Tonight I was working on a website I have not touched in years. I decided to install WordPress on it and went looking for a new theme. Being the Theme directory at WordPress is useless in actually finding a topical theme I went to Search Google for WordPress Themes to see what other sites are out there.
I found a website with really nice themes that were free. Normally I have paid for each of my themes but I found a great one on the website. I downloaded it, and installed it in taking a close look at the page at the very bottom of the page I was shocked to see three linked url’s led to sites that I would never link to ever!. Here is what it looked like at the bottom of the browser window, believe me you do not want this on your website.
Loading the theme editor and looking at the code in the Footer I found that the author had encrypted php at the bottom of the page. Needless to say alarm bells went off big time and I deleted the theme from the site.
Do not and I repeat do not download WordPress themes from wordpressthemesbase.com they are running a link farm scam in all of the themes I downloaded that will cause you a lot of harm when Google indexes your page.
You may get a free Theme but you will be pretty disappointed when your page rank goes to zero!
Bonjour,
That is a real shame! I have run across the same thing with a few template sites for Joomla! Good thing you spotted that!
You have probably heard about it, and perhaps even tried it, but I have come to be a very big fan of Artisteer. Sure, some of the “suggested” themes are “iffy”, but with a little bit of knowledge and somewhat of an “eye for design”, one can customize them even farther.
I have a few on my site that I have created; nothing too fancy … yet, but I am just getting started with this program.
Cheers!
James
[...] the original post: WordPress Theme Link Scam Site! – Geek News Central Related Posts:Wordpress Theme News – Woothemes and iThemes go GPL …BlogHer Geek Lab: WordPress [...]
This is one reason I recommend folks design their own theme and when contracting a web designer, make sure the web designer creates the theme from scratch. Many designers save time by grabbing a theme already created and changing it for the client, which can sometimes also include all the ads and other injected crap that otherwise should not be there.
This isn’t really a scam.
This is known among webmasters as theme sponsorship. Some designers create free WP themes and auction sponsorship spots to interested parties.
Check this guy’s listing for example:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1483034
I guess, if you are to go with free, you need to take this as a concern. This is how it is. In the end, I wouldn’t call it a link “scam”, or the site a link scam site.
PS: FYI, I am in no way related to any of these people I reference to.
Anytime a developer populates the template outbound links as they do, the largely unsuspecting blogger will automatically take a major hit from Google.
This is simply taking link building scam to a new low.
The sad part is the templates are actually worth paying for.