» Why do so many wordpress themes tank? Inventors Viewpoint: making your ideas real….

Posted in October 13th, 2008

Gosh, it seems there are a ton of new wordpress themes, many incredibly cool to look at… at least initially. And then sure enough, testing across screen resolutions, browsers, and different functions they crash. Then add in, it seems more and more folks are encrypting parts of the themes. I really detest encryption, unless i know what the purpose is. The last thing i need is some type of embedded nasty in a theme. Thus, when I encounter such, I almost always decrypt, or at a minimum, fire up in a debugger and monitor whats going on. Usually, the encryption is to some type of back link generator. I was wondering why on earth someone would make a theme so poorly, and then put their name on it…. Talk about a disincentive to do business or link to them.

Well, I read something tonight, and now it makes sense….

Last week I suggested you create wordpress themes and release them for free with your link in the footer, the majority response was that not a lot of us can design and code wordpress themes, nor have the time to learn. A good alternative is to sponsor themes other people have created, another plus of this is that they will be promoting their theme, which essentially equals free promotion for you.

Apparently a lot of folks who are in a bit over there head are releasing wordpress themes! The thing is… graphics wise, many of those themes are top notch. Some incredibly beautiful layouts… just the underlying code is terrible. Considering how many times I’ve run across this in the past few months, I’m almost thinking I should add a wordpress theme fixer service to the web dev side of my business. Of course the problem is… just like the plumber with leaking pipes, I need to do a bunch of web cleanup of my own before I start trying to market said services to others. Might be time to put an edge on my own saw again.

4 users commented in " Why do so many wordpress themes tank? "

Danny Cooper said,

in October 14th, 2008 at 2:16

Hey that’s one long piece of anchor text! Thanks for the link non-the-less.

Danny Cooper said,

in October 14th, 2008 at 5:03

Do you mind having a look over my theme to see if their is anything that stands out as a major flaw? I would love to increase load times.

Ron Amundson said,

in October 15th, 2008 at 18:51

Wowzers… I will edit that anchor text. Apparently I got interrupted on blog desk, and it took the whole paragraph.

Ron Amundson said,

in October 15th, 2008 at 18:55

Sure can.. I did a brief look yesterday, and noticed some of your ads have incredibly large graphic sizes. That could impact load time quite a bit, almost to the point of making dial up on an older machine problematic. Otoh, for your audience, I would guess the vast majority of users are on broadband, and have fast machines, ie gzip image decompression works pretty well.

I’ll send you a pdf of what all I found within the next 12 hours or so. Its minor stuff, the problem being each adds up a little bit, although again for your audience, it may be a non issue. Very artfully done site, with solid code underneath, i like it.