Today, we’re proud to announce to the community that we’re unveiling our new WordPress Theme Submission Requirements.

We began this process by analysing the constructive feedback we had received over the past few months, and looking at industry standards to ensure we’re meeting them. We’ve been working on a few key areas including:

  • WordPress Core API
  • WordPress Features
  • WordPress Unit Tests
  • WordPress Assets
  • Security
  • PHP Quality
  • HTML/CSS Quality
  • JavaScript Quality

The next step was to get input from a group of experienced ThemeForest authors, to give input on behalf of the wider community. Their feedback has helped us revise our theme requirements to best suit both the market and our authors. We really appreciate their insight, and the time they took to help us out with this project.

As this is a fairly major update, we don’t want to throw anyone in the deep end. For the next threeeight weeks we’ll be recommending, but not enforcing, that new and existing themes meet the standards outlined above. After that, these will become the standards for reviewing all new themes. We will eventually be asking that existing themes also be updated to meet them, with a separate grace period to be advised at the time. Those changes should be small and gradual, and we’ll work with affected authors to assist them through the process.

Thanks to everyone for your patience while we make our theme standards, and the marketplaces, better and better!