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Why You Shouldn’t Look for Free WordPress Themes on Search Engines

Jaypee Habaradas — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:38:27 +0000

One of the common trends in the Internet is that anytime something becomes big and popular, it won’t be long before spammers and other malicious users would come in and use the popularity of that website/product/service to take advantage and victimize users. The same trend has happened to WordPress and its users as the blogging platform has become more and more popular the last few years.

I’ve blogged about WordPress theme malware in the past. The first time I learned about malware being inserted into free WordPress themes was back in August of 2007 when Templates Browser dot com was found out to be distributing WordPress and Joomla themes ridden with spam and malware links. A few months after that incident, another website was reported to be distributing free WordPress themes containing spam and malware links.

The reason why I’m blogging again about this topic is to create awareness and to remind WordPress users to be very careful in choosing where they download free WordPress themes from. One of the common practice amongst WordPress users is using Google or any search engine to look for free WordPress themes. Using Google or any search engine engine by itself is not the problem and not all websites offer “dirty” themes. The problem is that these spammers and malicious users are very smart and use a lot of resources like SEO (search engine optimization) to make sure that their websites and “dirty” products get to the the top of the list or the front page of search engine results for keywords like – free wordpress themes, free wp themes, wordpress themes free download, free wordpress themes download, etc.

If these advice or warnings are not enough to convince you or you want to learn more about why you should avoid using Google or any search engine to look for free WordPress themes, I recommend that you read this article that I came across the other day. It’s an article written by Siobhan Ambrose on WPMU.org entitled Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else. The article shows how the author used the keywords “free wordpress themes” on Google and her trying and testing out the themes offered by the top 10 results. The result of her test? Out of the 10 websites offering free WordPress themes, 8 offered themes encrypted with base64 codes and only 1 was safe – WordPress.org.

There are a lot of nice and clean free WordPress themes out there, you just have to be careful and know where to find them. Some good examples are ThemeShaper, Theme Lab and Smashing Magazine. Some premium WordPress theme providers also offer free themes once in a while so you should check them out.

If you can’t find a theme that you like from the WordPress.org Theme Repository or the sites I mentioned above, make sure you use a tool like the Theme Authenticity Checker which checks theme files for any encrypted codes if you decide to download a theme from an unknown source.

Better safe than sorry folks! Never or as much as possible avoid looking for free WordPress themes from search engines.

Beware of WordPress Theme Malware

Jaypee Habaradas — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:00:34 +0000

One of the things that make WordPress great and popular is the huge number of available free themes and plugins. Unfortunately, the popularity of free WordPress themes have been used by scammers, spammers and malicious users, as an opportunity to cash in and/or wreak havoc. Many of the free WordPress themes available on the Internet today have already been altered by these users, adding base64 encrypted codes into the theme’s functions.php file which when decrypted, contain spammy links or malware.

Recently, a new type of malware was found on some free WordPress themes that are being distributed by a site called top-themes.com (site no longer available). The malware-ridden theme’s functions.php file contains code that inserts a zip file on a theme’s screenshot file. Once activated, the file unzips itself into a new directory and executes the malware file, adds itself (the malware code) and infects other themes in the user’s wp-content/themes directory. This type of malware is really clever because once it accomplishes it’s goal, the file erases itself so it won’t be traceable.

To learn more about how this type of malware works, check out Otto’s post entitled – Anatomy of a Theme Malware. As an additional resource, please make sure to read Lorelle VanFossen’s article – WordPress Theme Malware Prevention and Protection.

To all WordPress users out there, make sure you only download free WordPress themes from reliable sources/websites like the WordPress.org Theme Repository. If ever you’re gonna download a theme outside the official WordPress theme Repository, make sure you only download from the theme author’s website and to use a plugin like the Theme Authenticity Checker, that checks theme files for any encrypted codes.

There are lot of free WordPress themes out there that are not only spam and malware-free but also beautiful and premium-quality. I try to post as many of these themes here on JaypeeOnline so users can find them easily. You can check out the themes I’ve reviewed from the WordPress themes category. If you can afford it, you can also purchase premium WordPress themes from reliable sources like StudioPress, WooThemes, Elegant Themes, Theme Forest, WP ZOOM and many others.

Where do you guys get or download your WordPress themes from? Have you ever been victimized by a malware-ridden theme? Anyone here ever come across this new type of WordPress theme malware? Please share your thoughts.

