HeadsetOptions Web Design, SEO, WordPress, Etcetra

British Prime Minister’s #10 blog is apparently not honoring the copyright agreement of the theme developer, in spite of the Creative Commons licensing. Theme copyright infringements are a serious issue that many non-themers overlook, mostly because it conveniently services their purpose. The old theme viewer was plagued with this issue that eventually led to creation of a new admin monitored repository. With the growing popularity of WordPress, this issue left unaddressed will only lead to more such goof ups or worse, blatant rip-offs, which will eventually lead to a decline in free quality themes.

The theme version of the plugin directory is open at WordPress.org. The only catch is the theme needs to be exclusively GPL Compatible. Why is that an issue? When you have original work licensed under GPL, you no longer have creative control over how it can be used, simply put, anyone can download your work, add their links (own or paid) or malware code and distributed it without your consent. Do you really want that to happen? Isn’t that the reason why we shut the Theme Viewer in the first place?

A high level opinion poll concerning WordPress themes and its future is presented on Ian’s new site Theme Shaper. Highly recommended read for WordPress theme designers and enthusiasts alike. I have my 2 cents in there too!

Here’s another absolutely Free Magazine Style Theme! This theme is not only full functional, it’s also completely customizable, all without touching any code.

So what features come standard with this magazine WordPress theme
The theme includes all the cool functions we have come to expect from any paid premium theme, only now you can have it for free, here’s the short list:

Advance edit options allows users to edit the style without learning or knowing CSS. You can even change the header image without touching a line of code, all from the options page….

Why pay for a Magazine WordPress Theme when you can get one for free? Introducing The Box, the all-inclusive magazine style WordPress theme that has all the cool features of a premium theme straight out of “the box”. Best of all, it is absolutely Free!
Ola Hedin of Blyerts.com pointed out an IE 6 issue that was fixed on 05/06/2008 at 9:48 PM EST. Thanks Ola
The theme includes among other functions advance edit options, featured-regular post option, second level, conditional and dropdown menus, tabbed JavaScript interface, widget ready sidebars and is pre-styled for Google Adsense and coded to be search engine friendly (optimized).
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So we are not trying to wait it out or anything like that, we are just as sick of it as y’all are so let’s get this thing done and over with. Today will not go down in history as the day WordPress died; in fact it’s the opposite. In my opinion, WordPress is the best open source CMS out there, and can remain that way if we all took the chill pill and got our acts together.

Talking about acts, here’s a confession to add for your weekend gossip, Mark and I have lived a dual life for the past 4 months on WordPress both as designers and as the moderator of themes.wordpress.net, yes we were cleaning out the mess and doing the dirty job while Matt and Mark (Gosh) were busy smearing us with the tar of being the bad guys. But as Matt would thanklessly say, “no one asked us to do it”, we volunteered!

So why are we only coming out now? We do not seek attention, but this might be the best opportunity to bring to the attention of the WP communities some of the challenges we are facing today that must be addressed and could very well be prevented when Matt takes over the themes repository completely (as widely speculated) for whatever the reason. Think of this as the “Moderators” public service announcement. But before we go, I would like to clear the air and talk a little about why and how we got here in the first place.

Ok, most of the themes I use or develop have predecessors, which means someone took the time to put together a theme worthy of our fancy. I ensure that when I use their theme, for whatever purpose, that I leave a link to their site, in a way to thank them. Recently I have noticed that people who download the themes I have been releasing under GPL have the credits removed or worse, change it! That is not only un-cool, it is f*****up!

If you are a developer whose theme I have used, and if you notice a site that has my styling or modification and you don’t find your credit, let me know.

Note: the images I use are hot-linked.