the long term. Moderator tools are also on the list for reviewers, likely similar to what the Plugin Review Team has.
Those are some of the baseline things. The next item will be more automation. Dion Hulse is currently working on automated security checks, which should help with a consistent problem area. Steve Dufresne is working on an automated code-scanning solution.
One idea for a post-commit strategy is flagging themes with “quality tags.” These include items like Gutenberg-ready, security, last updated, translation-ready, and accessibility. It is not clear how this system would work, but it could be a way to surface themes in the directory that meet standards. Perhaps a new featured-theme algorithm should be in the works?
The last piece of the proposal introduces the concept of a yes/no voting mechanism for end-users. These would be “trust tags” that allowed users to mark themes as updated, visually broken, and more. The goal is to hand over much of the gatekeeping responsibility to users, putting them in the driver’s seat of what they want out of the theme directory.
The WordPress.org theme directory is becoming little more than a crippleware distributor. I suppose it was inevitable given its reach, which can be worth $1,000s/month for theme authors.
As I think back on that tweet from 2019, I realize how unfair it was to refer to the themes coming into the directory as “crippleware.” At the time, I was a part of the Themes Team (formerly the Theme Review Team). However, there were real cases of crippleware submitted to the directory when I wrote that.
To define crippleware: some themes blocked core WordPress features and made them available via the “pro” versions. It was one of the more blatant abuses of the free themes directory I had seen for a profit.
However, the term does not represent the majority of themes submitted. Most of what we see today are “lite” themes. Some of them are well-designed themes that provide value to end-users at no cost. Others are stripped-down versions of what you would typically see from a starter theme. While they are fully functional — the Themes Team’s rules have been strict on this requirement — the real value of the theme is in the upsell.
This is not the start of an anti-commercial theme rant. When WordPress developers and agencies are successful, it benefits the whole ecosystem. But, how do we balance that with providing value — which is subjective, I know — to the free theme directory? How do we transition the theme directory to something flowing with more artistic or even experimental ideas?
Guidelines and Stumbling Blocks
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder and project lead, posted the following on the Post Status Slack two weeks ago:
The .org theme directory is particularly bad when you compare it to any half-decent commercial theme marketing page, or the designs available on other site building services or Themeforest directories. The .org theme directory rules and update mechanism have driven out creative contributions, it’s largely crowded out by upsell motived contributions.
There is a lot to unpack in his statement. I agree with most of it. The Themes Team agrees with at least some of it. However, its members lack direct control over the system outside of the guidelines.
“I actually agree with this in a sense,” said Themes Team rep William Patton. “Creativity has not prospered in the directory, and I think a large part of it is the barrier of entry. ‘Don’t do bad things’ is the overarching guideline for the theme directory, but that can be viewed very subjectively. If it were the only guideline we would see a lot of things that might not be best suited here. If we want to encourage creativity then more freedom to express it would likely be a good way to start bringing it back. However, it can be hard to know where the line should be placed.”
The team sometimes gets pulled in two different directions. When the project lead asks for things to be more open, many members rally around that idea. On the other hand, the call for stricter accessibility requirements, for example, are popular with others in the community. It is a choice between two ends of the spectrum that are tough to pull together as the gatekeepers to the official directory.
“Why couldn’t it be more like the plugin directory?” asked Mullenweg. “That has all the same potential issues and has been working pretty well. I’d like it to work just like the plugin directory, with direct access for authors, and most reviews being post-review vs. pre-review.”
The Themes Team is not against the idea. More than anything, they just need the help to make any significant change.
“Having the themes directory work like the plugins directory would be great!” said Themes Team rep Ari Stathopoulos. “And, in fact, it’s something we’ve all been asking for years, but there are many technical challenges because they are built fundamentally differently. Plugin authors have access to their plugin’s SVN while themes don’t. Theme reviews are public while plugin reviews are private and closed. There would need to be lots of changes in systems and meta. Not to mention that, as far as I know, plugins don’t do post-reviews, they do pre-reviews the first time a plugin is uploaded and post-reviews for updates (which is exactly what happens in themes too).”
The team has created tickets, asked for help, and have generally awaited a champion to push innovative ideas — or any ideas — forward. Seven-year-old ticket to support the standard readme files available to plugins? No takers as of yet. Allowing block-based themes to be uploaded? Maybe we can make that happen sometime soon.
The guidelines are likely less crippling than the outdated Trac review system, uploading ZIP files for updates (which Mullenweg mentioned), the limitation of a style.css header for the theme description, and the lackluster theme previewer.
