During our series, The Phases of Podcasting, we will discuss Phase 4: What happens after the show is over. The After Show time is almost as important as the main show itself. http://www.nmpnetwork.com

Well, for those of you that follow me on Twitter the following won’t be news to you but I came across a post last night which reports that at least 200 themes have been taken off of the theme repository due to their embedded links. Spectacu.la which is a WordPress theme club reported on this issue and noted that they received a short but concise email that described why their themes were removed.

Links to spectacu.la will no longer be approved, as a result this theme has been suspended.

Justin Tadlock weighs in on the issue here and if the way in which these themes were removed ends up being true, I’ll have to join the ‘Are You Kidding Me‘ camp. I’ve gone into the WordPress Dev IRC channel but I couldn’t get a hold of any developers. I’ve searched the WordPress.org forums and haven’t found anything. I’ve searched high and low and can not find any ‘official‘ information related to this event. I imagine that something of this nature would need to be clearly addressed to the community instead of being handled behind the scenes.

While taking a look at the theme repository FAQ, here is what it says pertaining to this issue of links within themes:

All themes are subject to review. Themes for sites that support “premium” (non-GPL or compatible) themes will not be approved.

I look at this statement in the same light as Justin Tadlock in that, free, Open Source fully compatible GPL themes are no longer allowed to link back to either a theme you have to pay for or, a site that participates in selling themes. While I don’t like sponsored links or someones adsense codes in any themes that are available to the public, this one caveat in relation to the theme repository makes it pretty clear that the powers that be behind the project are not interested in seeing themes being sold. The interesting thing to note is that in Justin’s post, he mentioned that his theme has not been removed possibly due to the fact that he doesn’t sell the theme, he simply sells support packages that are seperate from the theme itself.

Could this be a possible loophole? Most likely no because it forces the theme author to have a business model similar to the one Brian Gardner has. While premium theme authors can just as easily do things on their own without the repository, I can’t help but think that offering a free, high quality theme which links back to other themes that users can pay for was a great promotional method. So if this ruling sticks, I see one of two things happening. Either premium theme authors adapt and give away themes while selling support packages and thus, the WordPress.org team single handedly forces premium theme authors to change their business model or, premium theme authors will continue to operate without the promotional benefits of links within free themes available in the repository.

If it’s the latter, consider Brian Gardner to have once again, “Revolutionized” something. Last but not least, if any or all of this is true, I hope someone comes out of the wood work to give a clear explanation as to the removal of these and future themes and then, clearly outline what is and what is not acceptable. If they don’t, I see a pretty nice smear/negativity campaign from theme authors that will most likely go into overdrive.

*UPDATE*
Here is the email that is making the rounds where Matt is contacting those affected by the mass purge:

Here’s what Matt has to say:

Thanks for emailing me about the theme directory. The other day I noticed a ton of bad stuff had snuck in like lots of spammy SEO links, themes whose sites said you couldn’t modify them (which is a violation of the GPL), etc. Exactly the sort of stuff the theme directory was meant to avoid.

There were also a few that violated WP community guidelines, like the domain policy. So since Monday we’ve been clearing stuff out en mass. If you’re kosher with the GPL and don’t claim or promote otherwise on your site and your theme was removed, it was probably a mistake. Give us a week to catch up with the bad stuff and then drop a note.

Thanks guys, and let me know if you have any more questions.

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Matt Mullenweg
http://ma.tt | http://automattic.com