Good, and oh dear …
From the rules:
“The theme should look good on all modern browsers, across platforms.”
I would, in the light of being around when the first competition ran, change that to:
“The theme must perform correctly on all modern browsers, across platforms.”
I would also add, and make it very clear, whether or not you as an author will support your creation. If YOU will not, then WE have to – and believe me, the forums have spent (and still do) far too much time answering questions about themes due to badly commented CSS, poor coding practices. If you want the kudos for a good theme, please accept you cannot just publish it and let others pick up your shortcomings.
I supported the first competition and I support this too, but there was one hell of a lot of fallout from that first one. Poor themes will only allow that to be repeated – and you do not want that to happen. Really you do not.
I would add that, as signaled by Ryan Boren in the polyglots mailing list, the them can now be fully internationlized using the _e() and __() function, so if in theme directory there is a .mo files of the language set for WP the theme will be in locale language too.
This is a great opportunity for theme developper to give to WP community a good products and to have theyr theme used by a larger amount of user that maybe are not used to work on PHP files.
As the Italian Translation team, we are going to support these theme making them available in Italian and I think other translation team, particulary the most active one (spanish, filland, frnce) will follow the same path.
This is a fantastic initiative that will provide at least a central repository for 1.5 themes (as was the previous contest for 1.2 themes) , something that right now is a real mess and a huge frustration for newcomer (a freind of mine switched to wp her main complain is the incredible search for themes )
Congratulations Alex
You guys beat me to the announcement. 🙂
I’ll monitor this thread for questions.
I’m getting timed out when I try to access alexking.org. So maybe it is just a bit too popular 😉
Thanks again, Alex.
I think there was a data center problem (I couldn’t reach any site at the data center regardless of which server it was on), it’s back up now.
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
Any theme is allowed as long as it does not require plugin activation. However, all themes are required to include a theme switcher tag wp_theme_switcher(); (again see the examples) so that they are compatible with Ryan Boren’s theme switcher plugin. – Rule #4
which means they need a plugin 🙂
Ooo! I really want to do this, as I have some old MT 2.6 layouts I did that I’d love to convert.
Might have to give up some sleep, though. 😉
Alex, in case anyone hasn’t said it – THANK YOU for doing all this.
So which IS IT macmanx? Plugin or no plugin? The two are incompatible….
Tg
@steveagl: not all prospective theme developers will be familiar with i18n issues, so it would be enormously helpful if somebody on the polyglots list could produce a guide to making themes localization-friendly.
There is a big difference between including plugins in your design and including a tag for a plugin that makes the content “work”. I think it’s pretty clear.
The main point is to focus on the “design” and layout rather than the fun things you can do with the programming code. Some people are really intimidated by plugins, and others, like me, love and hate them. Love them because they do so many wonderful things and hate them because I have to LEARN something new sometimes in order to get them to work. All this learning….it makes the head hurt 😉
Sounds interesting – I’d like to enter but don’t thik I quite have the skills. I take it only wholly original themes are acceptable rather than say taking an exisitng theme and changing it?
Hmmm this theme switch thing is a curious requirement, don’t know much about it. But will read up on it.
What’s the deadline?
After thinking it over, this thread just continues to reinforce what I had already known. Don’t subject yourself to it and stop reading now. tg
<delete>There is a big difference between including plugins in your design and including a tag for a plugin that makes the content “work”. I think it’s pretty clear. — Lorelle
BUT… doesn’t using the tag for a plugin that does not exist cause it to break? If some one doesn’t have that plugin installed and activated, they are going to run into problems when the d/l it, install it, and then try to activate it.</delete>
Tg
