So, how many designers of themes embark on their fine work entirely altruistically? Not many. I did a couple of themes a couple of years ago, leaving them on my web development site, and they still contribute significantly to the PR of the front page. This allows the sale of text links and is a nice little earner month by month. Theme designers do it for the exposure, direct or indirect, the vanity, ultimately the cash, (as well as that warm feeling inside of having put something back).
So it’s a issue that’s always been with us - the discussion is of sponsored themes and the practice of pre-placing links, static/dynamic, visible/invisible to humans in return for hard cash.
The “where does one draw the line” arguments.
Text Link Ads have a whole business built on a parallel practice, to little public alarm, perhaps an example of the inevitable “if you’ve got a well-designed web presence it all looks better”. I note they have just introduced sponsored links for some individual posts.
Is the assumption that sponsored themes lead to an increase in the rubbish out there, strictly accurate? - the quality of coding appears to be slightly higher, if anything…
It is always possible to take a free theme and strip out anything you don’t fancy… The converse, taking someone’s theme and rebranding as your own is far far worse, but attracts less discussion because there ain’t nothing to be done about it…
Weblogtoolscollection have made the decision not act as the police, or indeed magistrates, for the community - they say that they will permit sponsored themes to be promulgated on the site, but not given any priority and dropped in the case of any severe infraction. The talk is of “a nasty taste in the mouth”, presumably left by the naked capitalism of sponsorship left standing so close to the OpenSource ethic.
I would disagree slightly. If you do consider the situation is on fire, then fire has to be fought with fire. A certain large corporation, that started off as a search engine, drops sites with or without reason, and certainly without a second thought, on the “it’s my site and I’ll have who I want to” principle. Courage in your convictions, even balanced against the concept of free speech and distribution.
The guiding principle has to be protection - some are not as php-literate as others, and less well-placed to go through the code for anything nasty in the front/back door variety. There are certainly some simple exploits available, which I wouldn’t propose to describe in greater detail here. If you do come across anything you think dubious, announce it - but give the right of reply.
The future? Who knows, maybe a codecheck for wordpress themes - the successful bearing a seal of approval - but I’m not sure the situation has reached that stage yet…
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