I just attended the 2015 PDX WordCamp and am now helping out at the contributor day. Of course contributing to core can be done in a number of ways, but one of the areas that I’ve always wanted to help out with is through theme review.
The above link to the theme review handbook is quite comprehensive in regards to the steps one needs to take to help out, but this post is meant to be a quick overview of what I did to get up and running:
- Create a new sandbox site called theme-review.dev to complete the reviews. This is easy if you use vvv, and the extremely helpful scaffolding script vv.
- Check in with the theme review slack channel. This is a great place to introduce yourself and ask questions as they arise. If you don’t have access to WordPress’s slack channels, make sure that you have a WordPress.org account, and then ask for an invitation.
- Finally – request a theme to review!
A couple of helpful plugins and notes in regards to setting up the testing environment.
- Use the Developer plugin. No need to install all of the additional plugins, but a few of the following are useful.
- Debug Bar
- Log deprecated notices
- Monster Widget
- Regenerate thumbnails
- RTL tester
- Theme Check
- Beta Tester
- Install the theme meta data.
- Install the theme check plugin
Next steps — level up theme knowledge!