Provide an option for adding multiple theme authors

[mario-siteground]

On WordPress.org plugins could be led and managed by several contributors, but it's not applicable for themes. Only the theme author is entitled to work on a theme - and changing the author itself requires a communication with a member with privileges on WordPress.org (cannot be done by just updating style.css or readme.txt).

[iandunn]

This was initially discussed at ​http://make.wordpress.org/meta/2013/07/02/theme-directory-listing-multiple-authors-the-way-plugin/

[melchoyce]

Is this task on any sort of roadmap? Any idea when it might be implemented?

[iandunn]

I never got around to working on it, and now the new theme directory has launched, so @obenland is probably the best person to own it.

[obenland]

I'm going to pass that baton on to @otto42, as he recently mentioned he already has some code in place for that.

[Otto42]

Well, not code in place yet, but similar code lying around somewhere. I'll look into it.

[samuelsidler]

@Otto42: Any work here?

[Otto42]

I have code to allow for theme uploads by multiple authors, and will create a metabox to allow admins to edit it. I will add this to the directory this week.

[Otto42]

For assorted reasons, we can't send multiple author data through the API just yet. I need to test with old installs to find the right way forward. This means that only single author data will be displayed on theme pages until this is figured out. The patch just allows for specifying other-accounts that are allowed to upload updates to the theme.

[hugobaeta]

This would be great! +1

[tellyworth]

This is dependent on other work, and is most likely to happen as part of a larger project to normalise the theme and plugin directory code. Closing this ticket for now, but not because we're rejecting the idea.

[kalich5]

Hello,
I would also need this in our templates. So it should be added.

[davidulus]

+1

[williampatton]

I am just starting a bit of work towards a normalisation project to bring themes directory more into line with plugin directory. It is still very early stages so not yet ready to bring this back out of a 'maybe later' status however wanted to leave a note here just to say things are moving along towards a point when this could be viable to work on :D

[eherman24]

Hi all,

I posted about this in slack as I didn't realize there was a ticket around.
​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RP4Y3K/p1587047653275600

I'm just going to repost what I wrote there so it's also noted here.

Hi all, question for you regarding theme authors. It’s not currently possible to have multiple theme authors listed on WordPress.org. This presents two problems. First, and more minor, team members who contribute to the development of a theme are not listed as theme authors on WordPress.org, despite having contributed to the development of a theme. The second, is that when team members support a theme on WordPress.org by answering support questions, they do not have the ability to mark issues as resolved - and all team members have to use a shared account (the listed theme author) to close issues out.

Is there any sort of push towards having multiple theme authors to help work around these issues? Is this something that I can open up a ticket for on trac, since it’s .org related? Or have I just completely overlooked how we might have multiple contributing team members? I’d imagine multiple theme authors would work in the same way that having multiple plugin committers does.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #5635