E.Share

A new premium WordPress plugin store launched the other day called PluginBuddy, the same people behind iThemes. Their latest plugin is called BackupBuddy which describes itself as an “all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration”.

You can check out my quick video tour below where I go through all the menus and take a (surprisingly) quick database backup of Theme Lab.

Features

• Backs up your entire WordPress install (including all files) or just the database
• Use the restore feature to quickly reinstall a previously made backup
• Migrate a full WordPress site to a new web host
• Backup scheduling, includes email and FTP options

The Giveaway + How to Enter

Cory Miller of PluginBuddy was kind enough to donate one single use license ($25 value) and one developer license ($150 value) for a couple of lucky Theme Lab readers.

To enter, we’ll use similar rules to our last giveaway.

• Tweet a link back to this post saying you just entered the contest to win a BackupBuddy license, along with @themelab (my Twitter username). If you need a short URL, use this: http://www.themelab.com/1671. For example: I just entered a contest at @themelab to win a copy of the BackupBuddy plugin – http://www.themelab.com/1671
• Post a comment here with the permalink of the tweet you just made. It should be in a similar format to this: http://twitter.com/themelab/status/10079435298
• That’s it!

Please, only one entry per person. If I catch you trying to cheat, you’ll be disqualified.

On Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 12:00 PM EST this content will be closed to new entries, and I’ll pick two winners at random.

You’ll be contacted through the e-mail address you leave in your comment, so please leave a valid email address, otherwise I’ll have to bother you on Twitter.

Conclusion

You should already know the importance of backing up your WordPress site, and while there are other free backup plugins on the market, nothing quite comes close to this one, plus it’s actively developed and supported.

If you’re not feeling lucky, you can go ahead and purchase BackupBuddy now. Otherwise, go ahead and make your tweet, and enter the contest below. Please only comment unless you’re entering the contest. Good luck!

Related posts:

1. WPShift Launches, Two ShiftNews Theme Licenses Up For Grabs
2. To WordPress Plugin Authors – Add Changelogs
3. WordPress Theme Tweaker Plugin Review

So for the past week I’ve been running a contest to win a free theme from WPShift in which there were two licenses up for grabs.

Only 12 people entered the contest so each person had about a 17% chance of winning, which is pretty good. And the winners are…

The Process (Video)

Some of you probably already saw this on my Twitter account, but I went over the process and selected the winners in the following Screenr video.

Basically I just used the Random.org Integer Generator and generated 2 random integers between 1 and 12.

The numbers correspond with the order in which the comments were made.

The Winners

Okay, if you don’t want to watch the less-than-two-minute video to find out who won, the winners are listed below.

• Danny G Smith – @dannygsmith
• Saad Bassi – @saadbassi

Congratulations to both for winning a single site license to the ShiftNews theme. And of course, thanks to everyone else for entering.

Conclusion

So, how do you all like contests? Would you be interested in other contests offering premium WordPress themes and plugins as prizes? What about a combination of things like the last contest here.

If anyone has any thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Related posts:

1. We Have Four Contest Winners
2. WPShift Launches, Two ShiftNews Theme Licenses Up For Grabs
3. Free Domain + Web Hosting + Premium Themes = ?

Update: This contest is now over and the winners have been announced.

For any of you who have been following the WPShout or followed either @AlexDenning or @epicalex (no relation) on Twitter, you’ve most likely heard of a new premium WordPress theme company launching soon called WPShift.

They launched a couple days ago with a theme called ShiftNews, normally priced at $59.95 for a single site license. Check out the screenshot below or click through for a live demo.

For two lucky Theme Lab readers, you could win a single site license to the ShiftNews theme absolutely free.

Watch the following video to get an idea of what this theme is all about, including features (like custom widget based layout control) and support.

Read on to find out how to enter the contest. It’s not that hard, I promise.

