Don’t Get Forced Into Displaying Sponsored Links On Your Blog
Not too much going on right now, just changing my WordPress theme again. No surprise right? My friend Mr Javo even created a poll asking people about that. So anyway, I found one that I like, but I discovered that the designer of the theme stuffed a few sponsored links in the footer. Nothing new, no big deal… been faced with this situation many times. Solution = remove the links from the footer, continue using theme, and discount any respect you had for the designer due to their shady practices.
So anyway, maybe I have been too busy doing other things, because NOW the process of removing spammy, gambling, pornographic, crappy links have become more difficult. It seems that people, such as the folks over at WordPress Theme Base, now use special encryption software, which I am sure is an excellent deterrent, to prevent users from removing their sponsored links in the footer.
In my opinion, this is wrong, and it should be stopped. I would honestly much rather pay for a WordPress theme than be forced to display machine readable 3rd party links on my blog. I believe that if a WordPress theme is going to be made for the purpose of being distributed to the community for free, then it needs to remain free without being tainted with links that can cause harm to the end user’s blog. Just so that you know, 3rd party links being displayed on your blog like this can get your blog banned in search engines.
With that said, the current theme is a MODIFIED version of Webby Blue Theme. I have made the width of the theme wider so that I can post 640px wide videos in my posts. Oh, I also made some changes to the footer as well. If you would like to learn how to remove the sponsored links on this theme, check out these two pages. (#1, #2) These two pages will show you how to decode base64, which is the encryption being used to stuff sponsored links into many free WordPress themes in circulation. When you’re choosing a theme for you blog, load the demo page, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check to see if the designer stuffed links there. If they did, then you should probably choose another theme.
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9 comments
Certainly, there shouldn't be looks that can hurt your site. But, if you are using free themes you should expect a link to give them credit. Are you saying the theme had affiliate links or paid links? That wouldn't be cool.
I don't think credit links to the designer should be removed. The theme had paid links. In fact, I don't think the designer actually put his own link in the footer. The paid links were more important.
It could be but I think much better if not to remove it. well, that's only my own opinion.
So you're saying that it's ok to display links to porn sites from your blog just because the designer of the theme put them there?
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I agree not to remove its important to display.
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If the link is the WP designer homepage link, I don't think we should remove it, as it's the sign of our thankful to him/her for his theme but if it's porn of gambling link then we must remove it or pick another theme. But Garry for how long you're going to use this theme?
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Thanks for the heads up. My site is created in Wordpress and I appreciate this info!
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