Remove Themes With Broken Previews from Featured

  • Just wanted to say that it should be humiliating not only to the theme developers but also to www.ads-software.com in general to host “featured” themes that don’t work. Who is determining whether a theme is featured or not?

    There are at least 5 “featured” themes that you cannot preview. Is this acceptable? And by “preview”, I mean that when you click the “preview” button (next to the “install” button) in the theme browser, you don’t get anything like what they present for their example image.

    If nothing else, you could add a note for each theme: Uses it’s own custom preview content because it is terribly written and can’t use your existing content to preview. Or better yet: Uses the 2012 theme because this theme is broken, but still somehow featured.

    If a theme cannot even preview with my Blog Title and SubTitle, perhaps even my primary menu, it should not be featured. To feature your broken shortcomings is just not cool.

    The entire theme selection criteria needs to be seriously revamped. But that’s another suggestion. I’ll write it up separately.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    There are at least 5 “featured” themes that you cannot preview.

    I’ll bite: which 5?

    Thread Starter pprllama

    (@pprllama)

    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/bldr/ lots of differences
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/carzine/ vague resemblance
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/lucy/ Missing all the important features
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/cruzy/ full width in preview, 2 col featured
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/ex-astris/ 2 col preview, full width in featured
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/zeeflow/ Only the colors appear to be the same
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/greenigma/ close, but headers are different
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/ghazale/ close, but missing social icons, menu
    https://www.ads-software.com/themes/beautiful/ magnified 10x (browser at 100%)

    and for your convenience, here is a link to the imgur gallery that demonstrates the problem.

    Messed Up WordPress Previews

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Now I get what you mean. This is an old problem and has nothing to do with featured themes. They all look that way and the preview on all of those themes work fine.

    The problem is that the theme authors use demo content and settings tailored to their theme for the screenshot while the preview content uses one set of content for all themes. The only solution would be to a) either permit the authors to use their own content for their specific theme or b) not offer any preview at all.

    I don’t have a real answer that you’d like. ?? The first option would be horrible because the theme authors would inadvertently game the system. The second option isn’t very useful either.

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    If a theme takes a lot of set up to look like its preview, feel free to rate the theme poorly.

    Moderator Jose Castaneda

    (@jcastaneda)

    THEME COFFEE MONKEY

    Currently the theme demo content is being worked on. ( I know, I little odd but true ). It’s been on the table for some time: https://meta.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/30

    The thing to remember about the screenshots is that they represent what could be achieved. The actual requirements are:

    • The Screenshot should be of the actual theme as it appears with default options, not a logo or mockup.
    • The screenshot should be no bigger than 1200 x 900px.

    Now, I know there are tons more themes outside of the repo that don’t exactly follow that. I’ve seen my fair share of themes in the last 3 years that submitted themes with just a logo or a simple image with the theme name.

    Best example I can think of would be a Lego set. Let’s take the Death Star for example. You see the box with the beautiful images of the Death Star already constructed. You open the box only to find a manual, some bags, and several Lego pieces inside those bags.

    Now, do we go to Lego and let them know that the set is broken because it wasn’t built? We can, however, let them know when a piece is missing or broken though, which is what the theme’s forum could be an analogy|simile for. ??

    Trust me, the Theme Review Team knows that the preview is “broken” and that is on our to-do list. Yes, we do have a road-map that we hope to gain as much traction as we can: https://make.www.ads-software.com/themes/2015/07/07/roadmap-for-phase-one/

    I will say this:

    either permit the authors to use their own content for their specific theme

    That is generally what the Theme URI should be used for. To quote the requirement:

    Theme URI is optional. If used, it is required to link to a page with information about the Theme. If a demonstration site is being used, the content must be related to the theme itself and not test data.

    So that is what the Theme Homepage → should be taking you to. ??

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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