How To Enter

It’s pretty easy to enter, you just have to do every single one of the following things (or you’re disqualified):

• Make a blog post with a link back to this post
• Tweet a link to this page once per hour for a 24 hour period (bonus if you use multiple accounts).
• Same thing with Facebook status, MySpace bulletins, and FriendFeed, and five other social networking sites of your choice.
• Bookmark this page on Delicious, Digg, Mixx, Propeller, and six other social bookmarking sites of your choice
• Subscribe to the RSS feed via e-mail and get twenty or more of your friends to do the same.
• Fave this blog on Technorati, since Technorati is still relevant, and people care how many times a blog has been “faved” there.
• Pick a number between 1 and 1,000,000, jump through a flaming hoop, and then buy a ferret through my affiliate link.

Just kidding, don’t do any of that stuff. Well, actually you can do all of the above (except I don’t have a ferret affiliate link), but it won’t give you any advantage in the contest.

Seriously, this is how you really enter

• Tweet about this contest. You should include @wpshift, @themelab, and a link back to this page. If you want a short URL, use this: http://www.themelab.com/1470. For example: I just entered a contest at @themelab to win a theme from @WPShift. Details here: http://www.themelab.com/1470
• Post a comment below on this post with a link to your Twitter status. URL should be similar to this: http://twitter.com/themelab/status/8456081609
• That’s it

Also remember, there’s only one entry per person. If I catch you using multiple accounts, aliases, whatever, you’ll be disqualified.

On Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 12:00 PM EST this content will be closed to new entries, and I’ll pick two winners at random.

I’ll e-mail the winners, so make sure to leave a valid address when you make a comment. I could also try to contact you via Twitter if email fails, but yeah…just leave a valid email address. It’ll make things easier.

Conclusion

If you consider yourself unlucky, a black cat just crossed your path, and/or recently walked under a ladder, you could buy the theme now.

If you’re feeling lucky, go ahead and make your tweet, post your tweet link in the comments below, and hope you win. Good luck!

Related posts:

1. WPShift Contest Winners Announced
2. We Have Four Contest Winners
3. Just Interviewed on WPTavern

I came across a theme the other day called TweetPress, which bears a very obvious resemblance to the Twitter profile design. Let’s compare.

First, here’s a screenshot of the TweetPress theme:

And here’s a screenshot of my Twitter profile.

Not only is it a striking resemblance, it appears the cloudy background image was lifted directly from Twitter’s website, among other things. It’s the default background image set for new profiles.

Update: According to Gabriel Jones, creator of the TweetPress theme, “The [Twitter] API returns the background image, the link colors, everything…” in this comment.

Cloned WordPress themes aren’t exactly a new phenomena though…

Other Clone Themes

This blog post over at WPZOOM with 15 examples of WordPress clone themes shows a few more examples.

Some of the themes are clones of popular news sites, such as ESPN, and the New York Times. A theme review which I did here a while back called Red Carpet could have been considered a clone of People.com

Others are clones of popular social network sites like Digg, Facebook, and of course, Twitter.

Some are free, some are paid. Either way, I don’t like it one bit.

My Take

At best, they are overly inspired. At worst, it’s downright theft. I’m no lawyer, but I’d imagine that taking a custom design of another site would involve some serious copyright issues.

When you’re releasing the theme into the wild, selling it, and profiting off of it, you’ve probably opened a whole new can of worms.

Running Custom Theme, I have received several requests to make clones, replicas, whatever you want to call it, of other sites the potential client is not associated with.

I’m not talking about inspiration, I’m talking about requests to completely copy a site. I have refused every single job like that, and will continue to do so.

A while back, someone actually took my old blog design of Theme Lab, converted it to a Blogger theme (yuck) and released it under some Creative Commons license. This was almost an exact copy, images, styles and all, released without my knowledge or consent. I asked nicely (as in, no internet hounds involved) and the webmaster who released it removed it.

In another incident, someone released a theme (which I reviewed as a Theme Lab Look-alike Theme) which also took some obvious inspiration from Theme Lab, although I don’t believe any images or CSS was directly taken from my site.

Needless to say, in both instances I was pretty upset that it seemed people were taking advantage of my popular site design and using it to get more traffic, promote themselves, and ultimately profit off of my copyrighted designs.

Your Thoughts?

WPTavern had a great discussion titled “Themes that mimic copyrighted design,” started by Hafiz Rahman of WPlover. The consensus? It was generally a bad practice. Whether or not it was legal or not, or enforceable, remained up for debate.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on the issue. Here are a few questions to think about.

