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Sponsored themes are themes with bundled and embedded advertising in the theme that the theme author got paid for, often aimed at gaming search engine rankings. It is confusing users.
It's perfectly within people's rights to do this, but we should discourage WordPress.org resources to be used for these types of adware themes.
I explain these points in more detail in this essay, and I'd encourage you to read it before voting.
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Member
and, unless i'm missing something, shouldn't the status be set to "implemented"?
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Prominently labeling sponsored themes as such would be appropriate, but I don't think excluding them altogether is fair.
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sponsored themes Idea, definitely gives developer a better interest in making good themes for people to use. The theme viewer is an open place, and there are thousands of unsponsored themes out there as well, let the people decide wether they want to use sponsored theme or not.
Give me one good reason Why people should not be allowed to do that?
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I agree with marky, excluding sponsoring themes from WordPress.org is not good way
On Default installation WordPress.org we got some sponsoring blogroll too, such as:
* Alex
* Donncha
* Dougal
* Matt
* Michel
* Mike
* Ryan
We don't have any configuration, how to disable this blogroll list on installation ^_*
So, keep sponsoring themes on WordPress.org is good. :)
Member
I have made my case on my site, we are not in the fly-by-night theming for profit business, we actually provide a service, if y’all have any doubt, check the thousands of WP support questions we have answered on my site!
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I just deleted a comment with a personal attack and one from "CheapSEOServices" (I wish I was kidding). On his site he advertises "US$100 = We write the article and submit to 200 blogs. (68 ip's)" He voted this idea down.
ektz, we're not saying what people can use or not, they can do whatever they want, we're just choosing what we want to promote here on WordPress.org.
fitriarich, no one paid to be on the blogroll. People pay to embed ads in themes. You can also edit them through the interface without editing any files.
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I am in favour of banning sponsored themes for all the reasons you stated in your article, Matt. WordPress IS free and anyone making financial gain from your work is cheating, somehow.
I came up against a similar argument (and lost) which was almost the reverse of the current situation, when I was making themes for an app which shall remain nameless (its pretty much fallen into disuse anyway by most people)... many of us spent long hours beavering away at our themes which we released for free, and then the creator of the app bundled them with it as a selling point - without the themes, the app had no pizazz. Was he right to do this? I don't think so. And likewise I don't think anyone should be making money by stealth in the way described.
To the individual who objected to the default blogroll... why on earth should the people who created and who have put soo much into WordPress NOT be permitted to have their links there? geez!! Delete them if they don't fit your site... but don't complain about that, for heavens sake.
Member
Do you really think removing sponsored themes will benefit bloggers? This is not a sensible idea at all. Sponsored themes are generally much better quality themes as designers are motivated to deliver such quality to solicit sponsorship. Bloggers have every right to choose whether to use such sponsored themes. Let them decide! instead of you deciding what's better for them (obviously a wrong decision)
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