WordPress theme designers are a talented lot, and luckily for us many of them put their work out for the general public to use at no or little cost.

I’ve been messing around with the fruit of these people’s efforts for four years now, and while I truly appreciate the tremendous effort that goes into designing a theme, I have some nits to pick with a few designers. So, here is my list of grievances. On the bright side, it’s short.

Bad or incomplete code. Download the zip and they’ve left out a page like comments.php, or totally disregarded the laws of browser physics and tried to layer seventeen backgrounds because they think it looks good. Just because one browser can pull it off doesn’t mean the others can as well.

Hubris. Designers who put their name in 20 different places in the theme, and when you try to remove one instance your entire site goes down until you delete the thing in cPanel. Isn’t a notation in the css and a blub in the footer enough? Especially when it’s listed with three other people/sites who ’sponsored’ the theme and now we’re supposed to ’sponsor’ these people as well?

Stolen themes with no credit given of the original designer/theme. It amazes me how often this happens. I’m not talking about cherry picking an idea here and there, but blatant theft. Even if I’ve manipulated a design until it looks totally different, I always leave the original designer’s name intact. It’s just right.

Embedded code and text that doesn’t belong. This ranges from the designer’s meta tags to their ads sprinkled liberally throughout the sidebar, header and footer. Flickr I would expect, but I don’t want to have to go through a theme with a fine toothed comb to find hidden stuff that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Themes that are never updated. Once placed out in the general population, the designer never touches it again to update template tags or iron out bugs. Doesn’t answer emails or post comments; figures he’s ‘done enough’. While I can understand letting a theme fall by the wayside after a year or two, suspending support immediately is simply wrong.

Some may think I’ve no right to cast stones, as I’m not a designer and I’ve never constructed a theme from scratch; I rely on those more talented to do the work. That’s fine; this is simply my opinion.

Next up: some who do it right!