We have an exciting announcement to make, we’ve decided to make things easier for you, the authors, by putting together a Trusted Authors Program. Eventually, it will lower the burden on reviewers/leads and we will have more time for other interesting programs. After a few days of brainstorming, here is what we have.

The Trusted Authors Program is an attempt to streamline the review process for authors who are consistently able to show they can to produce high quality code and themes that are in line with the current guidelines.

You should know from the start that applications for the Trusted Authors program and its queue will be handled only by team leads.

To apply to this program, you will need to select the ticket you want us to take into consideration:

• It can be your latest approved (live) theme (not an update ticket)
• Ticket in the New or Final Queue.

After that you can post your application in the comments, using this format (make sure you read the entire article carefully before you apply):

User: greenshady Ticket: https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/35636

The leads will make sure to take a note and contact you if your application is accepted or not.

The ticket you’re applying with must have the following characteristics:  

1. Escaping/Sanitization – maximum of 3 issues.
2. Licensing – maximum of 3 issues and you need to be 100% GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples., all your products, either on your website or 3rd party sites.
3. Content creation – none spotted, this also includes correct use of demo content.
4. Malicious or egregious stuff – no PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php./JS or any types of errors, no pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party territory functionality. Correct use of prefixing, enqueue, translations, advertising.

As an author, you also need to know that:

• You can submit a theme once a week (1 week). Please consider that authors in the New queue have to wait for a review and they are also limited to 1 theme/30 days.
• You must have at least 2 live themes in the directory to be considered.
• You can’t apply with a child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/., just parent themes.
• This privilege is not transferable,
• Themes approved through this program cannot be transferred to other accounts for a minimum of 6 months.
• AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) ready themes are filtered out of the TA queue. They’ll need a11yAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) reviews.
• You can only upload one theme per week if you are a trusted author, no matter how many theme author accounts you are affiliated with. Doing otherwise or getting caught will result in a permanent ban from TA and all themes removed for all users involved.

Consequences of not following the rules:

1. Content creation, licensing issues result in 1 week suspensions without warning and removal from the program. You’ll need to fix the theme, suspension won’t be lifted until you do so.  You’ll be able to re-apply for the program after 3 months from the date when the theme is reinstated.
2. Any type of hacks, malware, attract a permanent ban and removal of all your themes. (unless you were hacked and can provide hard proof for that).
3. The other rules result in a warning, a period of 7 days to fix those issues, otherwise point 1’s consequences apply.
4. We’ll not take into consideration active installs counts, how old a theme is or your financial distress. Suspensions will be applied without hesitation.
5. Two strikes will result in removal from the program. You will not be allowed to re-apply to the program for a minimum of 4 months. Timescales may be decided on a case by case basis deepening on severity.

We would like to keep things civilized. All complaints are addressed in ticket, don’t call out people on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. You can pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” any of the team leads if you have any concerns.

Please do not take advantage of being a trusted author. Post reviews will be done at random to ensure the program is not being abused. If we find the program is being abused, any abusive authors will be removed without notice.