Help You To See Why Your Theme Gets Hard Reject

Envato Authors Author Hangout
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Theme Author Case

Most of experienced Envato authors have passed dozens of hard rejections during the time we create WordPress Theme. In the beginning of working with WordPress themes on ThemeForest, we feel so depressed and wish we can come back, re-do again and again, pray to get the soft rejection instead of a hard one.

No problem! No pain no gain. With some first hard rejections, you can understand what features you need to change, add or remove. They make your items get better.

However, not 100% of authors understand which features they should change. Or you got many soft-rejections and don’t know how to get approval. Then you post multiple post thread like this "Help, got reject, don’t know why" and you will be so lucky if getting one single reply that helps. You got tired and want to give up.

On the other hand, sometime, reviewers need to spend too much time at the low quality item. It’s waste & keep the longer time of waiting for other good item.

What’s the solution?

You guys can post your projects that you have submitted on ThemeForest and got hard rejection - soft rejection here and we will take a look, tell you some of aspects you need to modify, change or remove. On the other hand, other authors can join with us, this community is stronger than one brain, you will receive many advise & recommendation.

How to get there?

  • Post your link below (has already submitted & got hard rejection)
  • Wait for other author to reply

If you want to help

  • Click on any project you want to help
  • Please reply below each link

Thanks for joining.

Have a good day,
ThemeMove

1 Like
2

That’s great for the new authors :sunglasses:

1 Like
4

http://prntscr.com/b501y4 Please re-check your link.

5

Hello,

I submitted my theme and get hard reject.

DEMO: goo.gl/A6UUXM

Can you help me to make improvements and show errors in my theme.

Thanks!

6

Hi,
[ThemeForest] Your uploaded item Andura rejected! ( After 50 days )
Demo: https://www.se7en-team.com/

Please HELP

8

@ZeroTheme

Was your theme accepted by shopify?

9

Hi ashish79,

No, very difficult to upload theme to Shopify market.

10

No, very difficult to upload theme to Shopify market.

11

First, let’s take @ZeroTheme :smiley:

  1. First look is great. I like the font in the navigation and all of the hover effects - they’re not too overwhelming.
  2. I think the shadow behind slider titles is too harsh. I would also use some hazy effect over the images, so the white text stands out more.
  3. I like the hover effect over products - it looks elegant but not too much.
  4. I guess it would be better if the categories in the left sidebar would be more to the top or removed from there.
    But overally I don’t think it should be hard rejected. I’m not a code expert, so I honestly can’t tell anything about it, maybe someone will catch something?
1 Like
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And now @se7en-team :slight_smile:

  1. First impression is okay, but it seems weird for me that a website under your nickname holds a demo page for a theme called Andura.
  2. After scrolling down I was attacked by a lot of sections and animations. I would showcase it in less animated way, and remove at least half of these blocks (I mean the ones with “Fully Responsive…”, “Retina Ready” etc.).
  3. I don’t really like the counter. That gray color is too light and icons are hardly visible. There’s also too much of blue there.
  4. Nice hover effect over the ‘documentation’, I like it :slight_smile:
  5. The next section below the counter looks plain and sad. White icons, white text and low resolution picture as a background. I would put more contrast to it and replace the picture.
  6. The big picture showing features of the theme has a potential, but the font looks blurry in some places making it harder to read. Why are you writing “Wordpress slider builder”, instead of naming the plugin you’re using, same example with “Wordpress page builder” instead of Visual Composer.
    Also you made some mistakes like too much of “…”, not placing “.” where you should have, or not using commas where it should be makes it harder to read.
  7. What are those not clickable image doing there? Nice hover effect, love the blur, but you could use those images to showcase portfolio. Instead, all of those images are just sitting there with random titles. As a potential buyer I would hesitate, because I would not be sure if I would be able to make those images a link after buying and installing theme. // I just saw that these are upcoming demos. Maybe add them after you create those demos? It would look better that way.
  8. Just because I like to click around I discovered, that this divider in the footer is clickable! You should make the footer, well, a footer without hiding info under suspicious divider.
  9. Oh, just saw that after hovering the circle in the top right corner it opens the search bar. It would be wiser to change it into a search icon just to indicate, that the search bar is there.

There’s a lot more I could list there, but this post is ALREADY really long. Overall - I see potential in this theme, but there is more steps needed to make it perfect.
That is just my personal opinion, maybe someone has different view than me?:slight_smile:

1 Like
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Thank you very much!

14

I got a soft rejected with the following seasons:

JQUERY PERFORMANCE NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: Your jQuery code can benefit from
some performance tweaks. Please make sure that your jQuery is properly
formatted, commented and that you are caching and chaining whenever
possible. For more information please read:
_http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-ways-to-instantly-increase-your-jquery-performance–net-5551

SPACING AND ALIGNMENT: There are spacing and alignment issues in
this item. Please make sure that all elements are aligned properly and
spacing is consistent from section to section. Here are some articles
with more information regarding negative space and proper spacing:
_http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/using-white-space-or-negative-space-in-your-designs–webdesign-3401

For no.1, what should I do more with jquery. In fact, I am not so expertise in jQuery.