Theme review system on Trac.
For the most part, nearly every guideline has been put in place in hindsight. The team finds consistent abuse or issues and course-corrects.
“I don’t think that Matt’s idea of a creative theme is a theme that is not secure or not compatible with GPL,” said team repo Carolina Nymark. “Creativity is not limited by being asked to sanitize options. It is not limited by making sure that your theme can be translated. If the reviewers saw creative, beautiful themes that lacked in some other aspect like basic accessibility, then the team could help explain to the theme author what kind of changes are necessary. But that is not the kind of themes that are being submitted.”
Financial Incentive
In the mid-2000s, the average theme developer could get away with building an entire theme on a lazy weekend afternoon. WordPress was far less complicated. Theme development was not a race to the bottom, bundling every feature imaginable.
Today, we live in the era of the multi-purpose theme. To soar to the top of the popular list, most themes need to handle everything from being the online face of a pizza restaurant to masonry grids for artist portfolios. They also either need good luck, name recognition, or good marketing. That is the reality for the average theme developers trying to make a name for themselves.
It makes for boring themes in a free theme directory. If the theme author has any financial motivation behind creating a WordPress theme, they need to bundle the nicer features into a paid package.
There is not much incentive to push a free theme out to the directory just for fun. Most themers are spending a month or more of their time in today’s ecosystem to build a theme. The days of the weekend-afternoon project seem all but gone.
Even releasing a theme to give back can often be a letdown. There is little chance of any name recognition as the developer’s creation is swamped by the hordes of lite themes in control of the directory. There is no way for unknown players to get any exposure through the directory except in the brief moments their theme lands in the latest themes list. It is that one make-or-break moment that could potentially help best the algorithm and slip into the nearly unattainable popular list.
In comparison to Themeforest, the WordPress.org directory is lacking. Themeforest is inviting to users because it provides the backend tools for theme authors to market their themes. They can load up custom demos, provide screenshots, use a modern categorization system, and provide all sorts of extra data to end-users. They’re in the business of selling a product to users.
WordPress themes on ThemeForest
While WordPress.org may be free, it should still be selling the promise of a beautiful website to its users. I have always said it, the themes available on WordPress.org are the face of WordPress.
Users deserve better. Theme authors deserve better tools to make it happen.
Even with better tools and a better-designed directory in place, there is no guarantee of an uptick of creative contributions or a better overall balance that keeps pure upsells in check.
“I think that due to the reach a theme or plugin that becomes popular quickly commands, monetization is a necessity to be able to properly ‘support’ such an endeavor,” said Joost de Valk, CEO of Yoast, in response to Mullenweg’s statement on Post Stats. “I think the community also ‘demands’ a certain stability and a certain level of support that is simply unfeasible to expect from any non paid contributor. Because WordPress.org has no way of doing that monetization ‘on platform,’ this is what you end up with.”
He also argued that something akin to an app store would make things like the “balkanization from non-G-based site builders” less attractive to theme authors. Such a store has little or no chance of becoming a reality.
“I think we first need to agree on what the theme directory should be,” he said. “We need a ‘mission statement,’ of sorts. And I think we probably need less control than we currently have, be much more like the plugin directory. But if we have a vision of what it should be, then we could work towards that.”
There is an opportunity to turn things around. Full Site Editing will leave ample room for releasing creative, fully-featured themes with upsells. There is plenty of reason to be excited about pattern design and template packs, better value-adds for theme authors who want to upsell. The problem is going to be getting authors to abandon traditional themes and explore new terrain.
Changes Are Coming, Maybe, Hopefully
Popular listing on the WordPress theme directory.
For some, this is a song and dance they already know the lyrics and steps to. It is a years-long conversation that has netted little in return.
However, the WordPress.org theme directory may be forced to change one way or another. Block-based themes are not arriving in some distant future; they are knocking at the door. Full Site Editing is slated to land in WordPress 5.8 this June.
With this change, the WordPress.org theme directory needs to be prepared. Even with a move today, it will be a mad scramble to get systems ready in a handful of months. If waiting for the last minute, it is just asking for chaos. Block-based themes should already be allowed to be uploaded, for example.
As we saw earlier this week, Automattic launched its Blank Canvas theme. It is designed to work on single-page websites. It does not support commenting out of the box, which is a requirement for inclusion into the official directory.
Block-based themes will forever change the system. In the past, traditional themes needed to cover all their bases, integrating with every front-end feature of WordPress. In the future, that is not necessarily the case. Because everything will be built from blocks and users will have direct access to customize those blocks, a theme has no need to cover everything. The user can add and remove features at their leisure. The review guidelines need to be molded for this future.
