I’m not big on negativity, but that’s how I feel about it. I’ve expressed my displeasure with the WordPress.org plugin repository before, (it’s gotten slightly better since then) but now it’s time to gripe about the theme directory — and it sucks.
I’d like to post a few themes from Bustatheme.com to the directory, but I have a few issues as does nearly every other WordPress theme developer that offer premium WordPress themes for free. There’s a reason we all offer our themes from our own sites: We work hard and strain our brain of all its creative juices when producing AAA themes and we’d like to benefit from that hard work.
I’ll start with the WordPress mission statement as it is laid out on the the WordPress theme directory about page:
The goal of our themes directory isn’t to have every theme in the world, it’s to have the best. WordPress is Open Source, and all the themes we host here are Open Source. If you want your theme to be proprietary or promote things that violate WordPress’ license on your site, the directory probably isn’t the best home for your work.
There are a number of issues with that statement. Firstly:
The goal of our themes directory isn’t to have every theme in the world, it’s to have the best.
Failed. Let’s not leave out the obvious: Other than the very few exceptions, the themes available for download on WordPress.org are average at best. Most of them are poorly structured and offer very little in the way of progressive UI design.
Lastly, we have the ubiquitous “we’re open source” declaration:
WordPress is Open Source, and all the themes we host here are Open Source. If you want your theme to be proprietary or promote things that violate WordPress’ license on your site, the directory probably isn’t the best home for your work.
There are many that will argue that WordPress is free and we should be so generous as well. Automattic — the company behind WordPress — is not so philanthropic. Open-source just happens to be their business model. It benefits them to offer WordPress for free, and it further benefits them to offer plugins and themes on their site for free. For them to require the same of the people that add value to their product is selfish. If you provide a quality theme for free to WordPress users, you should be able to specify a few things. Which leads me to the gripes I have:
1) The first and most important gripe I have is that if I want to share my theme on wordpress.org I need to upload it to wordpress.org where it will subsequently be downloaded from wordpress.org by anyone who wants to use it — completely bypassing my site. There are legitimate reasons for this, but I’m not here to argue on their behalf. If I spend the time to make the theme, I’d like (the option to push) the traffic to my site. Whether I’m displaying ads or offering paid themes, most of the time a good designer makes a theme for free is so they can benefit from it in another way. A link back to the authors site just doesn’t cut it.
2) Let’s face it, most of the best themes for WordPress aren’t even themes that are meant to be used as blogs. They’re news sites, video sites, portfolios and sites that use WordPress as a general CMS. Forcing us to use the wordpress.org theme viewer with its strictly-for-blogs content is completely counter-productive if your goal is “to have the best”. Not giving us the option to provide a link to our own demo prevents us from displaying our themes as they are meant to be used.
For now if you want high quality themes, it’s off to Google, WP ZOOM, Smashing Magazine, Six Revisions, Blog Perfume, Bust A Theme or any number of hundreds of authors sites that offer great WordPress themes for free. Until wordpress.org changes a few things expect to find more of the same-old-same-old.
You know after working with wordpress for well over a year now on a multi clients ive grown used to producing my own custom template for each site thats been done, and aye sure if wanted to publish it, but if after publishing it on wordpress.org, then it gets lots of downloads, its the onslaught of emails asking for support for why this that and the other thing dosnt work, thats the only gripe i have with doing it, my only pleasure is knowing that ive created this custom website using a community driven piece of software thats open source then i know ive done a good job, if only the client can figure out how to follow instructions on how to post an article
thumbed.
loving the post to email greg
floated++
@marty
I remember trying to answer them all in the beginning. It’s impossible, and that’s with only 10,000 downloads. I can’t imagine 10x that number of requests. It does feel good to offer something for free and offering up useful things for free is something I frequently do (Skeleton CMS, PHPDL & Ad Crazy Layout for example) but when working in the industry is your business, you can only give away so much.
