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SLP “The Naughty List” Themes

By • November 2, 2012 • blog, Plugins, WordPress • Comments Off

Between developing WordPress plugins and helping clients get their WordPress sites online I come across a LOT of themes and plugins.  Often I find myself chasing down bugs or interface anomalies and end up installing various themes and plugins on my development box for testing and problem isolation.  Along the way I’ve found a LOT of themes and plugins that misbehave.  In some cases the infractions are minor, in others it is surprising the software actually works.

You may also want to check out “The Nice List“.

The Naughty List

Here are my findings of those themes and plugins that mis-behave.  Please feel free to share your own in the comments.

Themes

Blanco, Theme Forest

Does not process jQuery function extensions (fn.extend) properly.

This theme has a hard-coded call to Google Maps in the header.php file.  It does not use the enqueue_scripts() method that is prescribed best practices for WordPress themes that load scripts.  This can cause conflicts with any plugins that provide Google Maps services.

Warnings and Errors

Notice: get_theme_data is deprecated since version 3.4! Use wp_get_theme() instead. in /home/wordpress/wp/wp-includes/functions.php on line 2638

Notice: 
Use of undefined constant etheme_add_admin_script - assumed 'etheme_add_admin_script' in 
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/blanco/code/theme-settings.php 
on line 83
Notice: 
Undefined index: etheme_install in 
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/blanco/code/demo_data.php 
on line 3

Elogix, Theme Forest

Mangles valid HTML in shortcodes inserting <br/> in the middle of HTML tags.

Goodspace, Theme Forest

Mangles valid HTML in shortcodes inserting <br/> in the middle of HTML tags.

Halycon, Rocket Theme

August 2012 release.   Numerous coding errors and hundreds of PHP warnings.   Does not enqueue javascript via the accepted best practices as set forth by WordPress.

Invictus, doitmax via Theme Forest

Does not properly load Google Fonts library, hanging the font and script loading process. (version 2.6.52)

If you enter a valid Google Developer API key to enable web fonts to stop the “infinite loading of Google fonts” the plugin generates an error message:

Warning:
Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in
/kunden/268552_55268/chem-tools/finestcare/wp-content/themes/invictus/doitmax_fw/includes/google.font.inc.php
on line 81

Warning:
Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by
(output started at /kunden/268552_55268/chem-tools/finestcare/wp-content/themes/invictus/doitmax_fw/includes/google.font.inc.php:81)
in /kunden/268552_55268/chem-tools/finestcare/wp-includes/pluggable.php
on line 876

Made, Theme Forest

Mangles valid HTML in shortcodes inserting <br/> in the middle of HTML tags.

Maxx, Theme Forest

Mangles valid HTML in shortcodes inserting <br/> in the middle of HTML tags.

Natural, Theme Forest

Mangles valid HTML in shortcodes inserting <br/> in the middle of HTML tags.

RT-15 Theme by Tolga Can via Theme Forest

The IE check built into JavaScript is broken, causing all other scripts that load after script.js to break:

if(!jQuery.browser.msie){
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'msie' of undefined

RT-17 Theme by Tolga Can via Theme Forest

Various warnings and errors.While the SLP plugin does NOT do session management, ANY other plugin that does use session management (Events Manager, for example) will trigger a sessions error that will then cause the AJAX listener to break and thus make it appear that SLP is not working.   Neither plugins nor themes should be doing their own session management.
Notice: Undefined index: reset_settings in 
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/rttheme17/rt-framework/classes/loading.php 
on line 302 

Notice: A session had already been started - ignoring session_start() in 
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/rttheme17/functions.php 
on line 9 

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/rttheme17/rt-framework/functions/rt_breadcrumb.php
on line 143

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/rttheme17/rt-framework/functions/rt_breadcrumb.php
on line 143

Plugins

Events Manager

Version 5.3.1 fights with some themes that are also doing manual session management.  This causes the AJAX listener to break and thus SLP breaks.

MyReviewPlugin

Version 6.0.  Errors on replace() call in preview mode.  Bypasses standard Google Maps API call, instead force-loading the maps via a manual JavaScript call.  This is against Google Maps API best practices.

The Not-As-Naughty List

These are the themes and plugins with known problems that do not break outright but will “misfire” with the right combination of settings:

Themes

Clean Simple White by Mazznoer

Version 1.3.   Not checking named array indexes exist before testing.

Notice:
 Undefined index: page in 
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/clean-simple-white/functions.php 
on line 69

iRibbon, CyberChimps

Deprecated functions.  Does not properly load JavaScript in some configurations.

Deprecated: Function ereg_replace() is deprecated in 
/home/wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes/iribbon/includes/options-functions.php 
on line 307


											

										
					
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About Lance Cleveland

							I started my high-tech career in the early 80's as a computer technician.  I became a lead engineer at a Boston area database company a few years later.  When the Internet was just starting to show up on people's radar I quit my corner-office job and founded ProActive Web Marketing, my first start up company. That was the genesis of several successful start up companies including Time Magazine award winner The Lobster Net. 

After brief retirement in my mid-30s I co-founded the software consulting firm, Cyber Sprocket Labs. In addition to being "man of all hats" at Charleston Software Associates, I currently serve on the board or as technical adviser for several  companies including Musiplicity, Model Locate, and Advanced Media Ltd.  

In the past I consulted for Data General, Kimberly Clark, Kraft, Philip Morris, Rich Foods, Telefonica, Aribtron, and a half-dozen other Fortune 500 companies. I've appeared as a keynote speaker for the USVI Economic Development Summit, showed up as a lead interviewee for Microsoft infomercials, and have been a cited performance advertising, Internet retail, and cybercrime expert in The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. 

I currently spend most of my time hanging with friends & family while hacking WordPress plugins.

###
Code geek. Dad. Husband. Rum Lover.  
Not necessarily in that order.							

								
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