Theme directory tags overhaul

[greenshady]

After several weeks of discussion and surveys, the Theme Review Team has come up with a proposal for an overhaul of the tags/filters available. One of the major pain points based on survey results is the tag system, which is outdated and not very useful.

Color Tags

All color-specific tags (e.g., blue, white, etc.) should be removed. Most don't seem to be using these tags for finding themes, especially given the prevalence of theme options for changing colors.

Layout Tags

The following tag is proposed for adding:

grid-layout

The following tags are proposed for removing:

responsive-layout
fixed-layout
fluid-layout

A note on "responsive": It seems that this is the no. 1 searched layout tag, followed by "fluid". Based on feedback and discussion, we believe most users are simply looking for a responsive theme. When a tag is always used by themes and by users, it becomes practically useless in distinguishing themes from one another.

Feature tags

The following tags should be removed:

blavatar

The following tags should be added:

footer-widgets

Subject Tags

This is a proposal for complete overhaul of "subject" tags. The following is the list of subject tags with additions and removals:

blog
e-commerce
education
entertainment
food-and-drink
holiday
news
photography
portfolio

Survey results: ​https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2015/06/22/survey-results-directory/

The original list of all tags can be found here to see where we started: ​https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2015/08/03/theme-directory-tagsfilters-round-2/

[Otto42]

Theme tags are part of core. This would have to be coordinated with a core change.

Additionally, "removing" tags is problematic for backwards compatibility with previous versions of WordPress.

[Otto42]

Related: ​https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/33407

[ocean90]

https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sites/trunk/wordpress.org/public_html/wp-content/themes/pub/wporg-themes/functions.php#L161 needs an update too.

[grapplerulrich]

Added a patch. Where does the API fetch the list of tags from?

[ocean90]

1187.patch​ should get committed when the new tags have enough themes.

[greenshady]

We'd also like to add the custom-logo tag to the list of new tags. It wasn't in our initial proposal because the feature was not a part of core at the time.

I can create a separate ticket if need be.

Note that I made a ticket in core Trac for this: ​https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/36744

[rabmalin]

Add Custom Log

[ocean90]

In 3622:

Theme Directory: Update list of WordPress theme features.

Props grapplerulrich, rabmalin.
See ​[core37287].
Fixes #1187.