@Steven80
I forgot I even had that option installed on this site. It gets used a ton on Bust A Theme, but not here. Which reminds me, this site really needs a redesign…
I agree with you completely. Going to the themes repository is about exciting as theme developers who change the color of a layout and call it a new version. I think your work is fabulous and creative; I feel guilty because when someone ask me where did I get a theme from I point them right to the repository. Hey I had to learn the hard way so tuff luck, LOL
I’ve been emailing with Matt Mullenweg back and forth about this and he seems genuinely clueless as to how the community surrounding his creation even operates. He went so far as to accuse me of promoting a site that violated the GPL (bustatheme.com) – except all the themes I currently have on that site are GPL’d…
I took the time to listen to a 2 hour podcast he did In December and the clear message I got was that he’s completely out of touch with the WordPress community. WordPress as a platform has outgrown Matt in many ways. He seems to want to hold on to the idealism of Open Source and the stigma that comes with it, yet still maintain a dictatorial control over the community as defined by WordPress.org.
Rant over.
You could always license your themes with the new WordPress Premium GPLicense. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s what the old Revolution Two now StudioPress themes are licensed under. The managers at WordPress.org would give you a spot for your banner add at the bottom of the theme directory. This would give your premium themes access to millions of WordPress users who link directly to your site.
The best part of the new Premium GPLicense is that you really don’t have to honour the GPLicense. If anyone uses your themes you can take revenge on them, make public statements that people are exploiting your work, make other unnecessary comments. It’s a great new GPLicense for selected individuals and some WP theme makers.
I listened to that 2 hour interview also. I thought I heard Mr. Mullenweg say he wanted WordPress.org themes and plugins to be free, as in free to do what you want with the theme under the GPL and free as in price. I thought he went on to say if we start charging for themes and plugins, soon a WP user would have to pay for all themes and plugins. Maybe I didn’t hear right. I’m thinking now that I didn’t hear a lot of things right, when I listen to that interview. I’m not listening to the rhetoric again, so I’ll have to keep thinking that’s what I heard.
With this new license you could announce that all your themes will be FREE! As in no-pay-free. You’d get a lot of publicity. Then, maybe in a month or so, flip and charge for those themes, you just made available for free a month or so earlier. If you did this, you would fall under the new WordPress Premium GPLicense, fully supported by the folks at WordPress.org.
Remember what I said – You Don’t Have to Honuor this new WordPress GPLicense. If anyone does something with your themes, and yo don’t agree with them, you cam chastise them, you can even feel sad that they are using your themes for their own selfish reasons.
The theme developer I am referring uses the excuse that he was ignorant about the GPLicense when he decided to initially offer his themes free, as in no-pay-free. It appears that nothing has changed in his understanding of the GPLicense. He is fully supported by the managers at WordPress.org, so I suppose they to are ignorant about the original GPLicense and that’s why they have created this new WordPress GPLicense.
Greg-J: about these two comments… You’re right!
PS: We spell honour with a “u” in Canada:)
First off let me say that I don’t think I have seen cost free themes for WordPress that are nicer than yours. Really a fantastic job, I also agree that the WordPress.org selection of themes has much to be desired. Many are just rehashed retreads that are called new versions and most are not good for anything than the most basic of blogs.
I think Bill is right. I think that you should use the new license and get your themes up onto WP.org and don’t look back. Also while free as in no cost is great I personally would rather pay for something to A. get support and B. To simply get a superior product. The whole GPL thing I think has become very murky and even in the Joomla community which has much more pay plugins and extensions and all of the best themes are not “Free” there is much disagreemnet about all of this. The bottom line is that as a web designer/developer/entrepreneur I know that it is nearly impossible to create a site for free, at least one that is rich and fully functional. I know that somewhere I’ll have to spend some money, until I learn PHP that is. Cheers!
Navigating through that slog of a directory of themes is the biggest nightmare. Being an end-user who just wants a good blog theme (ie. not even concerned with all the same points you raise) upon which to base further tweaks, I still have to say that the wordpress directory of themes is just useless. At best.
(Honour, colour, humour… yup, all with a u!)