The WordPress themes debate
WordPress themes have become a major discussion topic recently, where the main threads have been sponsored links (and sponsored themes), credit link requirements, licensing options and usage rights. I have been tempted to write several long posts about this, but as you may have seen I haven't got much work done in the last couple of weeks. I'm back in good health again now, and will return to work next week. But for now I only want to make a few things clear about my own WordPress themes.
Free to modify, no limitations or obligations!
I have not defined any license for my themes since they are completely free in all senses. If I would have to put a license, the themes would go under the GPL. But I have never seen any need for that.
Just as with my free website templates, my WordPress themes are completely free to use without any kind of limitation or obligation. I kindly ask you to keep the footer credits, since it is a good way of giving something back to me for the work i have done. But it is completely voluntary, you are free to make any changes you may want to including removing the credits - or replacing it with your own.
No sponsorship slot sales
I get 20-30 offers for theme sponsorships every week. It is usually advertising companies or SEO agencies that want to place sponsored links in my themes, in exchange for a good amount of money. But I keep on turning these offers down, every single one of them, since WordPress founder and developer Matt Mullenweg has asked me to. I am not providing any advertising space in my themes, and I don't have any "sponsored link slot" that I sell to the highest bidder.
However, I do have regular credits placed in the footer.php of each theme. While I kindly ask theme users to keep the design credits, it is no demand or obligation. As said, theme users are free to edit and modify the themes in any way they may want to. That is why I don't get too mad when someone rips off my themes and posts lightly modified versions with altered footer credits. As long as the themes can help someone, I'm happy about it.
The "making money" part
While the theme sponsorship offers are very good and honestly painful to turn down sometimes, I am still happy as long as I have the option of having regular design credits in the themes I design for WordPress. Most theme users keep the credits, which sends visitors to this site. Since I have the commercial templates store (through 4templates.com) and the 8 text link ads in the sidebar of my front page, I make money out of the work anyway. I will never get rich from giving away my work for free, but I am able to keep this site online and hopefully soon give the site a proper update and a very much needed re-design.
I am also accepting donations over PayPal (click here for donation link), and thanks to your generous support I can spend a few hours every day on helping template and theme users for free. I am also able to work for free with customization and implementation of templates for different charity projects, and for non-profit organisations - something that has given me a lot of inspiration in return. With the new design, I will launch a "Thank you!"-section in the sidebar and on a separate page of this site, where I post the names and links of the people who support my work with donations. You are a great help, and of course I appreciate it a lot!
The focus
Depending on the outcome of the WordPress theme debate, I may possibly step back from the theme world and put the main focus on the website templates again. I will still continue to build WordPress themes (I have three new themes ready for release right now!), but I may not be able to provide the same amount of time to support theme users. But I don't know about that yet, it depends on the outcome of the discussions and the expected new rules and boycotts of themes that have "improper" links in them. I am not going to sit around if people see me as a bad-guy, because I hate that feeling. But if common sense wins over the angry demands, I will be happy to continue to build public themes that I give away (and support) for free. More about that later…
For now, this site is the main priority. I have built more than 30 WordPress-based websites in the last 6 months, including Tjuvlyssnat.se, but I still haven't implemented sidebar widgets into my own site! I'm still stuck with the same hardcoded menus and boring design that I've had for almost a year now. But that will change. I know I've said it before, and I know you don't believe me when I say it again. But I'll do my best to surprise you. I'm back from a period of stress and bad health, and the summer is soon here. I hope it will help me get the work done…
Final words and shorties
We lost a loved one two days ago. It is not fair at all. It never is…
Huge blog post coming up: "The fifth Lagoona album". I've been writing on that post for two months now, it will be fun to publish once it is ready for it!
Current number of templates that are ready for release on this site: 7. All new designs, not modifications of old templates.
Comments
Comment from David
Time: April 14, 2007, 11:04 am
Hello Andeas, I like your state of mind about the no limitiations or obligations on your designs. Currently I'm trying to make one or two designs (for sNews) per month with a cc2.5 license. This license enabled me to have a place on the net and I think I will also, maybe soon, remove this license. I just don't like the guys that resell our free work…
I'm also affiliate with a company for commercial templates and this is helpful to pay our hosting. I bought a dedicated server now and this is about $900/year here…
I'm sorry for your dog. I also lost mine monday and this was hard for my little daughter.
I'm looking forward to see your next designs !! :)
Comment from Runa
Time: April 14, 2007, 1:28 pm
I really appreciate your "realease-policy", which is the same that created our common blog management system, word press.
This "open source" philosophy gives your themes and/or templates (…is there a difference?) a huge diffusion.
I'm proud to use an original Andreas Viklund template on my own blog.
