A major change in WordPress is on the horizon in the next six months. Developers will now have to integrate WordPress theme options for frameworks into the theme customizer in order to submit to the WordPress.org repository. Support for the new customizer is a must even though it’s really not new and has been around for a little while.
Themes that are developed with a framework that use a custom theme option panel, such as Redux or Devin Price’s Options Framework now have to move their options into the customizer to be 100% up to theme standards.
I personally have mixed feelings about this decision given the fact that the user experience or the UI (user interface) of the customizer is really not very adequate when it comes to making edits or changes to a theme that has a lot of options. It’s difficult to add options for a large theme in a space that occupies about as much real estate as your iPhone.
The forum (see link below) stated by Justin Tadlock, that themes that have already been submitted will not be removed from the repository however new themes that do not follow this new strict guideline will not be allowed to be approved to be included in the theme repository.
So what does this mean to seem developers that use self hosted WordPress themes and custom development like Element 502?
Well if you don’t submit anything to the repository you really shouldn’t have to worry about anything. However, as WordPress continues to evolve to keep up with an ever-growing a market that has security issues every week, it’s probably a good idea to start learning how to use the customizer and to adapt.
If you would like to read more about this issue in the changes that are coming up please head over to WordPress.org in their blog to get updated.
