Themes older than 2 years cannot be found by an exact slug match

[SergeyBiryukov]

Looks like themes older than 2 years cannot be found even by an exact slug match:

• ​https://wordpress.org/themes/search/expound/ -- "No themes found. Try a different search."
• ​https://wordpress.org/themes/expound/ -- the theme exists though.

Some details from @otto42:

Seems like there is no exact-match check in there at all, and the limiter that cuts off at 2 years doesn't look at searches or expects an exact match check to be done elsewhere.
https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sites/trunk/wordpress.org/public_html/wp-content/plugins/theme-directory/query-modifications.php?rev=2920#L110
also perhaps there used to be a dropdown to search for author or theme name rather than just a general search? Because a lot of the code makes the assumption that you can search by several fields.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Just stumbled upon this again.

Since the 2-year search limit does not exist in the new Plugin Directory, perhaps now is the time to remove it from the Theme Directory as well?

Switching the banner to mention the latest 3 major WordPress releases instead of the arbitrary 2 years check (#3010) might also be a good idea, but it looks like themes don't have a Tested up to: field (or a standardized readme.txt file at all), so that's something for another time.

[dingo_d]

@SergeyBiryukov could you implement the fix you had in mind, since the TRT now requires a valid readme.txt (which means that the Tested up to field should be present in it).

​https://make.wordpress.org/themes/handbook/review/required/#readme-txt-file

[dd32]

The Tested Up to value for Themes can't be relied upon, for historical reasons. Maybe in two years time when all themes in that timeframe have valid readme's (Except new updates today still don't).

The original request here, for direct requests to a theme to bypass the limit seems reasonable still though.

[dd32]

Actually, I misread the ticket.
Direct links to themes work, searches for exact matches don't.
That seems reasonable enough to me, which explains why the tickets still open.

This is in the too-hard basket for now, as WP_Query isn't flexible enough for this scenario and altering the WP_Query results to force an exact-match is likely to have knock on effects in the caching plugin and API that's reliant upon the same code.

IMHO this ticket is a wontfix or maybelater for when the Theme Directory search is ElasticSearch powered.

[dingo_d]

IMHO this ticket is a wontfix or maybelater for when the Theme Directory search is ElasticSearch powered.

Any info when this might be?

[dd32]

In 9363:

Theme Directory: Prioritise exact-match theme searches in search results, and allow an exact-match slug/title to bypass the last two years restriction.

Fixes #2939, #4920.

[dd32]

In 9364:

Theme Directory: Revert some debug that slipped into r9363.

See #2939, #4920.