Official WordPress themes should have an official change log

  • Dear WP community,

    I recently published a blog post titled “Official WordPress themes should have an official change log”, where I state that — in my opinion — the lack of proper release notes for official theme updates really is a problematic situation. An update should never be applied blindly. The administrator needs to have his/her chance to go through the change log and decide on his/her own whether this update requires immediate action, breaks backwards compatibility, or is special or boring in any other way. There are many more reasons why proper release notes / a change log are helpful and sometimes required and I do not claim that I list all these reasons here. Most importantly, proper release notes and a well-defined release policy are state-of-the-art in any serious open source software project. The WordPress main release follows all this, which is great. However, the TwentyXXX theme releases are a little neglected in this regard.

    Now, I’d love to collect your feedback and, based on our insights, eventually submit an official request/bug report.

    So, did I oversee something? What do you think? Which details would you want to see within an official bug report?

    Thanks,

    Jan-Philip

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    The ability for themes to have readme files, much like plugins already have, is in the works. There’s no need to file any form of bug report for something we’re already working on.

    Thread Starter Jan-Philip Gehrcke

    (@jgehrcke)

    Thanks for your response, Samuel. I have a couple of follow-up questions:

    • Is the existence of the plan you are referring to publicly documented?
    • Does the thing that is being worked on affect all themes in the same manner or were you referring to official themes only?
    • Is the plan for named readme files to have a change log section?
    • Will it be required for theme authors to provide a change log?
    • In which regard are “old” themes affected by this plan? Specifically, will old but important themes such as Twenty*** start to have a change log?
    • Is there any chance to estimate a time frame for realization of this plan?

    Thanks for further insights,

    Jan-Philip

    PS: Please do not take offense by my direct questions. My goal here simply is productivity, and I am willing to contribute for improving the situation in the moment I see where it makes most sense to contribute.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    In order: No, all, yes, no, probably, no.

    The theme directory is being actively redeveloped. When it’s up to par, then this is one of the sort of features we would like to add and have specifically planned for. However, the new directory is still under active development and thus no time frame or estimate is available.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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