Appearance Tools support for a8c Classic Themes

[rambogenius]

Can we have our classic themes Opt into appearance tools?

Example: Twenty Sixteen theme is missing Settings and Styles: https://d.pr/i/utkkBW

[mrfoxtalbot]

For more context, this option is disabled by default but in principle, it could be enabled: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/global-settings-and-styles/settings/appearance-tools/

[matt-west]

@beafialho @iamtakashi Can you think of any reason why we wouldn’t want to enable appearance tools for classic themes?

[beafialho]

I don't have technical knowledge to properly weigh in on this. Though, I'd imagine adding appearance tools for classic themes could lead to broken/unexpected behaviors?

[iamtakashi]

I haven't tested things like this with the classic themes. @mikachan might know more about this.

[mikachan]

👋 I think I remember discussing something related to this a while ago, and we discussed possibly adding a mu-plugin that would enable appearance tools (as described in this comment) for specific classic themes (like an include-list of themes).

It would need to be tested on each theme so it didn't lead to unexpected behaviour as @beafialho mentions, but I think it's worth adding some logic for and testing it out. In general, I think the things to watch out for would include:

• Custom CSS bundled with the theme that may conflict with or override settings from appearance tools
• Custom settings built into the theme that may conflict with appearance tools

[matt-west]

Thanks @mikachan. Who would be best to follow up on that?

[mikachan]

I'm not sure about the work itself but I think @dsas would be best to ask for the next steps on this 🙇

[dsas]

I'm not sure about the approach of opting into appearanceTools as a whole. If we think it's risky enough that we need to test it on each theme before enabling it, then doesn't mean that we have to re-test each theme whenever GB puts more features under the appearanceTools umbrella? 🤔

This seems like it will be rather time consuming.

We have a sorted list of the most popular classic themes in MC (link in p1733936834115419-slack-C048CUFRGFQ) we should prioritise themes using that and accept that many themes either won't get appearanceTools or won't get tested.

Perhaps we can just say we'll do n themes/hours per week until we're happy with the number of themes with it tested and enabled. We can then decide whether to ignore the rest, or enable without testing, once we have a more informed feel for risk.

I think it should be prioritised alongside everything else Marvel works on ( 👋 @Copons)

[matt-west]

Thanks @dsas.

Do we have an understanding of how many users want this? It sounds like it will be a time consuming change, and perhaps those efforts are better spent elsewhere.

We could close this as a won’t fix for now. If it becomes more pressing, we can always re-open the issue.