• Where do you draw the line between inspiration and design theft?
• How would you feel if someone copied your popular blog design, and then released the theme without your permission?
• What if they were profiting of your copyrighted work, through direct theme sales (if it’s through a paid theme) or ad and affiliate revenues?

Sound off in the comments.

Update: Hafiz Rahman (previously mentioned in the post) has published a response: Theme Developers, Learn to Steal the Right Way!

Related posts:

1. WordPress Weekend Resources – May 22, 2009
2. 10+ Most Creative Free WordPress Themes in 2009
3. PowerTheme Premium WordPress Themes

A number of you have asked me what happened to my “WordPress Weekend Resources” series since I haven’t posted one of those since September 2009. Basically what I would do is roundup some of the top WordPress-related links I found during the past week, and posted them on the blog with my take on it.

I stopped doing it, because I was posting most of these links on my Twitter account already. Although, for those of you who don’t use Twitter, or follow so many people you might miss one of my tweets, I created a new community links page.

This page is an automatically updated list of tweets from my @themelab account with either a #WordPress hashtag and/or a #tlcom hashtag. The “tlcom” stands for Theme Lab Community, by the way. Also, remember it only posts tweets with my Twitter account, so don’t try to spam the hashtags thinking it’s going to show up on that page, because it’s not.

It’s powered by Juitter, a jQuery plugin, which uses the Twitter Search API to pull my latest tweets with that criteria. Being powered by the Twitter Search API, I believe it only goes back seven days, so make sure you check it at least once a week.

With that said, I have a couple questions for you:

• Would you still be interested in WordPress Weekend Resources returning? Although you can get more real-time information through Twitter, it has a temporariness attached with it, as you can only go back 7 days or so with the search API. Blog posts would be more permanent, plus there would be more room for information in the descriptions.
• Would you be interested in a tutorial on how to make your own “Community Links” page template in WordPress? Although it wouldn’t have to be community links, pretty much anything that you can search on Twitter could be put on an automatically-updated page on your site.

Let me know in the comemnts, thanks!

Related posts:

1. GaMerZ Plugins Now Compatible With WordPress 2.5
2. WordPress Weekend Resources – June 6, 2008
3. Elegant Themes Releases New Theme Options Page

Believe it or not, there were actually some really great free themes released in 2009. You might not know it because a lot of theme roundup posts these days are riddled with affiliate links to paid themes.

This post will list some of the most creative themes I’ve seen produced in 2009. Note that I won’t be listing every single good looking theme, just ones that I’ve come across which I deem “creative” enough.

Photography / Gallery

AutoFocus – This theme is for photographers looking for a creative way to showcase their photos. There is a pretty unusual layout in which photos are displayed.

Viewport – Posts are presented on the homepage in graphic form with a small excerpt through a “viewport.” Users can click through to view the full content of the respective posts.

Gallery – This is a Thematic child theme designed by Chris Wallace. Be sure to check out my Gallery theme review for more information on this awesome theme.

Personal / Lifestream

Seven Five – Created by Jason Schuller of Press75, this theme is described as a “semi-automatic” lifestream theme which can integrate with services such as Twitter and Flickr to bring all your content together in one place.

Irresistible – This WooTheme could be considered a “lifestream” theme for a personal site. You can integrate your Flickr photos, Tweets, and recent blog posts all on one neatly organized homepage.

Unusual / Other

LiveTwit – This theme from Templatic lets you set up a Twitter microsite based on a search word or username. Comes with a few different color schemes.

Visiting Card – This Templatic theme is a great choice for non-bloggers who want to set up a quick mini site with contact information, including links to various social networking sites.

RS16 – Not only does this theme have a very artistic and creative design, this theme mostly makes the list because it’s primary page navigation consists entirely of icon-based links which is pretty unusual (and maybe because I’m a little biased).

Video / Multimedia

Selecta – This is a free video blogging theme released by Obox with six different color schemes. The video player is located at the top for main emphasis on your video content.

Smashing Multimedia – An amazing Smashing Magazine release designed especially for podcasters, photographers. With the theme you can easily embed videos and images, and allow users to rate them.

