You know all those crappy WordPress themes that litter the web, the ones that just are in the way of the good ones you want to find in the WordPress Theme Viewer? Well, there is a good reason for the lack of more kickass WordPress themes: They take time to develop. Doing good design is not only hard work, it is most often expensive.
Blogging Pro’s David Peralty e-mailed me about the release of their second WordPress theme, titled InSense. While we don’t usually cover theme releases here at 901am, this one is a bit more interesting, and it’s not just because David sent me two e-mails about it.
You see, the theme comes with a sponsor link at the bottom, and the folks over at Blogging Pro, who are doing the actual release, aren’t shy about it. Lots of themes cram in affiliate links and whatnot in their themes, but few of them admit that they are trying to leech on unknowing users.
Financing theme development through sponsorships is a good idea, and when the sponsorship is in fact such a tiny little link at the bottom I feel it’s not too much to ask for having bloggers keep it. They don’t have to in this case though, which is fine.
The theme itself looks great overall. It needs a bit of tweaking around the categories though, the code for subcategories doesn’t end up where it should. That’s a common WordPress theme problem though, and I’m sure they’ll sort it out. Other than that it’s rounded corners, popular blue and orange colorsets and nice looking icons which is always a plus. It’s widget ready as well, which some might see as an advantage. I’m much more interested in the view option in the top right – you can make the blog wider if you’d like. Personally, I would use a bigger font for the actual content but that’s a matter of taste and nothing else.
InSense looks great. Check it out, and let us know what you think of sponsored theme releases like this one.
Originally posted on April 5, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
If the theme is released as GPL, then there isn’t an issue if a user wants to know off that sponsored link.
What a lot of authors are now releasing their themes with sponsors link under an Attribution license… does the sponsors link fall under attribution?
Seems like a great idea and a win-win for everyone.
Yah .. I’m pretty sure that I’m not a fan of that financing sponsor on the designer’s footer. It’s great to support the designer but, to support the people who supported the designer? That’s too far off-center in my books, regardless of how in- or ob- trusive the link might be.
I believe Chris Pearson has done this with a theme in the past.
I downloaded that theme somewhere. But now that I know there is a Sponsor link on it, I may just delete it, or take it off. Most likely delete the file. I’m stingy. I want my pagerank to myself.
Keeping you all informed, we have said in our full text that you can remove the sponsor link if you want as it is not included under our Creative Commons Attribution. :)
But this sponsorship link pays for the designer and coders time creating the theme, and I think most people would agree, this isn’t a common, simple, boring theme. :)
“Well, there is a good reason for the lack of more kickass WordPress themes: They take time to develop. Doing good design is not only hard work, it is most often expensive.”
Writing good software takes time, is hard work, and is even more “expensive” but our community seems to have created something pretty neat, and tons of people volunteer their time into making WordPress better every day.
It’s been a while, but I have to admit that I like the orignial blogging pro theme more. It need some tweeks, but the design to make search box stand out and the color scheme makes it still my favorite.