How often you have came across websites offering free premium wordpress themes. If not websites, search on torrents and you will have all the premium wordpress themes for free.
But before you search for torrents, read what is very crucial for your blog future.
Have you ever thought? There is no free lunches in the world, and there is catch behind every thing which is free.
Image Credit : D Sharon Pruitt
Imagine you have bought thesis wordpress theme for 87$ and are you going to give it for free to the world on torrent or on file-sharing websites? I’m sure most of answer will be no, because you have paid your hard earned money on something exclusive.
So now point here is why premium wordpress themes are available for free on Internet. If you remember my previous post on Free wordpress theme Vs Premium wordpress themes. I specifically mentioned about Encrypted footer, but its not the same in the case of such premium wordpress theme which is freely available on Internet.
In such themes, people who upload those themes, they upload it for specific reasons. In most of the cases reasons are adding codes in theme file, to pass on traffic or ranking . It may not appear to you at the beginning but later on when you will realize the traffic will drop, it will be too late.
Such codes are usually added into header.php or footer.php files of theme. More over it’s mostly a new file in your theme folder is added which has malicious code.
There common place from where you get such malicious WordPress themes are :
- Torrents
- Websites
- File Sharing websites
So if you still fall in the trap of getting premium wordpress themes for free, think again. For few dollars are you going to risk your page rank and search engine traffic.
What is your point of view about such free Premium wordpress themes which are easily available on Internet. Are you going to use it in your blog? Or you going to let people know about problem of using such freely available wordpress themes?
Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 945 articles.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
I will not suggest using such premium themes that are available for free on pirated sites. Instead of that anyone can use free themes as now days we can easily get premium looking free wordpress themes.
Yep I agree with you @ Simran
The best thing is to go for free themes and that too from the exclusive database of Wordpress themes section..
I never thought of downloading free themes from torrents or rapidshare (actually didnt knew about it) but i will be carefull !!!
BTW, will try ti find some… LOL…
Yes @simran, Pirated sites are the best source for hackers to spread worms and trojans. Wordpress have a massive users. there is no doubt people who love pirated softwares and scripts will go for such pirated theme downloads.
And hackers can take advantage of this by altering the actual codes of the script (or templates) , either adding a new file to take control of the entire server sometimes.
As usual, you wrote an useful post Harsh. Cheers !
These free themes from unknown torrents will create huge problem. If you are serious in blogging.
People listen to harsh what he is saying is absolutely true and if you cant spend 87$ better use wordpress default themes or spend 2 $ for custom css.
Hmm , I Agree , *Goes to verify it*
Though so far I have not used any such themes, I will take more care in future. Normally I download the themes from the Wordpress site.
I agree they add codes that inserts ad in your blog without our knowledge we should be careful !It common thing with free themes
I ll prefer free themes instead..
me too…..no use putting your traffic and rankings on risk with free premium themes
But 87$ matters for Me!
Well, there are some sites that take free themes and then insert suspicious code into them but such themes can be avoided by simply being more aware.
First, free themes should be downloaded only WordPress Codex and trusted sites. Most free themes only take a small footer link and I think they deserve it for the hard work put into theme!
thanks for the precautions
Interesting Post…….. Can You Disscuss a bit Detail about the Malicious Code etc…
Point is right but idea is that all blogger can spend huge money just for themes ? I notice also many theme which are free is having encrypted footer. so they have control over our theme. If you want descent looking theme then you have to ended with paying money or do lot of R & D for free themes. If you are having basic knowledge of editing theme, you can check extra codes in these said free themes. but conclusion is that If you are happy with free theme look and feel YOU SHOULD NOT GO FOR PAID (FREE FROM RAPIDSHARE) THEMES.
I fell for this scam with a website and complained to them but they didnt seem to care less.
Great they have the most latest premium themes but if you look closely in the index.php and footer.php files, they’re encoded with links for scam and money making websites.
I strongly agree with this post, either go for themes which look premium or just buy it! Themeforest.net is the most cost effect wordpress theme market, it wont break your bank.
Well it’s not just “a few dollars”
but again, I won’t ever use a pirated premium theme on my blog. Besides, there are so many good themes out there for free, why risk (not to mention the guilt feeling) having a pirated theme on your blog?
Can you be more specific how the traffic will be dropped or where this problem can actually be solved I might be a victim
The theme for my new blog, http://www.patchworkoftips.com/ was encrypted. I removed the encryption to rearrange the links BUT left a link to the original author’s website.