I know quite a few WordPress theme developers that want to share their work freely to the world trough the WordPress theme directory community. Here are some small but effective tips on how to get on the WTD more quickly and with fewer updates.

These tips are personally tried out after many theme version rejects. Also it`s a good idea to read the theme information page and theme development checklist before uploading a theme.

Tip #1. Most of the theme developers make their themes based on sample texts and media. I recommend developing for the actual sample data that the publishers previews themes on the directory. There are a lot of stuff that we can miss like abbr, acronym, pre, code, sub, sup. Simply go, preview a theme, and use firebug to discover those tags that need special attention.

Tip #2. Keep you functions.php clean and code compliant, note that the directory doesn’t accept

Tip #3. Always keep your CSS and XHTML in order, any discrepancies can make the publisher to request another update of the theme. Note that actual people are reviewing the submission so make your themes for people.

Tip #4. Don’t hard code Twitter links, adsense or other type of media or social stuff without including them inside a theme options page. They ask one thing to be fixed at a time so additional theme updates may be needed.

Tip #5. The most important THING!. If you want to include a link in the footer, please see to what website it leads to. Disable any wordpress affiliate links, paid wordpress theme, spammy content. Your theme WILL be rejected.

I got one theme rejected because the footer link was pointing to a website that “looked” spammy, and that was the actual review comment from the publisher.

What I do is include a dummy landing page with a 301 redirect inside the footer (You set up the redirect after the theme has been approved).