The Problems with the WordPress Theme Ecosphere
WordPress
Much of this post applies to all CMSs (Content Management Systems) and blog platforms but I’ll be talking about WordPress as that is what I have been dealing about the last few days.
I’ve spent a lot of time searching for themes lately. Not just for this blog but for projects as well. I’ve also spent time talking to folks who are in search of themes and hitting the same issues I am.
This is what I’ve discovered while searching for WordPress themes:
The WordPress theme repository sucks ass.
It’s full to the brim with out of date themes that in some cases, haven’t been updated by the theme author in 16 months. It’s also full of themes that are essentially the same theme that have had few of the colors swapped in the CSS and been given a new header. Why is this? Why is there no apparent quality control beyond the exclusion of themes with encoded and embedded advertising links (sponsored themes)?
Searching for themes outside of the repository is near pointless unless you want to either pay for a “professional” theme, get a freebie functionally retarded version of a “pro” theme or get a freebie infected and designed to allow you blog to be hacked theme. Either that or you get themes that the designers were too embarrassed to include in the WordPress theme repository.
95 percent of theme creators are cloners.
Either lazy or they just create bog standard, shite themes so that they can drive traffic to there sites and annoy the piss out of people who are searching for usable themes. Why bother creating a theme that is a literal clone of all your “other” themes other wise. When two separate themes are so similar that they would probably both validate on the same hash check you should know that you are doing something wrong!
What is the point dear theme cloners (I won’t call you designers – that’s reserved for the 5 percent that pump out quality, usable work) of rereleasing the same theme over and over again? Or even worse, what is the point of spending ages crafting a beautiful theme, releasing it, and not maintaining it?
I’ve seen some gorgeous themes out there that have never made it beyond the initial release. They are useful, perhaps, to people like me who hate to reinvent the wheel and love to use existing themes a kick off point to build upon, but to the average, not much if any coding experience, HTML or PHP scares them more than meeting Michael Myers in a dark alley, end user?
If you’re not going to maintain it, don’t release it!
I love WordPress. I love open source. I love that we have the freedom to build, to build upon, to fork and release pretty much anything we damn well like.
I hate that by having no quality control, by being simply lazy or unscrupulous we are damaging the user experience for new users and utterly frustrating the crap out of experienced users.
I never have bothered with the themes. I modified the default “Kubrick” theme to fit my website’s overall look and color scheme, and I haven’t significantly altered it since. I guess I should feel worse about that than I do.
I wouldn’t feel bad about it at all! I always use themes as the starting point to create what I want. Much like I am doing with this one, which will eventually end up the way “I” want it.
Doing what you have done is part of why themes exist.
I totally understand how you feel Paul. I am often on the hunt for themes and waste more time than anything else. Even though I have pretty much done my own designs for my main two sites I’ve often felt (and wished I could set one up) there is room for a ‘high’ integrity WP theme site. I’ve got more than a few ideas of the whole thing but it really is too big of a project – in order to do it right – for one person.
I wouldn’t feel bad about it at all! I always use themes as the starting point to create what I want. Much like I am doing with this one, which will eventually end up the way “I” want it.
Doing what you have done is part of why themes exist.