Making WordPress.org

Opened 9 years ago

Last modified 17 months ago

#969 new enhancement

Allow multiple screenshots

Reported by: grapplerulrich's profile grapplerulrich Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: high
Component: Theme Directory Keywords: needs-design
Cc:

Description

At the moment only one screenshot can be uploaded

Themes are about designs. Screenshots are great for displaying the different design elements on the theme.

The screenshot is normally of the home page without any plugins activated. Some themes support specific plugins and it would be helpful for the users to see at a glance how the theme looks like with those plugins activated.

The theme demo #30 at the moment is very bare and the screenshots are good alternative.

Change History (29)

#1 @Otto42
9 years ago

Core will need to add multiple screenshot support for this to happen, really. Some of the backend is there already though. Might be a good thing to add for 4.3.

#2 @grapplerulrich
9 years ago

Thanks Otto. Nacin mentioned "We may be better off keeping these out of the zip and serving them from the WP.org CDN. (matveb actually suggested this.)" meaning the screenshots

Here is the core ticket https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/26695

What would be the best way to coordinate between the changes needed on w.org and core?

#3 @dd32
9 years ago

IMHO: Make the changes on w.org, then get core using them too, shouldn't delay the backend support until core does, plus this way themes will start using them before cores launch which means a better choice of examples.

As for excluding them from the zip, I'd say we should zip up screenshot.* (for back compat, and display in cores admin page), and exclude screenshot-*.*,

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by grapplerulrich. View the logs.


8 years ago

#5 @mor10
8 years ago

Adding to this: Displaying the theme exclusively in a medium sized screen configuration is not an accurate way of demonstrating to the end-user what the theme looks like. Most themes are responsive, and many are mobile-first meaning the arbitrary medium sized screenshot does not tell the whole story. For the end-user to be able to make an informed decision, the theme should be displayed in the most relevant context as per the designer. That might be mobile, it might be medium screens, or it might be wide screens, or a combination of all. Some of this could be solved by displaying the theme in medium screen with a superimposed phone for a smaller screen demo as well, but it's a stop-gap measure. A proper methodology is preferable.

#6 @moonomo
8 years ago

  • Cc bangaliana@… added

#7 @karmatosed
8 years ago

I'm not totally sure that two screenshots is a good thing. Adaptive designs shouldn't just be about 2 screens either. Thinking in binary terms of mobile and not mobile doesn't help as that's not reality.

This needs some thinking about.

#8 @grapplerulrich
8 years ago

Multiple screenshots will help show the themes from different perspectives. Be the different screen sizes, different pages or the customizer.

I find it easier/quicker to look at the screenshots then to test the theme on different devices or resize the bowser. The user may be looking for certain design elements as how the mobile menu looks like etc.

#9 @mor10
8 years ago

In an ideal scenario I'd like to see the option for designers/developers to add a series of screenshots that can be rotated. There could be an upper limit (maybe 4 or 5), or you could upload just one. That way the different aspects of the theme can be showcased properly.

Maybe something like the "Screenshots" portion of the Plugins directory?

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by jcastaneda. View the logs.


8 years ago

#11 @celloexpressions
8 years ago

The theme review team decided in their meeting today that they'd like to allow up to four screenshots for themes.

Core can implement multiple screenshots fairly easily, but support needs to be added to the .org API first. Most likely, the additional screenshots would be queried separately once the theme details modal is opened, possibly along with additional data such as reviews that isn't included initially. It might make sense to either optimize the initial load to also not include the author, tags, or description, or just query for all data at once, though.

However, I'm still not convinced about the necessity of multiple screenshots. Core will be emphasizing a direct "install & preview" action with https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/37661, allowing users to get a live preview of themes and different device displays via device preview in the customizer. There is a question about whether it's better for users to look at additional screenshots before deciding or previewing and customizing a theme before deciding if they want to move on to something else.

If we are moving forward, I'd say we'll need it working via the API within the next 4-5 weeks or so if we want to get core support into 4.7.

#12 @poena
8 years ago

But adding screenshots does not prevent the preview and install approach in any way?
Please don't see it as if it has to be one OR the other.

There are still things that the live preview cannot do as smoothly, like choosing page templates. The screenshots could showcase these kind of templates.

Last edited 8 years ago by poena (previous) (diff)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by jcastaneda. View the logs.


7 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by poena. View the logs.


6 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by sergey. View the logs.


6 years ago

#16 @SergeyBiryukov
5 years ago

Last edited 5 years ago by SergeyBiryukov (previous) (diff)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by joyously. View the logs.


5 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by joyously. View the logs.


5 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #design by boemedia. View the logs.


5 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by poena. View the logs.


5 years ago

#21 @dd32
5 years ago

  • Keywords needs-design added
  • Priority changed from normal to high

Just a drive-by priority change, I think adding multiple screenshot functionality should be a little bit higher priority than many of the other enhancements suggested for the Theme Directory.

We do need to get a design decision here though, even if it's just "copy the screenshot functionality from plugins as it is"

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by dingo_d. View the logs.


4 years ago

#23 @dingo_d
4 years ago

The issue here is that we don't have plugin SVN structure - with assets folder.

And people don't update the themes using SVN directly, but by uploading them through the zip file upload.

Since we'd want to avoid rewriting the entire themes directory, we could allow them in theme zip files like Otto suggested: screenshot1, screenshot2 etc.
We just need to communicate with the authors that the screenshots should be of a decent size (not like 2MB each).

This could then be used from the theme upload itself.

The design would follow that of the plugins site (with lightbox hopefully).

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by poena. View the logs.


4 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by joyously. View the logs.


4 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by joyously. View the logs.


3 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by poena. View the logs.


3 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #design by fahimmurshed. View the logs.


22 months ago

#29 @annezazu
17 months ago

In reviewing the Twenty Twenty Three theme's screenshot, I personally am finding it to be underwhelming compared to the options included as part of the 10 style variations:

https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentythree/issues/163

In the same way we're exploring how best to add style variations to the theme directory, I'd love to see the same happen with the screenshots in the Appearance > Themes section, especially to highlight these same variations: https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6059

Thank you to @poena for pointing me here.

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