[wp-forums] Support for non-repository-hosted Themes

[Kevin Gagel (gagel)]

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From: wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com [mailto:wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Chip Bennett
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 9:30 AM
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What are your thoughts on making it the official policy that the WPORG support forums will only provide Theme-specific support for repository-hosted Themes? This policy would address not only the issue above, but would also eliminate issues with Themes downloaded from sketchy third-party sites.

Would this be a good idea? A bad idea?

If we went this route, I would even suggest that we consider only allowing topics to be posted through the Extend/Themes listing page for each Theme (if such a restriction is even possible), to force topics to be auto-tagged and subject-appended with the Theme Name. Doing so would eliminate another round of basic questions, since Theme-specific support generally requires looking at the Theme template files, and knowing what Theme is in use up-front will help us provide better support, more quickly.

[Kevin Gagel] Overall I'd say it was a good idea but I'd add a couple of things before implementation of it.
1.) A really good intro site on how to build themes, going from scratch to making changes to a current theme (I know something exists but I haven't gotten into it just yet).
2.) Anytime there is an example of what NOT to do in a theme that is not supported - a page (FAQ) should be setup with an example of doing it correctly and examples of it being done incorrectly. That way, when the inevitable, unwilling to look/read about themselves poster "shows up" a quick post pointing them there could handle it.