One great thing with most WordPress theme browsers out there is that you can view an active demo of a theme even without first downloading it. That means it’s an actual blog running an actual WordPress installation. It has actual posts, links, images, and various static pages, for you to see how that theme would look like once you upload it onto your server. This sure saves a lot of time and effort (and frustration?).

Here at FreeWordPressThemes, that feature is available, and you can preview some of the themes by clicking on the “Vew Demo” link, where applicable. I say “some” and “where applicable” because not every theme is available for live demo. We have to manually activate each theme before they can be previewed on our demo site. It’s not really “manual” in that we install the theme files ourselves. It’s just a one-click process for the site admins. But it’s manual in that a theme won’t be available for demo unless we say so.

We originally thought of having each theme uploaded automatically available for preview. That way, we won’t have to go through manual activation everytime we want something up on the preview site. However, there are downsides to this. I can think of a number, but here are some on the top of my list.

• Security. Remember the security concern with some themes that was a big issue a while back? If each theme were automatically activated for live preview, we could be leaving our servers open to possible attacks, should a malicious coder upload a theme with potentially damaging code.
• Quality of service. The site currently has hundreds of themes, and dozens more are being uploaded every day. If all of these are activated automatically, our WordPress installation would get tons of theme folders under its /wp-content/themes folder, so I’m not sure if the theme switcher plugin can handle that. Also, it might be tedious to manually weed out themes that are not exactly up to par with our expectations.
• Commercial themes/spam. One thing we do after activating themes for preview is to check whether the theme has any overt or covert sponsorship link. And we do remove them. After all, the demo blog is just for preview purposes. Let’s face it–while we’re not exactly against theme sponsorship and themes with paid links, we’re concerned that the site might be spammed by theme uploaders whose only desire is to get backlinks from the site.

So basically, we’re after the best balance of quality of service and security. I know it sure is better for users to have the ability to preview everything, but from a point of view of someone administrating a site, that could be a nightmare.

If you’ve uploaded your themes, and you would like these to be available for preview, you can always send us a message asking so. You may do this via our contact page or by sending us email directly at info (at) freewordpressthemes.com.