Magazine / Content-Heavy

Meta-Morphosis – This WooTheme has an interesting main index layout with room for lots of featured content and recent posts. There’s also a pretty sweet widgetized jQuery slider in the footer.

Magazeen – One of the few magazine themes you’ll see on this list. This one is very easy to read and fits lots of links to various bits of content from the homepage in an organized fashion.

Blue Rooster – This is a very cool free theme by Fearless Flyer web design. Included are a bunch of page templates which really separate this one from the pack.

Sources

I’ll spare you from the usual mile long list of free WordPress themes which you’ve probably already seen 50 times over.

Take a look at the following links instead. All of the themes above are probably on at least one of the following lists, plus a lot more quality themes to choose from.

• The Best Free WordPress Themes of 2009
• 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009
• 100 Premium Like But Free, Fresh Wordpress Themes: Year 2009

Also thanks to the following Twitter users who made suggestions to me: @ubeloved, @Enked, @_FearlessFlyer, @wpcanada, @bradleypotter

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter: @themelab

Rant

Those who follow me on Twitter know I was ranting about an article entitled The Most Creative 50 Wordpress Themes of 2009 yesterday. Not that I have a problem with creativity, WordPress themes, or list posts in general, as the post did have some creative WordPress themes in the form of a list.

My problem was every single theme listed was paid and every single link was an affiliate link. Now let’s get this straight, I have no problem with affiliate linking, I do it myself on occasion.

But when you’re publishing a post calling out the “most creative WordPress themes” and you completely exclude free themes, not only is it blatantly obvious your primary motivation for posting such a list derives purely from potential affiliate revenue, you’re also doing a huge disservice to your readers by not mentioning any of the excellent free themes available.

Okay. Rant over.

Conclusion

Unless I get a ton of Delicious saves, Diggs, retweets, and oodles of other traffic to this post (and subsequently get hooked on the cheap traffic), I probably won’t be posting another linkbait-style list post for a long while.

I know there are probably a lot of really creative free themes in 2009 which I have missed. If you have any personal favorites, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Weekend Resources – July 17, 2009
2. WordPress Weekend Resources – May 8, 2009
3. WordPress Weekend Resources: September 11, 2009

Blogwave is a free WordPress blog theme that I just released over at Custom Theme. It has four different color options including blue (pictured below), red, orange, and green.

This is just a clean, simple blog theme with no fancy options or features. I know it bears a striking resemblance to Slick Red (a free theme available here) because of the similar header gradients, layout structure, and color switching ability.

There are a few additional features available in Blogwave including WP125 support for 125×125 ad management. Just install the WP125 plugin and place the widget wherever you want in your sidebar. There’s also a widgetized 404 template and styles built-in for the WP-PageNavi plugin as well.

Head on over to Blogwave WordPress theme page to download. If you have any feedback leave a comment here or on the release post.

Related posts:

1. Spotlight Blog – Free WordPress Theme
2. Nature Blog – Free WordPress Theme
3. Make a Sitemap Page For Your WordPress Blog

So, you go to Google and type in a search for “WordPress themes.” You skip past the official WordPress theme directory because out of the 1,000+ themes hosted there, you couldn’t find one you liked.

So you move on to another site that has a great collection of free themes, you download one you like and install it on your site. It has 50 random irrelevant spam links in the footer, and you can’t edit them out because there’s weird encrypted code in footer.php, but who cares? It looks good so that’s all that matters. And chances are your visitors won’t ever scroll down that far anyway.

Using a theme with encrypted code would be a big mistake, and unfortunately most users using them don’t even know or care that the themes they’re using can open their entire blog or even server up to malicious attacks.

Unless you want to end up like Bart, I suggest you read on to find out:

• What types of sites to avoid when downloading themes
• How to spot encrypted code in a theme without manually checking
• How to decrypt code (if you really want to use a theme)
• A list of trusted sites to download themes from with confidence

Stay far away from sites like these

These are two main types of sites you should avoid while looking for any sort of WordPress theme to use on your blog.

