Roughly 10 months after sketching it out in a journal and just barely starting writing the code, the heavy duty development with Giornalismo is over.
This week I wrapped up the majority of what I have with the theme, cut a couple of things out and fixed a few things to get it ready for a heavy testing period and then a target date of the end of July to submit it for the WordPress Theme Directory.
It’s been a bit of a tough go of it for the theme. I had to cut out a few features, primarily the Twitter Card support. That will likely come in the version 1.1 release somewhere down the road. I also gave it a bit of a test run, setting up the theme on its demo site, which will allow prospective users a chance to see all of what it can do in action. That provided me a really good chance to see what users will see when setting up the theme and to fix those issues.
As for what goes on now, first the theme is available for those who want an early release to try it out, test it and help make it better before submission. Those who do help will be listed as contributers. Those who do wish to try the early release should expect some errors here and there that might have snuck by and need to fill out the form at the bottom of the theme page.
Second, during this next month, I’m going to be doing my own heavy testing, making sure everything is up to standard and correct so that the theme review process this time around will be much, much quicker. And finally, I’ll be documenting the CSS classes to change different aspects of the theme. I found out that might be valuable to theme users while trying to do a video demo for setting up a child theme and customizing the theme.
So that takes care of most of what’s happened this week. Hopefully the next month or so is very kind and I’m able to pump out a really high-quality theme for WordPress use.