Code Quality on Themeforest items

I got my answer and the last comments are so fascinating that they are too much for me, so, on the hope to not waste any more time:

Thanks to everyone that pitched in this thread with great debates, ideas and answers!

I think that it is also important to realize that some of these files here might be three years old or older. As the standards have increased, the files have not all been removed. Some have been updated but as time goes on, the coding as well as the designing will get better. I think it would be great if everyone could code at a master level, but this just isn’t going to happen. As long as the code works and doesn’t break things, that is all that should matter.

I do remember the rules changing here a while back saying that jquery or javascript files needed to work even if javascript was disabled on a persons machine. This was for all the Vcards and little sites that worked heavily on jquery to change pages.

A very useful thread to have around!

+1 to @Ivor’s and @ThemeBuddies’ posts too.

@Ciprian, I’m glad the question came up and was answered, but it might be better to actually phrase it as a question next time so you get your answer quicker and fewer people annoyed

I work with 3rd parties to help get our coding standards improved, and obviously over at Wptuts+ we’re trying to help educate people on coding standards.

In fact, my very first post on Wptuts+ was some quick guidelines for theme authors to help ensure they were producing quality code ( http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/quick-tip-guidelines-for-improving-wordpress-themes/ )

Thanks for all your input everyone.

Japh said
A very useful thread to have around!

+1 to @Ivor’s and @ThemeBuddies’ posts too.

@Ciprian, I’m glad the question came up and was answered, but it might be better to actually phrase it as a question next time so you get your answer quicker and fewer people annoyed

I work with 3rd parties to help get our coding standards improved, and obviously over at Wptuts+ we’re trying to help educate people on coding standards.

In fact, my very first post on Wptuts+ was some quick guidelines for theme authors to help ensure they were producing quality code ( http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/quick-tip-guidelines-for-improving-wordpress-themes/ )

Thanks for all your input everyone.

I know, I know, bad wording on my original post. I’ve learned a lot from this thread and you won’t hear anything like this from me again. (Well, not so badly written at least).

Thanks Japh!

Ivor said
That said, Themes and Templates are rigorously tested. Just to give you an example, themes are tested with:

• WP_DEBUG enabled.
• Theme Check
• Debogger
• Log Deprecated Notices
• We check if themes are enqueueing stylesheets and JavaScript properly.

would reviewers really enforce the above rule ? we have valid reasons to read a file in our theme folder like many other well known plugins. For instance, wordpress importer gets 3 warnings for using file_get_contents/fopen/fclose.

Giving reasons in the message to reviewer box would be enough ?

BF

pixelentity said

Ivor said
That said, Themes and Templates are rigorously tested. Just to give you an example, themes are tested with:

• WP_DEBUG enabled.
• Theme Check
• Debogger
• Log Deprecated Notices
• We check if themes are enqueueing stylesheets and JavaScript properly.

Just a question about theme check, we get a bunch of warnings about using “file_get_contents” ....

would reviewers really enforce the above rule ? we have valid reasons to read a file in our theme folder like many other well known plugins. For instance, wordpress importer gets 3 warnings for using file_get_contents/fopen/fclose.

Giving reasons in the message to reviewer box would be enough ?

BF

Theme check is a joke, I don’t understand how can one rely on it’s findings.

For example:

WARNING: Found wrong tag, remove responsive from your style.css header.

and that’s a keyword of the theme description.

WARNING: Found base64_encode in the file rv_OptionsIO.class.php. base64_encode() is not allowed. 

Why it is not allowed? Who said so?

rvision_ said

pixelentity said

Ivor said
That said, Themes and Templates are rigorously tested. Just to give you an example, themes are tested with:

• WP_DEBUG enabled.
• Theme Check
• Debogger
• Log Deprecated Notices
• We check if themes are enqueueing stylesheets and JavaScript properly.

Just a question about theme check, we get a bunch of warnings about using “file_get_contents” ....

would reviewers really enforce the above rule ? we have valid reasons to read a file in our theme folder like many other well known plugins. For instance, wordpress importer gets 3 warnings for using file_get_contents/fopen/fclose.

Giving reasons in the message to reviewer box would be enough ?

BF

Theme check is a joke, I don’t understand how can one rely on it’s findings.

For example:

WARNING: Found wrong tag, remove responsive from your style.css header.

and that’s a keyword of the theme description.

WARNING: Found base64_encode in the file rv_OptionsIO.class.php. base64_encode() is not allowed. 

Why it is not allowed? Who said so?

Tag error is related to tags used to describe theme – if that theme goes to official free WordPress theme directory it shoudn’t have tags that don’t exists there – however I don’t know where to find official lists of tags – it’s strange “feature”, but not required on ThemeForest

And for base64_encode() warning – it’s also not allowed for WordPress themes directory – it’s the easiest way to put some malicious code in theme. It shoudn’t be allowed in ThemeForest also.

purethemes said
Tag error is related to tags used to describe theme – if that theme goes to official free WordPress theme directory it shoudn’t have tags that don’t exists there – however I don’t know where to find official lists of tags – it’s strange “feature”, but not required on ThemeForest

So there is no official list of tags one can use as a reference and this is considered as error?

purethemes said
And for base64_encode() warning – it’s also not allowed for WordPress themes directory – it’s the easiest way to put some malicious code in theme. It shoudn’t be allowed in ThemeForest also.

Really? As far as I know, there are no artificial intelligence bits of code in theme-check plugin, therefore there is no way it can see the purpose of the base64_encode call in my code. FYI : Option tree plugin is also using this for import/export of options.

rvision_ said

purethemes said
Tag error is related to tags used to describe theme – if that theme goes to official free WordPress theme directory it shoudn’t have tags that don’t exists there – however I don’t know where to find official lists of tags – it’s strange “feature”, but not required on ThemeForest

So there is no official list of tags one can use as a reference and this is considered as error?

purethemes said
And for base64_encode() warning – it’s also not allowed for WordPress themes directory – it’s the easiest way to put some malicious code in theme. It shoudn’t be allowed in ThemeForest also.

Really? As far as I know, there are no artificial intelligence bits of code in theme-check plugin, therefore there is no way it can see the purpose of the base64_encode call in my code. FYI : Option tree plugin is also using this for import/export of options.

It’s not error – it’s just warning

base64_encode is also used in many places in WordPress core – I’m aware of that – probably if some TF author would put malicious code in his themes using this function he would be banned quickly – but that’s another story in WordPress free themes directory – and theme check was created for guys who accept themes there, not here. TF reviewers just use this because it tells a lot about how theme was build.

Complete list of tags required for submitting a theme to WordPress directory can be found at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/about/

Some of the errors, warnings etc. can be ignored because the Theme Check plugin is outdated and as well as some of rules don’t apply to themes which you are not going to upload to WordPress themes directory e.g. the tags in style.css.