Hello everyone. The meeting notes are from the themes review team discussion on April 12, 2022. The themes team meets second and fourth Tuesday of every month at 15:00 UTC.
This week’s meeting agendas can be found here. Thank you @kafleg for preparing the agenda. The meeting was facilitated by @kafleg. The note was taken by @Benachi. You can read the full transcript on our #themereview channel.
1. Weekly updates
The themes team published weekly updates about tickets and HelpScout emails. Here is the theme statistic for the past 7 days. The most current stats can be found here.
- 363 tickets were opened
- 362 tickets were closed:
- 348 tickets were made live.
- 41 new Themes were made live.
- 307 Theme updates were made live.
- 1 more was approved but is waiting to be made live.
- 13 tickets were not-approved.
- 1 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded.
- 348 tickets were made live.
Number of reviewers: 5
Block Themes:
3 block themes are live in the past 7 days.
2. Block Locking UI
The new feature “Block Lock” is scheduled to be shipped in the WordPress 6.0 release. The main purpose of this feature is to limit access to UI using the block editor settings. We discussed whether it should be allowed in the themes. @greenshady stated the block-level locking can be a useful tool for theme dev and end-users can unlock the locked blocks, but the block lock falls under plugin territory. We did not make a definite decision during the meeting, but the themes team will continue to discuss as the block lock feature progress. Please comment below to share your feedback.
3. Themes that haven’t been updated in over 2 years
We discussed what would be the best way to manage the themes that have not been updated for over 2 years. @dd32 suggested providing authors with options to update, leave as-is, or request closure.
@joyously suggested sending an email before each WordPress release asking theme authors to test their themes, and removing the “This theme hasn’t been updated in over 2 years.” banner. @benlumia007 suggested email would be better than having a banner because it will lose attraction to people who want to use it even if the theme is outdated.
4. Open Floor
Accessibility-Ready Block Themes
Currently, none of the block themes, including Twenty Twenty-Two, are tagged as accessibility-ready. This ticket discusses the ongoing efforts to make block themes accessible. Feedback and comments would be greatly appreciated.