• Torrent/warez sites
• Random sites you find in Google

Okay, torrent/warez sites are kind of a given. You should know better if you’re downloading themes from a site like that. It’s no secret downloads from those types of sites can be bundled with malware or other viruses, and WordPress themes are no exception.

Using a theme from a site they find on Google on the other hand, is probably a mistake a lot of people unknowingly make, and it can be a costly one if you don’t know what you’re doing. Take a look at this video just to demonstrate how Google’s top results for “WordPress themes” are dominated by shady sites that use encrypted code.

As you can see in the video, 4 out of 4 of the sites I checked did in fact have encrypted code somewhere in the theme, usually in the footer.php file, but it could be hidden anywhere (and do just as much damage too).

How to spot encrypted code

Remember, encrypted code can be hidden anywhere in your theme and it really doesn’t matter where. In order to efficiently check a theme for encrypted code, without manually checking each file, I highly recommend using the Theme Authenticity Checker. I’ve written about this before, but it really is an invaluable tool if you have a lot of themes and haven’t had time to check each one for encrypted code.

Basically what it does is automatically scan your themes for (potentially) malicious and unwanted code, including pretty much all of those code obfuscation techniques you saw in the video, plus all outgoing link information. This can save you a lot of time and from my tests, it is pretty effective in detecting that kind of junk. For more information you can also check out Jeff Chandler’s post on the exact same plugin (who was also nice enough to mention Theme Lab as a good source for free WordPress themes).

This would involve actually setting up a WordPress installation though, and like I said in the video you should really check out the themes before uploading. If you know how, it would probably be best to set it up on a local test site, and not a live production site.

How to decrypt code

Like I mentioned in the video, if you found a theme with encrypted code, it’s usually best to avoid it altogether. Maybe you can do some digging and find the same theme on the original author’s website (which I hope wouldn’t have encrypted code either).

However, sometimes you really want to use a theme, and can’t find any other option to get it from the source. It is possible to decrypt the code if you really need to. Take a look at this WordPress.org support forum post called Encrypted Theme? Here’s how to decode it.. In the post, Otto42 goes over ways to decrypt several types of encrypted code.

• For code that looks like $o=whatever: you can use this tool to decrypt it: http://ottodestruct.com/decoder.php
• For code that looks like $_F=__FILE__: you can use the following tool to decrypt it: http://www.tareeinternet.com/scripts/byterun.php
• For code that looks like eval(gzinflate(base64_decode('...')));: you can use the following tool to decrypt it: http://www.tareeinternet.com/scripts/decrypt.php

Now, I think I noticed some sites using multiple methods to encrypt their code, which might be a little more tricky. I would suggest decrypting each part one at a time and then putting all the pieces together if that’s the case.

A list of trusted theme sites

The following list of sites, you can rest assured you won’t be getting any encrypted code with their theme downloads.

• WordPress.org – Themes from WordPress.org have to pass a number of automated checks, including checks for encrypted code, before being uploaded. Before they go live, they are also moderated by a real human just to double check your theme is fully functional and free of dirty code.
• ThemeShaper – Although they had a little hack scare recently, I would still consider this a highly trusted site when it comes to WP themes. If still in doubt, you can always get Ian Stewart’s themes at WordPress.org.
• Theme Hybrid – A site from Justin Tadlock, and home of the Hybrid theme framework and a number of great child themes developed on top of that.
• StudioPress – A site from Brian Gardner and home of several well-designed paid WordPress themes. Since the majority of themes available from StudioPress are paid, be vary wary if you come across one of their themes available for free download on some other site.
• Premium Mod – A site which offers free modified versions of premium themes. Although I said you should be wary about downloading free themes that are normally paid, there are (very rare) exceptions to the rule. I have personally checked out all of Premium Mod’s theme releases and there is no encrypted code that I can find.

Obviously there are a ton more “trusted” sites, but I can’t list them all. Please do your research and make sure you’re getting themes from reputable sites and companies, if not from WordPress.org.

Conclusion

I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for a while now, but it really hit close to home when someone emailed me about a theme from Theme Lab which they encountered encrypted code in the footer.

I know this isn’t exactly new news, but I hope this brings more awareness to the issue that still is a big problem today. Most people lately are talking about the encrypted code problem with premium themes but I’d argue the problem is much more widespread when it comes to free themes.