Comment from Web Design UK
Time: April 15, 2007, 1:54 am
Very honourable that you release the templates this way. Does the possibility of unscrupulous parties reselling your work as their own concern you? I have a couple of templates for Wordpress and OSCommerce that I'm considering releasing, though this possibility is a little unnerving.
Comment from Thomas Internet Seo Marketing
Time: April 15, 2007, 12:38 pm
this is a great idea and all my respect for you work. i will check your templates definitelly out. keep the great work up.
thx Thomas
Comment from Gnome
Time: April 15, 2007, 7:39 pm
Nothing beats the freedom you offer the users to your templates.
Comment from Solomon
Time: April 16, 2007, 11:14 am
I wait new themes!
Comment from Shawn Ann
Time: April 16, 2007, 4:20 pm
I think the people who will be doing these sponsored themes will be losing downloads from people. Why in the world would anyone force others to put advertisement on their site that they aren't getting paid for? Just stupid! I'm always switching themes, almost on a monthly basis because I like a different look all the time, but if a majority of the themes that are going to be sponsored and I'm not getting paid for it, then I'll end up sticking with just a couple themes that are sponsor free.
Thank you very much for keeping your templates ad free :) and thank you for all your work on the themes :)
Comment from Andreas
Time: April 16, 2007, 5:30 pm
Thanks for the kind comments, I really appreciate it!
As said, I could write a whole lot about this, but I don't think it is worth spending too much time and energy on since it doesn't really affect me anyway. As much as I'd like to discuss the topic, there are much larger problems that should be discussed instead, such as the threats and attacks that WordPress theme designers get when people make the mistake of believing that the designer is the owner of a all the blogs that are published using his/her themes..
People get death threats for being kind and providing free themes to WordPress users, and if that is not a bigger problem than sponsored links then I don't know what is. Seriously.
I build templates to help people improve the quality of their websites, and to inspire them to learn more about HTML, CSS and web standards. And I've made a few WordPress theme ports of my templates since a lot of people have asked for it and since I know WordPress well enough to provide a few themes. While I make money from the popularity of my templates and themes, I wouldn't want people to believe that I'm providing WordPress themes only to abuse the WP popularity. That would be really sad…
But with that said, WP-Andreas01 became the third most downloaded theme from the official Theme Viewer - even though it had the sponsored link in it. I have got more than 20 times as many angry e-mails from people who are mad about me releasing WP-Andreas01 for free so that people could use it on controversial sites and blogs, than I have got negative comments about the sponsored link that the theme had before. Sponsored links may be annoying, but they are not the problem. The problem is the systematic and organized abuse of the WordPress popularity, and that is a much larger and completely different discussion…
But enough about this topic for now, I'll wait for the credit link misunderstanding discussion to wake up before I write anything more about this. Thank you for your support, everyone!
Comment from Tomek
Time: April 16, 2007, 6:26 pm
I really appreciate your "realease-policy", which is the same that created our common blog management system, word press. I fully agree with You Runa it's really great "policy" and i think it work's great in this matter.
btw. I use one of Your cool designs on my blog and i want to thank for it.
Greetings
Comment from Dan
Time: April 18, 2007, 1:23 pm
I looked for a clean WordPress blog-theme with a big header image and so i stumbled for a while ago upon your AndreasTheme. It's one of my absolut favorites and so I really appreciate your cc-philosophy! :-)
Keep on the good work. Best wishes!
Comment from פיצה
Time: April 18, 2007, 8:35 pm
Keep it up ! Don't give up to those tempting offers by all those SEO firms.
They are simply ruining the internet with all their various spams.
I love your themes. You rock Andreas !!!
Comment from Ben
Time: April 19, 2007, 4:18 am
Hi Andreas,
Please check out my website. I am using your template - I am an accountant and look what you've enabled me to create.
I have and will always give credit to you and your creativity very prominently on my website. You have learnt the secret - when we share we grow. May God bless you for the simpleness of your heart and for helping bring my dream come true. Thank You also for teaching me a valuable lesson in being steadfast in your beliefs no matter what.
Blessings
Comment from Greg
Time: April 20, 2007, 2:06 pm
I appreciate your openness with your designs. Your templates really helped me while I was (and am still) learning how to code. Although I only have released one template (which will soon become a wordpress theme), I maintain your view about themes and templates. I find it flattering if someone uses my design, even if they don't credit me.
Comment from Robbie
Time: April 22, 2007, 9:28 pm
Andreas, you are one of the people that inspired me to go into designing. You have my 100% support.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Comment from VirusHead
Time: April 23, 2007, 5:02 pm
Just wanted to let you know that your work is very widely appreciated. Maybe you could move from support to a Wiki with common questions, etc.
Sympathies for your loss, too. Hugz.
Comment from Ajay
Time: April 14, 2007, 9:37 am
This is why we love and continue to use your templates