Automattic Releases WordPress.com Theme Guidelines

Automattic wants you to have the best possible experience on WordPress.com, and to ensure that, all of the available themes go through a rigorous series of tests. Each theme is carefully scrutinized by at least two, if not four, of Automattic’s Theme Team focussing on code quality, usability, and potential theme-specific anomalies. The result is a theme that “just works” out of the box, with no annoying bugs or usability quirks. Traditionally, things like this have been closely guarded secrets, but Automattic has publicly released their theme guidelines so anyone can benefit from them. These guidelines, are not a requirement if you want to just develop a theme for WordPress in general, but they are still some great coding practices worth following if you want your theme to “just work” too.