Think about it for a sec, if someone downloads a paid theme from a torrent site, they are going completely out of their way to do so and have some experience using torrent clients, file sharing sites, etc. just to save a few bucks. They’re probably already aware of the risks involved when it comes to that sort of thing.

People searching for free themes in Google likely have a more “innocent” mindset and probably don’t even realize the mistake they’re making when they use themes from these random sites. Like someone mentioned on Twitter to me: Most users never read, only see download button. This is a sad fact that I’d unfortunately have to agree with. The only thing we can do is spread more awareness and educate users about the dangers of using themes from rogue sites.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Going to have to ask everyone in the comments to not mention the “GPL” whatsoever, because this has nothing to do with theme licensing or if a theme has a price tag or not. It has to do with scummy sites taking advantage of unsuspecting WordPress users.

Related posts:

1. Stop Complaining About Scrapers and Start Taking Advantage of Them
2. Elegant Themes Releases New Theme Options Page
3. 10+ Most Creative Free WordPress Themes in 2009

Last Friday in WP Chat I had the opportunity to chat with the owner of Premium Mod, a site which offers modified versions of commercial GPL themes for free. For more background information, be sure to check out this launch announcement post to get a better idea of what they offer.

We agreed to do an interview that was to be published here, which is below. In the interview we discuss the various feedback received as a result of launching the site, future plans for possible monetization and support, among other things.

Leland: How long have you been using WordPress, and what has been your involvement with the community thus far?

PM: I have been using since WordPress 1.5, which is a huge release at that time, and I stop keeping track how long ago was that. Before I started Premium Mod, I have released 2 free themes (still remained popular, with 10,000+ downloads) and started 3 WordPress-related websites with one of them selling Commercial GPL premium themes (two of these sites are sold).

Leland: Why did you launch Premium Mod? Was it to prove a point by “calling the GPL bluff” as some have called it? Are your intentions to provide value to the WP community? Explain more about this “movement” you’re trying to start.

PM: The reason I started Premium Mod is to start a movement – A movement for more people to produce high quality WordPress themes based on commercial GPL themes and make it available to public (in GPL license, of course) for free. I don’t want to prove anything and yes, it’s all about contributing to the community.

You see, a lot of people (web design newbies, freelancers, web design firms) are already actively modding commercial GPL themes, but they only kept it to themselves. The main reason they never release it to public is the fear of attack from the community. It does not take any extra effort to release it but only a little bit of courage. The ‘movement’ is about giving people the courage to do it. Because think about it, the community will only benefit from the release of modded commercial GPL themes. The one who will possibly ‘attack’ is the 1% of the community who are either premium theme authors or very good friend to the premium theme authors.

However, the sad thing is, these 1% are sitting on top of the WordPress community right now, and in a way ‘controlling’ the community. And after 3 days of launching Premium Mod, I proved myself right. These top 1% of WordPress community (with a few exceptions) almost never mention Premium Mod directly because they thought if they kept their mouth tight, the rest of 99% will never know.

Leland: How have you dealt with the negative feedback on Twitter, blog comments, and elsewhere? Some have suggested you’re “exploiting” businesses based on selling GPL themes. How do you respond to that?

PM: The negative feedback sure has been enormous. I have tried my best to respond to every single feedback on both Twitter and blog. And yes, ‘exploit’ is probably the harshest word I have received so far regarding Premium Mod and it is certainly not true. I can only tell them that the commercial GPL premium themes providers are aware of the GPL license and chose it without anyone forcing them. GPL is GPL, not PR/marketing stunt.

Leland: What kind of support and encouragement have you received as a result of launching Premium Mod and releasing modified commercial GPL themes?

PM: The only guy who supported us on the first day was Ian Stewart (@iandstewart). He tweeted our website directly and argued about GPL with Nathan Rice (for more than 10 tweets! which is cool). Then, Elpie (@elpie) also contacted us regarding keeping the original copyright notice intact in the source file to comply with GPL and helped us set it up correctly. Andrew Rickmann (@andrew_rickmann) proposed that we should include the footer credit to the original author (though not a requirement) and Jeffro (@wptavern) came up with a suggestion on the format. Then we implemented it, of course. Lastly, the moderator (Len from WPCanada.ca) of Weblog Tools Collection also permitted us to post our theme in their ‘New Themes Release’ forum because he is a ‘huge supporter of GPL’. All in all, the support and encouragement were great but sure far less than the critics and judgment (about the scale of 1:10).