Cool WordPress Themes From Fearless Flyer

Jaypee Habaradas — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:47:33 +0000

Fearless Flyer is a web design blog ran by web designer Michael Soriano that provides design related articles, tutorials, cool freebies and some of his web creations. I came across his blog late last year when I was browsing the Internet for cool WordPress themes. At that time, his most recent release was the Clam Shell WordPress theme. I was planning on reviewing that theme but due to some circumstances, I wasn’t able to write the review and eventually forgot about it.

I came across his blog again a few weeks back and saw that since my last visit, he’s released a few more cool WordPress themes. So I decided to feature and share with you the last 2 free WordPress theme releases from Fearless Flyer – the Pork & Beans and Aparatus WordPress themes.

Porl and Beans WordPress Theme

Features:

2 columns
Widget-ready
Built-in gravatar support
Built-in threaded comments support
jQuery tabs
Custom comment form
Auto resizable images
flickr box

Required Plugins:

Preview or Download the Pork and Beans WordPress theme.

[You can also download the PSD file]

Aparatus WordPress Theme

Features:

Magazine style
2 column
Widget-ready
Built-in gravatar support
Built-in threaded comments support
Cufonized fonts
Homepage slideshow
4 custom stylesheets/color schemes
Author info section
Social bookmarking section
Theme options page

Preview or Download the Aparatus WordPress theme.

Both these themes are really well designed and are premium quality not only design-wise but also feature-wise, especially the Aparatus theme. Aside from the premium-quality design and the features/options, what makes the Pork & Beans and the Aparatus WordPress themes awesome is that they’re both FREE!

Kudos to Fearless Flyer and Michael Soriano for releasing beautiful, premium-quality WordPress themes like the Pork & Beans and Aparatus themes to the WordPress community for free. You can follow Fearless Flyer on Twitter if you want to receive updates on the next free WordPress theme releases or other freebies.

Weekend Roundup #81

Jaypee Habaradas — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:24:36 +0000

Hello people! How was your weekend? Mine was good and wasn’t that busy. Went shopping in Cabazon last Friday, then went to church on Saturday and spent the whole day Sunday at home, watching movies and the NBA playoffs. I’m happy because the Los Angeles Lakers won the first game, although I almost thought they were gonna lose until the last few minutes in the game where Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Kobe Bryant scored some crucial baskets. Looking forward to Game 2 of the Boston Celtics vs Cleveland Cavaliers series tomorrow. Btw, Lebron James was awarded the Most Valuable Player award/trophy earlier today.

This edition of the Weekend Roundup is quite early because I only stayed home today and didn’t have much to do, so I was able to finish it and publish it early. Hope you guys enjoy this week’s edition. Stay safe and God bless!

Blogging

WordPress

Technology

Gadgets

Pinoy Blogs

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or want your article or find an interesting story that you want to be featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

WordPress Theme Team

Jaypee Habaradas — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:40:34 +0000

One of the things that make WordPress attractive, aside from its features and functionality – is the large collection of free themes and plugins which can be easily installed on any WordPress blog. Unfortunately, not all of these themes are good quality-wise.

In an effort to boost and improve the current selection of themes, Automattic has launched “The Theme Team” who aims not only to create good quality WordPress themes but also to help aspiring WordPress theme developers and attract more quality theme submissions from developers, making sure that there will be lots of good quality themes available for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Here’s a short introduction from the WordPress.com blog:

I’m super-excited to announce to you today that WordPress.com now has an official Theme Team. In a nutshell, we’re a bunch of people who really care about WordPress Themes and want to see them get better and better—on WordPress.com and for every WordPress.org user. And yes, that means we’re getting more themes, more often.

Here are some of the goals that the WordPress Theme Team hopes to achieve:

Every WordPress.com user should feel like there’s a theme that fits them perfectly, that is exactly how they want to present themselves to the world, that they’re excited to show to their friends.
We want everyone to feel a sense of momentum and ever-increasing possibilities, and to do so we will present as many perfect-fit WordPress themes to as many WordPress.com users as we can.
We will ensure all of our public work represents the best in coding practices, web standards, and technical excellence.
We will craft all of our themes to have a consistent user experience and meet our users expectations and hopes.
We will teach WordPress developers to become the best theme developers in the world. If you’re a WordPress theme developer—commercial or 100% free—we want to help you be the best.
We will ensure all our improvements make it back to the open source community.

This is definitely good news for the whole WordPress community! As a WordPress user/advocate, I’m looking forward to the new themes that the Theme Team will be creating/releasing. This move will help WordPress retain current users, attract more new users and at the same time, compete with other blogging platforms and other free blogging services like Blogger.

What do you think of the Theme Team launch? What do you think of their goals? Is there anything in particular that you want the Theme Team to do or address in addition to their goals? Please share your thoughts.