Thoughts on removing spammy links from wordpress themes?
 

K, dont throw any ninja stars at me for making this post.

What are your thoughts on removing encrypted footer links on free wordpress themes.

Yes the themes are free, and some authors "expect" you to leave the links on.

For example http://www.newwpthemes.com

they have clean style themes, very easy to modify, but they add a nasty dashboard widget to contact their server, and also spammy footer links encoded.

http://newwpthemes.com/public/BlackP..._BlackPink.jpg

note: I did write a shel script to remove all the encoded links and dashboard widget without breaking the themes code.

Just want your input since this is a tough question

It's unethical to remove the links.

I reckon if they have no option to donate to remove the link or pay a "copyright" removal fee, then it is obvious they are puting them links there for the sole purpose of spam.

If they have a donate option I always send whatever $10,20 etc.. whatever it is to remove the link.

Also, why does it have to be a link?

Why can't a simple line of text as a credit surfice?

Those themes are impressive. I guess link or two in the footer don't hurts

If the theme is free, I feel that you have to keep the links intact. As much as I hate it, I leave the links on all of the themes that I'm using for free. I do use the TAC plugin to check for malicious or hidden code though.

I wish more free themes came with the option to pay a nominal fee for removal of footer links. I've passed on some great themes because there were links out to sketchy sites or some such.

Thanks for that :thumbsup

If the links are standard html and not encoded to all fucking hell, yes, leave them, otherwise, how the fuck do you know it's not a backdoor or something into your server? Just because someone makes a theme for free, doesn't mean they are the most awesome person ever and are trustworthy.

truth. if the links aren't encoded all to hell then leaving them is kinda a trade off for using the theme for free. However, all encoded ones I'm against.
:2 cents:

You're missing a . in the xbiz link in your sig.:winkwink:

I had a nice keyword domain get totally blacklisted from Google because some fucking theme hid an invisible "play poker" link in the header. My traffic dropped like crazy one day and I found this link by accident. It was hidden in the upper right corner of the header. The header file had the link encrypted. Sucks too, because I was gaining top 5 for the keyword I was after and it had nice traffic. Over a year later, even submitted the site for re-inclusion from Google, but it's no where to be found. Total waste.

So to answer your question, if I use any themes that have anything encrypted, I will remove them.

Whoops! Thanks doll. :)

I always loved the themes on that site, but I wouldn't use them because of all their ringtones and other garbage links in the footers. I also tried to remove them but they ended up fucking up the theme and posting a message to leave the links. Any chance you are selling that script or otherwise making it available? :winkwink:

'I love that Blackpink theme, but hate that it has all the encrypted stuff.

... view source, copy the html.. put it in the .php file and change it however you like..

try dat.

A non encoded text link I can understand.
I would also rather see an option to pay to kill the link, like many software companies do.

I do not trust encoded shit. To many incidents with installs and all sorts of shit. Already found one theme that I cant remember anymore but it was fucking full of cookie stuffing.

So I am at odds.
I say if you modify it at least um 25% you can kill it. Doubt it is legal. Then again is it illegal to look at it and then make your own version as long as you do not copy their code?

On the other side. If I still could design worth a shit. I know I would be making themes left and right for text links. Would not even get greedy and try for other shit. Just the inbound links would make me pretty fucking happy.

Ya the links are base64 encoded, so you cant see them, if they were normal textlinks i would leave them, but you never know what people are inserting.

Some theme sites like weblogtoolscollection wont let you list themes that have encrypted footers

what is your email.

sinisterbanana ::AT:: gmail, thanks man I really do appreciate it. I've been wanting to use a few of these themes for a while...:thumbsup

I remove ALL encoded links or code on themes.

http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp

I have no issues linking to designers, but refuse to include the footer links that are usually added after the fact.

Most of these themes with encoded footers can often be downloaded from the source without any encryption, just a link back to the designer.

An easy solution is to use paid premium themes, and not have to worry about it, plus get decent quality product.

If a theme has non-encoded links, I usually try to honor those links. I think when they are encoded they are often up to something

I always remove the encoded footer and replace it with my own footer...encoded ANYTHING is shady to start with and there is no way to really know whats included in that crap...additionally some of the links are certainly not relevant to my content and that's probably not going to be beneficial to anyone's SEO.

As Fris said, some of them add stuff like phoning home to their server and that could very well come back to bite your sites up time and performance.

Now all that being said, I have included links to the authors or whoever on a separate generic "resource" type html page outside of my content to give credit..probably not what the author wants...but best I can do in most cases.