Leland: So far you have only modded themes from WooThemes. Do you have plans to modify themes from other commercially supported GPL theme sites?

PM: Yes, because we are huge fans of WooThemes. And we do plan to modify themes from other commercial GPL theme sites. More to come (we try to release 1 theme per week).

Leland: Speaking of WooThemes, have you had any sort of correspondence with Adii or other WooThemes employees about Premium Mod? Any correspondence with other commercial theme authors? How have they responded (if at all)?

PM: I have sent an email to WooThemes about asking for their permissions to support our users if they sign up as WooThemes customers. So far, no response from WooThemes yet. I have not contacted any other commercial theme authors but briefly chatted with Brian Gardner. He seemed to be fine with supporting our users (if they sign up support with StudioPress), and actually, Brian is the one who came up with the idea.

Leland: Do you have any plans to monetize Premium Mod? Have you considered selling commercial theme modifications? As of now all the themes are available for free download.

PM: Everything from Premium Mod is free and will be free. In future, I might include advertisements and affiliate links. But right now, the focus is on the ‘movement’.

Leland: What happens when people come to you asking for support? Do you have plans to offer a support forum on your site? Would you rather strike up some sort of affiliate deal with WooThemes to forward them support customers? Do you think they’d be willing to support your modified versions of their themes?

PM: For now, there’s no support request yet. Once there are, the best solution is to foward these request back to the original premium theme sites (with the requirement of these users signing up with them). This will be a win-win solution for either party and I don’t think there are any reasons they reject this. If not, I will just have to put up a support forum on my site and support it on my best-effort basis.

Update: A quick update. I’ve just received response from WooThemes. Directly quoted as below:

“Unfortunately we cannot support WooThemes that have been modified by Premium Mod. We can only support themes that we have 100% developed ourselves in-house. I’m sure you can understand.”

Leland: You have private Whois on your domain name, no about page on your site, no real clue as to who you are. Why the secrecy?

PM: My original intention to the anonymity is to avoid any risk of legal complications until things cleared up. I will be revealing myself soon.

Conclusion

This interview was unedited aside from a couple fixed spelling errors and the added links. This GPL topic seems to be pretty controversial in the WP community so I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments.

What do you think of what Premium Mod is doing? Although their have been sites which have released modified versions of GPL themes for free, such as this one, this is the first site I’ve seen that’s sole purpose is to release modified commercial themes for free.

What do you think of releasing modified versions of paid GPL themes for free? What about unmodified versions of paid GPL themes for free? Remember, you can redistribute GPL themes if you want to, just as long as it stays open source.

Related posts:

1. PowerTheme Premium WordPress Themes
2. WP Gorilla – More Free Premium Themes?
3. Commercial Themes and the GPL

There has been some discussion recently on child theme inclusion in the official theme repository. Child themes are WordPress themes that latch onto a parent theme to do something a little extra, whether it be adding additional styles or functionality.

There are a lot of great child themes out there that do some amazing things on top of frameworks like Thematic and Hybrid, but unfortunately those who don’t look for themes anywhere but WordPress.org will probably never hear about them.

I made a site over at Themelets to list all of the child themes you won’t see on the official theme directory a while back, but nothing will beat the promotion of child themes than on the official WordPress website.

Great designers who support WordPress deserve to have their themes listed in the official theme directory. Not only is it a disservice to them, but also to WordPress users who miss out on these awesome themes, such as these free Thematic child themes from Cozmoslabs.

I think as long as the child themes are designed for parent themes already listed in the WordPress.org theme directory, there shouldn’t be any reason why they’re not included. Be sure to vote if you think they should be included.

Related posts:

1. Monochromatic – A Thematic Child Theme
2. Compact Child Themes – Black and White
3. Lighter – A Lightweight Child Theme