My Theme got Hard Reject. Need Help.

Envato Authors Theme Authors
,
1

Hi, my WordPress theme just got hard rejected and it was surprising, because there were no PHP errors/warning whatsoever or design leaks.

So, I came in here and start reading others questions about hard rejected products and someone recommended useful website: validator.w3.org

I test my site there and it showed few errors/warning here and there. Mostly ID duplications, Section lacks heading warning(s), frameborder attribute (google map), missed closing tag and things like that.

Is that possible to get hard rejected because of those errors/warning?

Second question:
I imported dummy data from WordPress.org to get bunch of different posts so I can test all the edge cases etc.
I tested that blog page also on validator.w3.org site and it showed errors which is not exactly errors in my end but on WordPress functions. For example, get_the_date function causes a lot of errors. All errors were the same: "Bad value for attribute datetime on element time"
And the very same page showed errors which is caused by comments_popup_link WordPress function. The error is “The itemprop attribute was specified, but the element is not a property of any item” – few posts thumbnail causes the same error as well.

So… should I care about those errors?

I’ve fixed pretty much all the “biggest” errors, like closing tag missing or unnecessary tag somewhere etc.

Appreciate every reply, this is my first time I try to upload own item in TF.
Thank you!

2

Hi CCMil

Sure the validator is a good tool and TBH people should use it more but as you pointed out WP dummy data actually does not validate :slight_smile: ‘never has’ from my long memory … it’s a shame, likewise oftem WP does not pass WAI tests (which it should certainly for any commercial sites and especially in the US where/if a client (theme user) is dealing with Gov’t areas need to look at Section 508 …

But hey so many people don’t bother with WAI/508 etc … I wonder how many theme developers here do?

3

I think the main reason is design - if design quality is low, theme will not pass, no matter if you have errors or not.
If design is good and you have some errors - you will get soft reject and you will need to fix errors.

4

Thanks for your reply.

What does “low design quality” exactly means? I mean, my theme uses VC page builder and its fully responsive, so what else I could do? Navs/menus are editable and all the posts/custom post types displays without any leaks.

Thank you for your help!

5

If it’s fixable then it should be fixed - unavoidable ones like iFrames can be ignored.

If you share a link to your demo people can give you feedback - without that it’s hard to comment on design etc.

6

That are all features of theme - functionality. Design should be “eye catching”. There is a lot of authors who don’t use VC and tons of plugins but have good sales.

But, without demo page, we can’t give you any feedback.