No doubt, with the great innovation and additional features, Wordpress has grown to the most popular and user-friendly Content Management Systems in the developer's community. However, you must be wondering that why Wordpress is gaining popularity these days...Well, its official plugin directory, loaded with thousands of plugins makes it a top choice of developers. It has been created to provide a standard set of tools and shared platforms to all Wordpress plugin and theme developers. The best part is, the wide choice of plugins are free to access by developers and non-technicals.
All these are the reasons why Wordpress has emerged as a fantastic platform to work with...
While everyone from beginners to experienced developers has received so much out of it, so it takes an effort when it comes to giving back to this whopping community.
This blog is for those developers who kept asking about the simplest way to get your theme approved at Wordpress.org…
Now the central question is, how to get started, what development standards you need to adhere, where to submit, how long it takes to approve and more…
Here is the table of contents:
● How does the approval process work in Wordpress.org?
● 5 Simple Steps to Get Your Theme Approved on Wordpress.org
● Some Other Points to Keep In Mind
Let’s dig deep in each point and understand the process in depth.
How Does Wordpress Theme Approval Process Work?
Before getting started with the steps, keep in mind that Wordpress is one of the most reputed CMS, which already empowering 26% of total websites existing on the internet. So before adding any theme to WP Theme Directory, your proposed themes are carefully reviewed by the "Theme Review Team" to ensure that you have followed the basic guidelines. Their review process ensures that your theme is of high-quality and secure to download by the users across the globe.
While the review process involves a list of things, but every developer has to follow it if they need to get their theme live in the Wordpress dashboard.
What Steps Do You Need To Follow To Get Your Theme Approved on Wordpress.Org?
Have you been pissed off getting rejection messages from Wordpress.org? WordPress Theme Development has never been an easy task, especially when you do not know what guidelines you need to follow. Don’t worry; this blog will help you get your theme passed from Wordpress.org.
Let’s begin with the steps…
Step 1: Understand Wordpress.org Theme Requirements
Before you rush to start your theme development process, take out some time to understand the basic theme requirements of the Wordpress.org. Don't be afraid; there is a list of simple things that you need to keep in mind to meet the approval standard. While list covers multiple topics, so here it is defined under:
Coding Guidelines You'll Need to Adhere, Include:
PHP or Javascript codes must be error-free.
Make sure all theme text strings must be translatable.
No short-cuts are acceptable in scripts and files unless you need to provide the original data.
Avoid including favicon, CSS or Javascript directly in the header. Instead, they must be loaded from functions.php.
Prefix functions and classes.
Licensing and Branding Guidelines To Meet
Make sure your proposed theme must be 100% GPL and 100% GPL compatible licensed, including all images.
You are not allowed to use "Wordpress", "theme" in your theme name.
Never make a spelling mistake in "Wordpress". Spell rightly in all public-facing text to avoid rejection.
Once you have checked your theme against these requirements, you can use the Theme Check Plugin to review the codes of your theme deeply. You can install the Theme Check Plugin from the Wordpress Plugin Directory, which is free to install and access it to auto check the basic elements of your theme.
Step 2: Upload Your Theme For the Approval
Create a new account at Wordpress.org or log in with the existing account, if you have already used it before.
Upload your theme at https://wordpress.org/themes/upload/ page by simply following the general instructions of Wordpress. The moment you upload the theme, the process will start running the various automatic checks to make sure your theme passes a series of tests and up to the standard.
From checking the file name to identifying coding errors to authentication of the theme, this auto process verifies everything in your theme.
Step 3: Initial Review Process
WordPress Theme Customization can be a simple task with the help of best developers, but getting your theme passed from Wordpress.org is not at all a simple task.
Once your theme uploaded for the review, your theme review ticket is generated and the reviewer is allotted to your theme, who will deeply analyse to check whether it meets all the guidelines.
While the Wordpress.org theme review team consists of volunteers and they are extremely busy. So don't be surprised if it takes too long to review your theme and approve it. In case, you didn’t receive any update from the reviewers, I'd recommend you to join the Wordpress slack platform, where most of the active reviewers hang out. The people available at this platform are enormously helpful, especially when any newbie is pitching them.
Now you must be wondering that approx how long it takes to approve the theme?
Some of the themes are approved in a few weeks or months, but if you are not a proactive user, then it can take longer. If I talk about my personal experience, it takes more than six months for approval, and some of the themes are still under review from the last 9 months. Here, my recommendation is, before submitting them for approval, thoroughly test your theme in a local installation. This will help you check every aspect of Wordpress Theme Development.
Step 4: Admin Theme Review
Once your theme has been passed from the initial review process, then it will be passed onto the Admin Theme Review panel for approval. The admin is a group of people, who do major behind-the-screen work for the Theme Review Team. As there are thousands of themes that have been uploaded for the approval on Wordpress.org; hence, you can check the admin review queue at https://themes.trac.wordpress.org.
Step 5: Final Theme Approval
If you successfully complete the review process and get the approval from Wordpress.org, then you will receive an email like this.
Congratulations! Now your Wordpress theme goes live, and a massive number of internet users can log in into the Wordpress dashboard to install your theme.
A delightful thing you may see after the approval is a good number of downloads on your theme in a short span of time. We had experienced more than 100 downloads every day in the first two weeks of the launch, that too without promotion.
Some Other Important Points to Keep in Mind
Whether you are migrating from PSD to Wordpress, developing your Wordpress theme from scratch or submitting it for approval, there are always universal rules that usually developers overlook. But, it can put your theme at high risk and delay the process of getting approval on Wordpress.org.
While the processing of theme approval is quite lengthy and time-consuming, but for buttery theme approval procedure, you need to go through the theme beforehand to review team carefully.
Ending Note:
Getting a theme approval from Wordpress.org is a complicated process, but it is completely worth spending the time to get it published in Wordpress.org. Being a designer or a coder, it not only gives you a high level of work satisfaction but also making your work available to millions of people.
Hopefully, you enjoy reading the post and understand the necessary steps to be followed for the guaranteed theme approval.
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