Theme Standards System

[nathanrice]

One thing that just popped into my mind ....

What if there were categories like:

1. Code
2. Design
3. Features
4. Usability
4. Support

And each one had a 10 point scale. A theme could be rated like so:

1. Code: 9/10
2. Design: 8/10
3. Features: 5/10
4. Usability: 8/10
4. Support: 10/10

for a total of 40 out of a possible 50.

The theme would be rated a 40, but the users could see each category of ratings clearly as well. They could see that the code is solidly built, but it may not be feature-packed. It might have crappy code, but the support is superb ... tons of features, but sloppy code.

Make sense? Thoughts?

[andrew]

I have come up with an alternative to the stars. Effectively there will be a series of named standards and they can be used in combination so what I described as 1-star will be the 'Quality Standard', with a 'Configurable Appearance Standard' and 'Configurable Layout Standard', and so on. The names might change still, but I think that works better.

Nathan, I like the idea that you are looking to review themes after they are made and I am trying to provide a steer on where the developer should start. It will be interesting to see if our ideas converge.

For my system I am deliberately excluding price and licensing. I think premium is too woolly and tells you nothing about the actual theme, so this is my way of trying to provide an alternative.

[andrew]

One thing that just popped into my mind ....

That would make a lot of sense for themecritic but I think you would need to include usability, or rather user friendliness.

[nathanrice]

... I think you would need to include usability, or rather user friendliness.

Great Idea!!! I'll add that to the list.

[ozh]

Support is probably going to be hard to judge...

Maybe a criteria for originality / uniqueness would make sense. Like, if someone releases a superbly coded, heavily supported Kubrick variation, would that make a good theme? I'm not sure.

[Darren Hoyt]

I second the idea that stars wouldn't be sufficient. I'm also wondering if you could use a percentage meter for each set of criteria - I experimented a bit with this to make my own skillset more visual.

[schmitty23]

I just started following Nathan on twitter and thought I'd jump over here. Love the threads so far. My situation is that I've been struggling to start a site for a couple of years, and had looked at WP, Joomla, and Drupal as possibilities. Being new to hosting a site, I thought the learning curve on the latter two was too steep, though some of the templates I've seen for Joomla blow away by far the best WP themes I've seen. I was fine investing time in the design and setup of the site, but I didn't really want to have to code anything.

Anyway, I looked all over for themes, tried many free ones, bought a WooThemes package but ended up not liking them much, and finally am currently trying to setup a studiopress theme. Having my own issues with that one too, though. I feel like I never really know what I'm getting before I purchase a theme.

So - at least for a newb, for me the most hard lesson to learn is that a nice looking demo page relates very little to how easy and flexible a theme is to use once you (try to) set it up put some real data in it. IMHO, to qualify as a 'feature", something must be built into a theme and configured from the control panel. No coding, editing of CSS, etc. If an outside pugin\widget is required, it should be marked as "supports" perhaps, but it's not a feature.

I think a good theme comparison site should break down features in a pretty detailed way - generating a comparison checklist of features on multiple themes would be neat.

btw, an example of one theme that I think really breaks down featues well:http://www.one-theme.com/features/

Hope you don't mind the input..

Erik

[ianstewart]

How do you compare the Manifest WordPress Theme with the Agregado Theme? Is Manifest deficient in some way because it has no sidebars or options for changing the layout? Is Agregado deficient because it has built-in options I might not want?

I think they're both great.

Star ratings, percentages of set criteria, matrixes of features. These are terrible ways to rate themes for comparison. The fairest way is the unfairest: opinion.

Nathan's original subjective idea is the best; a detailed review followed by a simple declaration of quality. This theme is good. That theme is bad.

[andrew]

My intention with this isn't so much to compare themes, but for there to be something other than the word 'premium' to help describe what a theme is. So that as a theme author, if you decide to make a theme that has layout options you have a baseline to work to which is documented and available to users.

Is Manifest deficient in some way because it has no sidebars or options for changing the layout?

You've asked two completely different questions there.

The lack of sidebars is a non-issue because normal operations for that theme assume none. On the other hand if it did provide customisable areas but did not widgetise them then it would be deficient.

I also love Manifest; but, If I wanted to use it for something that required me to customise the appearance (Change the header for example) but I didn't know HTML then for my purposes it would be unsuitable.

To take it a step further, what if you could change the header but nothing else, would that be deficient? No, but it also wouldn't meet my idea of a theme with customisable appearance. I see no reason why it isn't possible define a standard that says that themes developed with customisable appearance options, feature at a minimum functionality that allows items x, y, z to be changed within a particular range.

That doesn't mean it is better than Manifest which has none, it just says that if the theme says you can customise the appearance the user knows what that means.

[Brad]

I liked how Dan compared theme frameworks in this post
http://www.wptavern.com/comparisons-...eme-frameworks

Perhaps a point system would be helpful but it needs to be pointed out to the reader that fewer points doesn't necessarily mean the theme is lower in quality. It may simply be lacking some bells & whistles that may or may not be used by the buyer.

I think the biggest benefit for someone like me who buys themes on a consistent basis would be a checklist that I can quickly scan and look for the features that matter most to me.

Also, I often find that screenshots or video of a theme's backbend features and custom write panels are not displayed by the seller so perhaps a critic site could do so.