Consolidate 'featured themes' page

[jonoaldersonwp]

Both ​https://wordpress.org/themes/ and ​https://wordpress.org/themes/browse/featured/ return the same page/results.

This is a mess, and it's harming us from an SEO perspective (and, creates headaches from an analytics perspective).

We need to:

• Consolidate these into one page. ​https://wordpress.org/themes/browse/featured/ should 301 redirect to ​https://wordpress.org/themes/, and internal links (e.g., from navigation bars) should be updated accordingly, where possible.

• The canonical URL tag currently on ​https://wordpress.org/themes/ (pointing at ​https://wordpress.org/themes/browse/featured/) should be updated to become self-referential.

• These changes should be replicated across Rosetta sites.

• The title of the Themes page should be updated to WordPress Themes | WordPress.org (and on Rosetta sites, append the country code; e.g., on fr.wordpress.org/themes/, it should be Thèmes WordPress | WordPress.org (FR).

• The JavaScript which updates/replaces the title tag with the 'Featured' title should be removed.

[joyously]

Would it be better to make them different?
Having Featured, Latest, Popular, and Favorites means you have different ways to see the same content. The Featured ones are random, but perhaps they shouldn't page. Favorites is limited also.
I personally would prefer that the themes page showed just the search and filters, without showing any themes, although you could make sections like on the Plugins main page.

[jonoaldersonwp]

Perhaps! But, that introduces politics and design, and it'll stall forever in the void of death-by-democracy. Let's just fix the mess for now :P

[dd32]

If someone wants to look into having a different homepage, let's do that instead, perhaps similar to how the plugins homepage works?

Changing things to work how proposed in the ticket isn't going to happen anytime soon, certainly not sooner than changing the design.

[jonoaldersonwp]

I disagree strongly. Attempting to make any meaningful strategic/layout change to this page will likely take months of politics and design. Every day which goes by with current behaviour hurts our performance, to the benefit of Wix/etc.

What's the barrier to just fixing it?

[dufresnesteven]

Update the JS should we proceed with the other items in the list.

[dingo_d]

Any news on working on this ticket? There is a patch, just needs testing I guess.

[dd32]

In 9637:

Theme Directory: Link to / rather than /browse/popular/ for the default view, and use the homepage title text instead.

Fixes #4681.