One of the primary reasons I like WordPress so much is the almost endless supply of free plug-ins and themes. These free items can add great value to a blog and instantly give a novice blogger an extremely professional look with a simple download. While those of us that use these free items reap the rewards, what do the creators get in return?

I know from my own professional publishing experience that once your name is out there, someone will contact you with a question about what you wrote, what you developed, or the theme you designed. Point being, giving something away for free brings with it a certain amount of implied free support from the writer/developer/designer whether they want to give that support or not. So, focusing specifically on a WordPress theme designer for a moment, what does that individual gain by “giving away” their hard work?

Give Away a WordPress Theme and What Does the Designer Get in Return?

The obvious incentive for a theme designer to give away their creation is two fold: name recognition, and a link back to their personal web site (provided they inserted a “created by’ statement with a link in the footer.php, or similar, theme file).

Name recognition provides a tremendous value to a new designer that wants to build a reputation. Release enough high qualities themes into the general public and before you know it, people start to acknowledge your skills which may in turn lead to potential paying design jobs. In short, giving away some of your quality work is good inexpensive marketing.

A link back to the designer’s personal web site is another benefit to giving away a theme. Most theme designers already insert a “created by” line with a link back to their personal web site in the footer.php file. It’s this type of link insertion, however, that most people are referring to when they talk about the evils of sponsored themes. The idea is that if I can give myself credit in the footer, why not include other links in that footer.php file and sell that “link inclusion?” This way the designer gets “paid” to give away their design. This idea is not new, and most of us have seen it in some types of “free” software.

Most people don’t begrudge a theme designer from making money through sponsorship. If the sponsored link is clearly seen, and easily removed, then what’s the problem? If I’m in the market for a theme, and don’t like these inserted “ads”, then I can just look for a theme that doesn’t accept sponsorship. Unfortunately, that’s the real problem here. Not all sponsorship is easy to find. Some of these free themes take advantage of unsuspecting users by inserting hidden links, and making them hard to remove. And that, is “the big deal.”

Should Free WordPress Themes be Completely Free of Sponsors?

I believe most people agree secret link insertion is wrong. The practice is essentially “malware.” The ads are hidden and they’re hard to remove. People downloaded a theme thinking they were getting one thing, got another, and had no idea they got that other thing. But what if the sponsored links were clearly visible and easy to remove, is that wrong? What if the theme came with a pre-loaded sidebar graphic advertisement with a link back to the sponsor? It might say something like ‘This theme is made possible by Wonko Widgets: Wonko, we don’t just make widgets, we love them.” What about that type of sponsored theme, is that wrong? Some people might actually like that type of pre-loaded ad because it serves as an example of how and where to insert other ads.

Sponsored themes aren’t bad. Free things being free due to sponsorship is everywhere and has been around for a very long time. Free WordPress themes are not exempt from sponsorship because it goes against the “free” spirit of the WordPress community. Evil WordPress themes are those that insert hidden hard to remove links without informing the user. That practice is plain and simple malware and should NOT be confused with sponsorship. The two are NOT the same and we as a community of WordPress users should start to use the correct terminology when we discuss free theme etiquette.

Name Recognition: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Finally, I mentioned earlier “name recognition” as one of the benefits for giving away a WordPress theme, and I wanted to elaborate on the importance of giving credit where credit is due.

It’s my personal belief that when someone uses a free WordPress theme, the site owner give credit to the theme designer somewhere on the site. This is one of the main motivations for free theme development. Designers want, and deserve, some sort of name recognition for their hard work. Some people, however, might not want to have a constant footer credit on their site. That’s fair but at least give the designer some sort of credit. I propose one of the following three credit methods:

• Footer Credit: Standard method for theme designers to get credit is to insert a “WordPress theme designed by NAME HERE” tag-line in the footer. Create a link on “WordPress” back to WordPress.org (it’s also free and also deserves credit), and then create a link on the “NAME HERE” (obviously inserting the designer’s name instead) back to that individual’s personal web site.
• Ad Style Credit: Most blogs have some sort of advertising somewhere on their site. This style of credit would insert a similar graphic type advertisement that acknowledges that the theme was designed by NAME and is a link back to the designer’s personal web site. The theme designer is obviously responsible for supplying the graphic along with insertion instructions.
• Credit Post and Mentions in Future Posts: This style calls for a dedicated blog post mentioning that the theme at this site was designed by NAME and is available for free download at LOCATION. The NAME and LOCATION would both be links back to relevant web sites. Then, in future posts, where it makes sense, make mention of your site’s theme, it’s designer, and create relevant links where necessary.

I recommend using one or more of the above credit methods. At TechTraction, I use the footer method but have also given credit to Kaushal Sheth as my theme’s designer in previous posts where appropriate. Also, one final suggestion on this topic. If you have made significant changes to a theme, then by all means call attention to that in whatever credit method you use. Reason being that if you’ve butchered the original theme, as I have done here at TechTraction, the original designer might want to distance themselves a bit from your implementation of their theme (see the footer of this page for an example of what I mean).

Let’s Get it Right: Hidden Links are Bad, NOT Theme Sponsorship

Sometimes debates get started in the blog-o-sphere simply based on a misunderstanding. I think the words “sponsored theme” where incorrectly used in some of the posts I read and created unnecessary confusion. The real issue that the WordPress community as a whole agrees with is that hiding links in a free theme is unethical theme development. On the other hand, accepting sponsorship for a theme isn’t wrong provided the links are clearly visible and the guidelines for their inclusion is clearly spelled out by the theme’s designer. Above all, however, if you use a free theme, please give the designer credit in one of the previously mentioned ways. If you refuse to do so, then you are indirectly taking credit for someone else’s hard work.

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