Last month, the big issue being discussed by the WordPress community and the blogosphere at large was that of sponsored themes. The concept of sponsored themes is not entirely new.–it has been used by designers to monetize their creations for some time now. The basic idea is this:

• The theme will include at least one link to a sponsor’s site, with some defined anchor text. This is for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.
• The more that a theme is used on WordPress blogs, the more backlinks the sponsor gets. So the more popular the theme author is, or the wider the distribution, then the better benefits the sponsor gets.

The benefits, as some would see it, are:

• WP theme creators get an incentive to create good designs that people will download and use.
• Companies, businesses or any other entity that needs search optimization can get (relatively) cheap SEO.
• WP users get great themes available for free download and use.

However, it’s not all a bed of roses. There are some who have spoken out against theme sponsorship, particularly from the Wordpress development community itself, namely Matt Mullenweg, who was one of those who took a stand against theme sponsorship. The people behind the WP theme viewer have also gone as far as ban users who have uploaded sponsored themes, and to ban sponsored themes outright from the viwer.

Their reason behind this is as follows:

• For them, theme sponsorship is spammy in nature, particularly in light of Google’s (at least some people within Google) being against paid links.
• They also reason that most of these sponsored themes are not really original, but just rehashed themes that have links inserted somewhere.

The arguments on both sides are valid, and I do think it’s good for healty discussion. For instance, those who are for theme sponsorship argue that the focus should be on quality, and not simply the business model itself. Some argue along the lines of distinguishing quality sponsored themes and spammy sponsored themes, much like how the great artists had patrons who helped them pay the bills (or something to that effect), while they created beautiful stuff. And then there is the fine print behind the sponsorship–some theme creators allow users to remove the sponsored links, while some do not. Some are even overt about the fact that their themes are sponsored (which is good), while some insert links covertly (which is bad).

Those who are against sponsorship, meanwhile, argue that it’s difficult to determine the good from the garbage, and hence better to keep out of the sponsorship game.

Thing is, some people on both sides of the argument tend to attack persons and personalities, rather than the issues themselves (a.k.a. ad hominem), which I think doesn’t help at all in clearing up things.

Given that the powers that be seem to have spoken, then there might be no changing their minds, at least not anytime soon. Sponsored themes (along with their uploaders) have been kicked out of the WP theme viewer, and the head honchos at Automattic are against sponsorship of things. So where to now?

We here at Free WordPress themes are not really explicitly siding with either camp. At least I can speak for myself. What we would like to focus on is making available to the WordPress community a good, useful, usable repository of quality WordPress themes, no matter what the business model, no mater who the creator.

We just have one request–and that is for authors (or users) who would upload sponsored themes here to declare that their theme is using such a model.

So it’s best to be transparent and not sneaky. In fact, I would like to disclose that the parent company of Free WordPress Themes has ventured into (high quality) sponsored themes itself. Here, I think it’s justified, since the creation of these themes is not inexpensive (if I have my numbers right). So sponsorship would make it lighter on our pockets, and makes the theme creators happy with the compensation they get for their effort.

Everyone is welcome here.