This week I submitted my first WordPress theme to Themeforest. Unfortunately it got hard rejected for design. The reviewer said the following:
Your design has an interesting starting concept, but it needs significant improvements in terms of aesthetics and attention to detail.
As higher quality items become available in the marketplace, approval requirements will increase to maintain appropriate marketplace quality.
While I’d be able to provide feedback as to how to get this approved, I can only do after it has crossed a certain threshold, quality-wise. I’m sorry to say this isn’t there yet.
It came as a bit of a surprise though, because I’ve only seen code quality requirements and never read a word about design.
But now I’m working on creating a and better preview/demo website, with several home, portfolio, about and contact pages. (Do you agree that I should do this? The theme code is stable and meets every requirement and the customizer is very extensive.)
The reviewer also sent me a link to the Envato mid-year trends review. I read the article thoroughly and there I read about template kits.
I planned to create templates for Elementor as a demo, but now I’ve got the idea to use the Envato Export Template kit plugin, so that I create a theme with a template kit, rather than a demo website. Customers will then get a WordPress theme with advanced customizer options in combination with a specifically tailored template kit.
Can anyone tell me if it’s allowed to ‘skip’ a one click demo importer or sth like that and use the Envato template kit? And if that’s allowed, do I need to meet all the Template Kit requirements? For example the required compatibility with the Elementor Hello Theme or the demo website which is required to run on the Hello theme.
If I meet the quality requirements for Template kits and advertise my theme as a WordPress theme with a template Kit specifically tailored for the theme, will the reviewer accept that?
Many thanks!