Wp-calypso: Theme Showcase: Twenty Twenty Homepage Layout not set as homepage on theme switch

[ianstewart]

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a new site on WP.com
2. Navigate to theme showcase
3. Switch theme to a recent theme like Barnsbury, view the homepage and note that it looks like the theme demo, because it's using the homepage layout template
4. Switch theme to Twenty Twenty, view the homepage and note that it doesn't look like the theme demo

What I expected

Given that Twenty Twenty has a homepage layout template I expected theme switch + homepage template behaviour to match all the other recent, recommended themes.

cc @vindl @apeatling

[apeatling]

/cc @obenland If you could give some quick directions on what needs to be done for this one.

[obenland]

It needs the 'auto-loading-homepage' tag added to its style.css file

[apeatling]

Ah, this can't happen because it's a core theme.

[Addison-Stavlo]

Hrm, do we need to remove it from Recommended Themes (or at least change how it is put on there?) ??

I goofed up, I thought this theme wrote its homepage template over what I had on Friday when I tested it out. Because of this, I said it was ok for @allancole to add the auto-loading-homepage tag so it shows up in searches for this feature. I take it we should remove this tag... but will we still want this showing up under "Recommended Themes" if it doesn't exhibit that behavior? 🤔

[allancole]

Drats, should I go ahead and remove the auto-loading-homepage tag from the post, and then we can wait on another solution to get it included in Recommended Themes?

[obenland]

We could also add a _sigh_ exception to the way we determine an eligible theme

[iamtakashi]

It needs the 'auto-loading-homepage' tag added to its style.css file

Ah, this can't happen because it's a core theme.

We have WP.com specific tags in core themes until Twenty Sixteen. It looks like we've stopped adding those from Twenty Seventeen. Was it because it makes syncing difficult? Would it be that bad to have the tag in the stylesheet?

[vindl]

We could also add a sigh exception to the way we determine an eligible theme.

Agreed. If we can't add a tag to the theme, we could add a whitelist check in addition to auto-loading-homepage tag.

[obenland]

I'd prefer adding the tag fwiw. It shouldn't be a merging nuisance since these tags generally don't change for core themes.

[noahtallen]

Where could I go about adding a tag?

[noahtallen]

Is it just modifying the file in svn under wp-content/themes/pub/twentytwenty, or is the source somewhere else?

Another note that adding the tag wouldn't work on self-hosted (and likely Atomic).

[Addison-Stavlo]

From what I have gathered from @allancole, it sounds like in order to get (and keep) this functionality working we will need to re-add the auto-loading-homepage tag to the stylesheet every time WP gets an update on Dotcom. Which could become a bit painful to maintain over time.

My questions at this point are:
Is this something we would want to commit to doing?
If not, would we still want this theme to appear in Recommended Themes section without that functionality?
Are there any other thoughts on where we want to go with this?

[obenland]

I'd love to learn more about how Twenty Twenty gets updated on dotcom. Based on r54887-wpcom-themes I'm not sure why we'd have to re-add it every time.

[ianstewart]

cc @allancole and @danieldudzic

[danieldudzic]

Hey @obenland,

Here's the doc outlining the dotcom update process: PNEWy-cvG-p2