No more Sponsored Themes.

Everyone who knows me through my blogs knows that i have a terrible weakness for new WordPress Themes. However, though the weakness is great, I do have a major dislike for themes that are created for a single purpose and that is to sell links in their footer bar. Most of these themes are rush jobs created without passion. It is like something that has been mass produced just to make money by selling links to sponsors.

About a week ago, Weblog Tools Collection, my main source of information for new WordPress themes announced to my utter pleasure that they will not be featuring Sponsored Themes anymore. It was good news as I have seen so many themes being bastardised and then passing on as their own being featured in Weblog Tools Collection. A slight change in the banner, a slight modification to the color codes, does that make the the theme theirs to call? I mean even I as a novice can do such modifications. The shameful thing is after that slight change, they credit themselves totally with the theme and proceed to sell links to sponsors.

After that announcements there were blogs and bloggers who designs themes and sells links in their themes arguing that Weblog Tools Collection’s decision won’t effect them too much as they still have many other avenues to have their themes published. However, I think sponsored themes will be a thing of the past within this few months. Today Lorelle posted that Matt Mullenweg has officially announced that all sponsored themes will be removed before the World Cup which will be 21st. of July. Lorelle also said in her post,

In theory, this means that all WordPress Themes listed on the WordPress Theme Viewer, the official source for WordPress Themes, and those in the Codex WordPress Theme List which contain sponsored links, will be removed by July 21, 2007, unless their authors remove them first.

Looks like days for sponsored themes are numbered though i feel they will not die out totally. They will definitely look for other avenues to list their themes, but these 4 major outlets have definitely caused a major stumbling block. Maybe now the plaigarizing of themes won’t be so rampant.