Theme Showcase: broken "Next theme" links when browsing premium themes

[lancewillett]

Quick summary

Theme Showcase: when navigating "Partner" themes, the “Next theme” links at the bottom of single theme showcase pages point to a retired theme “A Simpler Time”

This seems to happen for all "Partner" theme views, example URL: https://wordpress.com/theme/organic-stax?tab_filter=recommended&tier_filter=partner

Steps to reproduce

1. Logged out, visit the Themes Showcase at wordpress.com/themes

2. Click "Partner" from the view dropdown

3. Scroll down to Features section of the page (this is on a single theme view)

4. Click Next theme — and, op! — it’s a retired theme called "A Simpler Time"

What you expected to happen

I expected “Next theme” links to navigate me the “next” Partner theme in the current view — or in the collection of themes I was browsing — based on search or category.

What actually happened

I see the same retired theme each time: https://wordpress.com/theme/a-simpler-time

Impact

All

Available workarounds?

No but the platform is still usable

If the above answer is "Yes...", outline the workaround.

No response

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

No response

Logs or notes

Chrome latest, macOS Happens both logged out and logged-in CC @ianstewart for feedback on the bug report: anything I missed?

[jartes]

📌 REPRODUCTION RESULTS

• Tested on Calypso – Could Not Replicate

📌 FINDINGS/SCREENSHOTS/VIDEO I tried to replicate this on Chrome and Firefox, and when I click on the Next Theme button, I'm always redirected to the Alonso theme:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/94becf2a-fe0b-402b-9262-ba136eed3eaf

📌 ACTIONS

• Requested author feedback
• Closed as I could not replicate (please reopen if the issue reoccurs)

📌 Message to Author 👋🏻 @lancewillett Thanks for the detailed report! I'm not able to reproduce this issue. Are you still getting redirected to the a-simpler-time theme when clicking on the Next Theme button?

[ianstewart]

feedback on the bug report: anything I missed?

LGTM. The URL to a specific example theme was especially helpful as I also wasn't able to reproduce (proxied or unproxied) and that helped me confirm quickly when triple-checking.

Are you still getting redirected to the a-simpler-time theme when clicking on the Next Theme button?

Still happening consistently?

[BogdanUngureanu]

I've managed to reproduce it. This happens because the next theme is determined based on a search in the WPCOM themes. However, if the theme is not found, it returns the first result (in this case a retired theme).

I believe this is reproduced intermittently because the list of themes is cached. When the cache expires, it's regenerated (probably) in a different order.

Since the partner themes aren't part of Simple Site infrastructure, they are never found, so we don't know which theme is the next one.

[lancewillett]

@jartes I can't reproduce today likely because of the cache issue Bogdan mentions above. Let's keep it open — fix involves making sure Partner themes are returned in a next search from the WP.com Themes API.

[lsl]

There's discussion in paYJgx-5gH-p2

Traffic on this isn't worth fixing for, just remove the button.

[JulianBustamante]

@BogdanUngureanu Since the Theme details: Remove the Next theme button #93562 PR gets merged, I moved this issue to Done.