April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

themes

WordPress themes and other things

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I’ve been lax on my political blogging, though much of what I’m reading makes you wonder if the human race has jumped the shark.

What I have been doing is building WordPress themes Serenity was my first one. I had thought about calling it “it’s my first day”(Simpsons fans will get that)

The second and third are a wide and narrow version of the same theme. It’s called Dark Room (920px version here)

I’ve also built a theme for a contest so can’t show it here. Probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.

I’ve also been doing a lot of living in the land of plugins both WordPress and Firefox. Plugin developers are truly unsung heroes of the web.

I think I’m going to work on a theme for Canadian political blogging next. Anyone have any ideas they would like to see incorporated into something like that?

WordPress themes..Or, Oh NO not another sponsorship scandal!

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wordpress logoIn the past few months, a proliferation of “sponsored” themes has arisen. This seemed to me out of keeping with the open source intent of WordPress, and I wouldn’t download one out of principal even if there was one I thought worth it. (which most aren’t)

At the very least though, most of these themes require little editing to take out the “sponsorship”.

While reading the WordPress forums, I saw this thread wherein a poster finds an unintelligible code in his theme footer.

Turns out this code allows the theme “sponsor” to track stats on YOUR blog. This is an invasion of your blog privacy as well as a potential security risk.

For some time there has been discussion as to whether or not these types of themes should be allowed on the “official” theme site. Hopefully, this will put a higher priority on the subject and it will be ruled that they are not to be hosted at the ThemeViewer site

For more detailed information, read here.

Remember to check your theme files!

Here are some of the themes involved

http://themes.wordpress.net/other/right-sidebar/3954/mobilemagic-10/


http://themes.wordpress.net/other/widget-ready/4090/portable-magic-10/

http://themes.wordpress.net/other/widget-ready/4057/classical-1-10/