Advice needed - themes backend

[ksucpea]

Hello everyone - looking for some advice here :) hopefully someone reads this.

I have over 500 themes that need to be reviewed and added to better canvas.

This takes a lot of time... so I've been working on a backend for users to submit their themes and automatically upload it. This way I can just query the API and give back an up to date list of themes without me having to manually input each one. I'd also like to add the ability for users to like themes so that their popularity can be ranked.

The backend is mostly done, but I'm now having doubts about it over the legal stuff regarding data collection (especially concerning minors, since there's probably children as early as elementary school using better canvas). I'm not actually collecting any data besides the likes, but I need to give users a unique, anonymous ID so that people don't spam the backend with requests and it sounds to me that this could be a form of tracking.

I am thinking of 3 things to potentially do:

• Have users opt-in to the new system
• Have everyone automatically opt-in, send a notice, and give the ability to opt-out
• Forgo the backend and stop accepting theme submissions entirely

I don't really like any of these options, and I don't want to scare anyone and make them think I'm tracking them since that's not my intention. I also don't know if this is even considered tracking, since the ID cannot be traced back to someone.

Any advice on how to go about this would be appreciated! Thank you.

[AdoreJc]

Create an independent website and requiries login for theme submission and voting may be a good approach that is how other custom theme sites do. ex: SteamGridDB userstyles

[ksucpea]

Thanks for those examples - I took a look at userstyles and it prompted me to opt in upon installation so I think I'll do similar but inside the themes tab. Don't know if I'll make users have to login though, unless I really need to, since I want to make it easy to submit a theme.