Full Site Editing almost seems purpose-built for outside-the-box theme designers. Whether it is a simple, one-page wedding invitation or an author’s book landing page, there are more possibilities upcoming than there ever were in the past. And, these things will be far easier to build on the theme-design side of things. It will remove a lot of burden from developers and from the Themes Team during reviews.
“Regarding the FSE themes: to be honest all my hopes are there,” said Stathopoulos. “They are very different, and it’s a fresh start for the repository. New theme paradigm, a different set of rules (with of course some overlap for basic things), and a new way of doing things and thinking about themes. However, if they are presented in the same way in the same repo we have now, then nothing will change. the theme repo needs to change, and there’s no way around that. But that’s a decision that will have to be made from the WordPress leadership and implemented by meta.”
As always, I remain optimistic about the future of WordPress themes, hoping for the ushering in of a new era. I get the sense that the Themes Team shares some of that enthusiasm, at least cautiously so. More than anything, they need the community, particularly theme authors, to chip in and shape that vision of what the WordPress theme directory should be.
Perhaps today, the stars are nearing alignment. Mullenweg plans to chat with the team and gather feedback in the coming weeks.
Front page of the theme directory, featuring popular themes.
Yesterday, the featured themes page was quietly removed from the WordPress theme directory. Previously, it was the primary page users would see when visiting the directory. It has now been replaced with the popular themes list. This change is only reflected on the WordPress.org website and not directly in the WordPress admin for end-users.
This is the first major change with the featured list since it was switched to a randomized set of themes in 2014. Over the past six years, volunteers have presented numerous ideas on what to do with the page that is, in many ways, the face of WordPress, particularly for new users who are searching for their first theme. No proposal has gone beyond a Trac ticket with a handful of participants or a theme review team meeting. It is almost as if every idea was dead on arrival.
Removing the featured list altogether is not a simple matter of hiding the page on WordPress.org. There is an API endpoint that serves the list and core WordPress fetches themes directly from WordPress.org. Even if removed from the software, we would still be dealing with years of backward compatibility for older versions of WordPress. At this point, outright removal is not an ideal solution.
The commit note makes a point that hiding the page from the theme directory is only temporary. The idea is to eventually replace it with a properly-curated featured themes list.
However, such a proposal could languish for years. Given that we have suffered through six years of a randomly-generated list, it is unclear if anyone is motivated enough to push the project forward.
What Happened to the Curated Featured Themes List?
In October, the WordPress theme review team decided to create a system for a curated feature themes list. The initial plan was for the team representatives to work out the finer details and create a path forward. However, the idea seemed to fizzle out before it ever broke ground. There was little public mention of it after the excitement of the initial decision.
“It was really hard to come up with requirements that we wanted the themes to follow,” said Carolina Nymark, a TRT representative. “Like the keyboard navigation and skip link had to be added to the theme, and no upsell. That alone limited the possible themes to a selection that was too small.”
The idea for curated themes was that they would be the best of the best. Seemingly, that meant going above and beyond the standard requirements while being completely free of commercial interests. In hindsight, that level of scrutiny over the list may have been too tough of a sell. Curation does not necessarily have to strive for perfection. Uniqueness may provide more room for flexibility.
“We did not hold any meetings with votes because there were concerns that people would only root for their own theme, their friends’ themes, or even get paid to suggest themes,” said Nymark. “It would be too easy to game it for profit.” Such backdoor schemes have been trouble with previous programs in the team’s past.
The curated list based on their criteria would be too small to rotate regularly on the featured page. The team attempted to find other solutions. However, they were unsuccessful.
“It was a strain that we could not figure out a good solution where theme authors would be treated fairly,” said Nymark. “Then we had a video meeting with [Josepha Haden, Executive Director of WordPress] where she said that the TRT team representatives should not have to select the featured themes. And it stopped there.”
Ari Stathopoulos, a TRT representative, mentioned the elephant in the room that the team was not addressing. “There would be significant drama if the list was manually curated,” he said. “If it’s done by reps, then those who were not selected would accuse reps of favoring some themes. If it was done by a rotating committee, the same. Authors would rather believe that they are a victim of some conspiracy rather than believe their theme is bad.”
A curated themes list is still a possibility. It is unlikely the theme review team will be handling it directly anytime soon. If it does happen, it will likely be another party who makes the call and gets to be the bad guy.
