WordPress Themes by WP Diva

I PERSONALLY think that if I were to use a sponsored theme (and I never will) that this “sponsor” should pay ME to have his link there since he’s getting all his linky love off my site. But that’s just me. (Jenny)

With a response by Thomas:

Then Jenny you should pay the designer for the theme you are using expect for (semi-)professional bloggers no one wants to pay for the themes he uses. (Thomas)

Thomas makes a valid point. It seems that the people who want something for nothing are the ones who ultimately forget or don’t fully understand what goes into the production of a single, quality WordPress theme.

Creating a good theme can be an hours long project; themes simply don’t spring to life out of thin air.

• Layout planning
• Color and font selection
• Graphic creation and, in some cases, stock image purchase
• Slicing, dicing, and coding
• Testing and tweaking
• Supporting the finished product

Often, the designers do it for the sheer enjoyment of designing a nice theme, but the hours spent creating that free to use theme are hours that aren’t spent on a paying project. Sure, the theme designer could slap up a donation button, but the fact is that people rarely donate, even when the button is in their face; the amount of donations a theme designer may receive in a year probably wouldn’t even cover an hour spent on the theme production and support.

Not all theme designers are in a position where someone else supports them — providing shelter, buying groceries, and paying the bills. In other words, some theme designers are only able to produce the free themes if it is part of their overall livelihood. Adding a sponsored link is a way to curtail the financial obligations associated with producing the theme. In essence, the link becomes a non-monetary donation from the end user to the theme designer.

With all of that said, there definitely does need to be some basic ethical standards for sponsored themes to make it a win-win-win situation all around. Continue reading »

Technorati Profile

For all of you would be theme designers, or if you just want to get your feet wet with one of my templates as a starting point, I present you with the Ultimate Diva Sandbox theme.

Basically, it’s a sandbox theme. It contains all the elements necessary to design a WordPress theme, however, the style.css file (though it contains all the CSS selectors) is completely devoid of styling.

The theme is, of course, free to download, use and modify as you see fit (please don’t redistribute it or post it elsewhere for download). The theme still falls under the terms of the theme use, however, the links in the footer aren’t required (this only applies to the Ultimate Diva Sandbox theme), though I’d appreciate it if you left them intact.

I’m making this theme available for download because some people like my code layout, but don’t want to create a theme themselves from scratch and have an issue with the terms of theme use for my other themes — UDS is a happy medium.

It’s basically a way for you to code your own theme, you just need to provide your own graphics and styling rules.

Preview » Ultimate Diva Sandbox
Download » Ultimate Diva Sandbox 1.0.0

Technorati Tags: free wordpress theme, sandbox theme, ultimate diva sandbox, wpdiva

It’s been brought to my attention that my theme use isn’t entirely clear and that is my own fault.

There’s nothing wrong with a theme author requiring a link for use of a theme — a lot of work goes into developing a theme and they can choose whether they release the theme absolutely free, free as in beer, or with more stipulations. It’s a personal choice. Continue reading »

After some tweaking and playing, the theme playground is now online. In the playground, you can preview each of the themes, click on links, leave comments and just see how the theme works on a blog.

I’ll be spending some time this week updating each individual blog entry with a link to its preview.

Now that the August theme set has been completed and uploaded to the site for download, the next task is installing a demo playground for previewing the themes. It’s on the to do list and should be completed sometime within the next week.