As someone who downloads free WP templates and then modifies them to suit my needs, I'm wondering if there is a point where it's okay to remove the designers link in the footer? Is there an unspoken or spoken rule for this? How much modification is considered "adequate" until a link can be removed? I know I could just remove the designers link and the sponsor link, but I feel they need the recognition for the original design. However, if I'm modifying the theme, then it would seem to me that after a certain point, I should be able to remove the links in the footer. Just looking for some feedback. TxDon
I i feel you shouldn't remove the link as those people work hard to give it out free a tiny little backlink wont do any harm.
If I do a lot of major changing to the theme, I will take the footer link off. Especially if it is a site filled with Adsense just to make money off clicks. If it is a site with good relevant content, I somtimes remove the footer link and move it to the Blogroll.
i'm a wordpress theme designer and also a theme coder. for me, i really hope that the user not remove my links from the footer. because the theme was designed and coded by me. so at least give us some respects. -cypher.
What is the problem with leaving in the link anyway? It's usually stuck at the footer and in small font size. What I did was to leave in all the credits and adding a line saying, "Hacked by me."
Yea i too release themes for wordpress and hope people dont remove the footer link, just as a sign of appreciation.
If you wish to remove the link, nobody can really stop you, although it wouldn't look good on your part. E-mail the author or contribute via Paypal and ask whether you could remove the template.
I think removing the designer's link is wrong under all circumstances. I can understand people removing sponsored links, particularly if they stick out like a sore thumb, but they shouldn't do that either. I think all designers should safeguard their links by blending them neatly and discreetly into the template and making it a condition of download that the links aren't touched. I'm speaking as someone who sponsors themes naturally!
The appropriate time to remove the footer link is when you have contacted the creator and reached an agreement to their satisfaction for removing it. Modifying a template is not making it your own. A template is your own when you create it from scratch.
Never. Code your own. I do however feel that advertising links in footers are becoming increasingly annoying. But it's not up to the leecher... In terms of payment four footer links on a popular page is way more than you need to pay to buy link-free templates.
You can always put "Designed by YourName derived from OriginalThemeAuthor" Which links to both the original coder and to you... Ans as suggested, you can always approach the original author to purchase a design by link removal...
Personally I always leave the original link in there and change the text to "Based on a theme by XXX". Even if you've hacked the code to bits, it's only fair.
I gave this a lot of thought about a year ago. I noticed that a bunch of "original" themes released by "authors" were just minor modifications of other themes, most notably kubrick. I used a code comparison tool and found that on average most "authors" were modifying their "themes" somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% before removing the original authors links and inserting their own. As to my thoughts on the matter, in decided to leave the original authors link as is (provided it's truly an original and not one of the one's I mentioned above) until such point in time as I've modified over 60% of the CSS and the index.php I still felt a little guilty over this so created several basic layouts from scratch and now use these as starting points. My basic layouts include: One column Two column no header or footer Two column w/ header no footer Two column no header w/ footer Two column w/ header w/ footer Three column w/ header w/ footer Other than the basic layout settings, the CSS files for each of these is blank
This is more in line with what I was talking about. I see a lot of Kubrick, Misty and others modified with the original links removed and I was wondering at what point do you decide that it's "your" theme and not the original designers. Thanks to everyone for the input. I think that if I modify any themes, I'll use the "Designed by YourName derived from OriginalThemeAuthor" as suggested above. TxDon
Your final template may look totally different from the original template after the modification. But the fact is, you are using the template as a base and I believe it has helped you in certain way. It is a lot harder working from the scratch. So it is good that if you could give some credits to the designer (eg a blog roll like someone has suggested would be nice.) Like lazyleo has said, a tiny link do not any harm
You are right, even if you modified the theme 60% you start modified something is not yours , that inspired you , is not something that is designed by you from the begining. In the software world if you use one patended idea(piece of code) from a company in 1000 ideas (pieces of code) 1 to 1000 you have to recognize the owner code. Look at the open source rules. Why people give you something to use for free if you not recognize their work?
That's true to a point which is why I strip out everything from the css except for the layout div's. There's only so many reasonable ways to create a basic 2 column layout and I don't see any of them as being copyrightable but more so as public domain. There's a container, header, left column, right column, and footer div. Even though it's a little more involved the same can be said about 3 and 4 column themes.
I would never take out the originators link, but then again, I could care less about something so insignificant. I know i can't design a theme, so thanks for giving me something to hack, is how I look at it.