For no.2, I really have no idea with SPACING AND ALIGNMENT with this
template. But I already worked hard for that. This template has SPACING
AND ALIGNMENT problem only on a home page or other pages as well.
Please anyone give me comment in order to improve to be approved.

Here is the demo: http://crenoveative.com/envato/extretion/index.html

Thanks

1 Like
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Hi Zero Theme,

After checking your theme, I don’t understand what the purpose of this template is.
At the top of the template, I was thinking of an landing page (you show your features list: http://prntscr.com/b5f6es but the images go with them are not cool) . About Mega Menu feature, customer cannot see this feature on your demo site.

To be honest, it looks like you take each elements of your page from some famous authors, it is easy to see that (Avada, TheFox, Stocklom)

I wish if I hover to this place: http://prntscr.com/b5fdf2, I can open to a new site, but it doesn’t happen.

I advise you to choose a Topic & a good style of design then you can draw the attention of the customers (at least, the viewers)
You should tell to people that what your theme’s purpose works for.

Hope someone else can give more comment.

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Hi Se7en-team,

After checking your theme, I don’t understand what the purpose of this template is. At the top of the template, I was thinking of an landing page (you show your features list: http://prntscr.com/b5f6es but the images go with them are not cool) . About Mega Menu feature, customer cannot see this feature on your demo site.

To be honest, it looks like you take each elements of your page from some famous authors, it is easy to see that (Avada, TheFox, Stocklom)

I wish if I hover to this place: http://prntscr.com/b5fdf2, I can open to a new site, but it doesn’t happen.

I advise you to choose a Specific Topic & a good style of design then you can draw the attention of the customers (at least, the viewers) You should tell to people that what your theme’s purpose works for.

Hope someone else can give more comment.

17

Hi ZeroTheme,

It’s nice to see that the code quality is good :wink: so, don’t ever think of giving up.

However, the design is out-dated.

Hope other authors can give more comments.

18

@ ThemeMove,

Thank you for your comments! I will try to improve it.

19

Can you provide me detailed feedback on my hard rejected item it was my first try in html/css category thanks.

http://webfulcreations.com/envato/webful_accessories/

20

Need help with a soft-rejected items

I received a soft-rejected for the following reasons:

  • COPYRIGHT VIOLATION: Please note that we do not review items for
    copyright or intellectual property issues, and this is your
    responsibility as you have confirmed during the upload process. However,
    we have some concerns that assets used in your item may not have been
    properly licensed. No famous people or screenshots from Movies, TV
    Series, Video games, CD covers or anything similar that might be
    infringing on any copyrights are acceptable. Please remove them from the
    preview image. Please review your item, identify any assets in it that
    are not licensed, and replace them with properly licensed assets. Please
    note that Envato takes copyright complaints and issues very seriously.
    Please be aware of your obligations under our membership terms to ensure
    that your items do not infringe anyone else’s intellectual property.

For this reason, what is “COPYRIGHT VIOLATION” in here? Car images?

Please any one help me for an improvement.

Thanks in advance.

21

My template is soft rejected for those reasons:

  1. TYPOGRAPHIC HIERARCHY: The typographic hierarchy of this item requires additional work. For more information, please read: http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/understanding-typographic-hierarchy--webdesign-11636

  2. SPACING AND ALIGNMENT: There are spacing and alignment issues in this item. Please make sure that all elements are aligned properly and spacing is consistent from section to section. Here are some articles with more information regarding negative space and proper spacing: http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/using-white-space-or-negative-space-in-your-designs--webdesign-3401,\ http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/adding-space-to-your-designs--webdesign-14836

I tried to clear them and re-submitted. But, I don’t know whether them are cleared.

Can you check my template here: http://www.athenadesignstudio.com/themes/axis/

22

Hello,
My theme got soft-rejected first time and the reviewer sent this message
Unfortunately ‘WordPress’ has higher standards in terms of aesthetics. An approved design in other categories does not guarantee an approval under ThemeForest’s WordPress category. Your design has an interesting starting concept, but it needs significant improvements in terms of aesthetics and attention to details. 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.

I resubmitted the theme with the following features :
*Live Composer
I have redesigned the front-page with Live Composer so that the users can change every element right from the front-end. If an user wants to remove an element from the front page then he can do that easily using the Live Composer plugin.

*Testimonial
I have added testimonial section’s button color option and option to change slide speed in Redux Framework.

*Navbar
Option added to change Navbar Color also the font color of navbar.

*Blog
Option added to change Blog’s background color or place an image.
Redesigned the blog section.

*CPT
Removed the use of Custom Post Type UI plugin and made a custom plugin that contains custom post types. Users don’t have to install CPT UI plugin and import post types manually. The post types will be installed automatically.

*Shortcodes
I have added some shortcodes.

*Post format
I have added 3 post formats : Image post format, audio post format, video post format.

*Portfolio
Users can now view their portfolio with detail using ajax.
Fixed issue with the category. Users can directly link their portfolio to a category without any filter.
*Contact form
Redesigned the contact form.

But it got soft-rejected again with the same problem.