I updated a Wordpress blog with a new template last night. Until I had something designed I looked at some free templates as well as I was ready to buy a nice looking one. So, I searched Google for "buy wordpress template" and one of the ads on the right was for blogthemes.com which I clicked.
The site offers free templates. There are none to buy. Did not really think about it (Adwords -> Adsense -> free product) until I installed a template and tried to modify it a little bit.
The footer template looked strange and I did not like the look within the template and so I made changes. Suddenly I see a link to a mesothelioma website on my own. WTF .... so, I looked around and the style sheet had an entry for hidden text. Why would that be needed? Well, guess what - that free template (all of them you can download from that site above) has embedded hidden links to this mesothelioma cancer website.
So, I was totally pissed off. First of all I removed the hidden link and then searched all the template files until they were clean.
Usually open source and free stuff requires a link to the author. That link of course was still in the template (visible). That is just bad in my opinion. That sneaky bastard might damage the Google value of any given block that uses his templates and he wants a legit link back to his normal site? Screw you. You do not deserve any backlink and you deserve to be tagged as a sneaky bastard.
Anyway - if you are using one of those templates - make sure to clean up and remove the hidden link stuff. There is an "inc" file that you need to look at ....
Chris
The site offers free templates. There are none to buy. Did not really think about it (Adwords -> Adsense -> free product) until I installed a template and tried to modify it a little bit.
The footer template looked strange and I did not like the look within the template and so I made changes. Suddenly I see a link to a mesothelioma website on my own. WTF .... so, I looked around and the style sheet had an entry for hidden text. Why would that be needed? Well, guess what - that free template (all of them you can download from that site above) has embedded hidden links to this mesothelioma cancer website.
So, I was totally pissed off. First of all I removed the hidden link and then searched all the template files until they were clean.
Usually open source and free stuff requires a link to the author. That link of course was still in the template (visible). That is just bad in my opinion. That sneaky bastard might damage the Google value of any given block that uses his templates and he wants a legit link back to his normal site? Screw you. You do not deserve any backlink and you deserve to be tagged as a sneaky bastard.
Anyway - if you are using one of those templates - make sure to clean up and remove the hidden link stuff. There is an "inc" file that you need to look at ....
Chris
