Help beta test Hybrid version 0.6

Last time we had a major branch of the Hybrid theme ready for testing (version 0.5), everything was mostly done by the exclusive club members. Of course, everyone got to vote on some of the features.

This time, we’ve already had both exclusive and non-exclusive club members chipping in on the discussion and alpha testing version 0.6. Not everyone visits the community forums on a daily basis though, so I wanted to extend an open invitation to everyone to test the upcoming version of Hybrid.

What is beta testing?

Basically, a beta version of a WordPress theme means its nearing its time for release. It’s not quite ready for public consumption, and it’s likely to have a few bugs that need squashing.

A group of people come together and test it before the official release.

I should also note at this moment that beta testing should never be done on a live site. Well, it’s a kind of use-at-your-own-risk sort of thing. I only encourage the use of this in a testing environment.

What needs to be tested?

Well, we should be looking for anything that goes wrong with the theme. We should test all the pages, views, widgets, and anything else to see if they’re working as expected.

Here’s a short list of the major elements:

• Every theme setting needs to be checked on the front and back ends to make sure they’re working.
• Layout stylesheets (located in /library/css/) with blank child themes and major browsers.
• Testing of the separation of comments from trackbacks and pingbacks.
• Do all of the page templates work?
• Are widgets working properly (display, settings, etc.)?
• Looking for anything on every type of page view (archive, home, single, etc.).
• Make sure it doesn’t break child themes.

So, it’s a lot of boring stuff, right?

Well, to me it’s pretty exciting. It can be for you too. Here’s a list of reasons to be excited:

• Get to play around with some upcoming features.
• Input your ideas about the direction of the theme.

Okay, so that’s the only two reasons I could think of. This is a good time for your personal input. Although the theme is pretty much in a feature freeze for version 0.6, it’ll give you a chance to voice your opinions on versions beyond 0.6 as well.

Some notes

I want this to serve as a bit of a disclaimer, so no one is confused.

• You must be running version 2.8 (trunk) of WordPress.
• This is not an official theme release.
• This beta version of the theme is not supported in any way (it will be after testing).
• Please do not use this on a live site. It’s best to work in a test environment.

I want to reiterate that this version will not work on a version of WordPress prior to the development version of WordPress 2.8. It simply won’t work on a version earlier than this.

How to participate

I’ve opened a new thread in the community forums, so all members can join in on the discussion. You are free to leave comments on this post, but a forum environment serves this kind of thing a bit better than a blog post’s comment section.

• Download version 0.6 beta
• Discussion forum topic

The theme has been updated to Beta 2. It should fix a few of the major errors, so the testing phase should go a little smoother now.