[wp-docs] Codex pages relating to theme development

[Lance Willett]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Lorelle on WordPress
<lorelleonwordpress at gmail.com> wrote:
> I went through the Codex and found some files you may have missed. Not sure
> exactly how indepth your mixing and matching might become, so I did a wide
> search.

Thank you so much, Lorelle! That list helps a ton.

We will not be able to clean up all theme-related pages at this time
-- that's way too big of a task. But, I do want to look at each and
every page that relates to themes so we can fix links and add pointers
to the new information.

> A key issue to this is that you have three audiences to address, a common
> problem with the Codex, which is why we set up the WordPress Lessons area,
> giving beginners a safe place to start and covering topics in a very simple
> fashion. While the basics might not apply to serious WordPress developers,
> EVERYONE digs into their Theme at one time or another.

So true. Theming -- like web design/development in general -- crosses
so many disciplines. And yes, even experienced developers need to have
a reference. :)

> The three audiences are: beginners, experienced designers, and "the next
> generation" developers, digging into the hooks, code, and customization,
> creating their own rules as they go.
> In general, the Codex serves to help the first two groups, but offer a solid
> reference for the third. I'm glad your focus is on the middle group,
> providing a "checklist" based reference. Eager to see the results.

I agree that the focus of our efforts is on the second and third
audiences you mention, though I see them as one group (it just depends
on where they are in their design/development cycle).

On the theme-reviewers list we recently used the following to describe
the audience for this doc work: "For web designers wanting to make a
rock-solid WordPress theme -- perhaps for a client site or for
personal use -- *and* for theme developers wanting to create
rock-solid publicly-released themes for the WordPress directory."

So while the Theme_Review page will clearly be geared towards Theme
Directory submissions, I think the other pages getting updated (Theme
Development, Theme Unit Test) should be aimed at everyone working with
themes, except for absolute beginners (since the theme development
standards assume basic web design and development skills).

-Lance