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It is part of my daily “job” to follow what’s going on in the WordPress theming community and I must admit that I’ve been slightly disappointed with the recent spade of “premium” theme releases. At the moment it just seems that everyone is jumping on a bandwagon, in the hope of making a quick buck and in the process they are totally ignorant to the quality of their offering.
I’m sure that if you were to look across the board and inspect the wide variety of “premium” themes currently available, you’ll notice that most of them are premium only in name; and not because they are actually a superior alternative to free themes. If you consider the quality of free themes such as Thematic, most “premium” theme developers should be embarrassed to call their products premium.
I can only assume that way back then (late 2007!?), when Brian started selling his WordPress themes, he called it premium because it was an improvement in the type and quality of themes available at that time. And I’d also like to believe that when I launched Premium News Themes (R.I.P) in November 2007, it was a premium alternative in context. I could also the exact same thing for a handful of other premium theme developers, who actually deliver a top-notch product.
So here’s the thing… Whilst there’s been murmurings of changing the name “premium themes” to something else (eg. “commercial themes” or “paid-for themes”), the uptake has been slow, largely because of the users that are used to associating the word “premium” with a theme that they’re purchasing.
But fact of the matter is, that there needs to be a massive paradigm shift in terms of what you’re paying for and thereafter what’s considered to be premium. Some premium themes are indeed premium, because of their functionality, features and support resources. But as I mentioned above, a theme like Thematic should then be considered as premium, even though it is freely available for download.
You may ask what qualifies me to write an article with “definitive” principles (even though they’re only suggestions) about “premium themes” and I’d have to answer that I believe I’ve paid my dues. Just like most of the other premium theme guys that I respect most (Brian Gardner, Cory Miller, Nathan Rice & Chris Pearson), we all released a helluva lot of free themes (and some of us still do) before we even considered selling that work for financial reward. You can even take someone like Small Potato from WPDesigner (R.I.P), who contributed a helluva lot to the WP theming community, before I even started to think about his $5 Themes Club.
In this regard, I find that too many of the current “premium” theme producers aren’t really WP community members, but instead opportunists who have seen a gap with some potentially massive reward.
So whilst I’ve been criticized profusely in the past (for my “capitalist” involvement with the non-GPL’ed WooThemes), I’m actually one of those designers / developers with WordPress’ best interests at heart. Sure – I’ve made business decisions relating to WordPress and I’ve build a successful online startup with WordPress, but way before this ever became a business, I was a WP community member.
I fully believe that the more the merrier and with more themes available than ever before, I do believe that the WP user is the one that is benefitting most. Yes, it’s not an ideal GPL world and unfortunately the user needs to pay for some of the best WP themes, but at least there’s that alternative and the choice is thus the user’s.
But in contradiction to that, I believe that the community should take a stance against developers automatically using the word “premium” in relation to themes that are just not that great. Sure, experienced WordPress users can spot the difference between a real premium theme and an average alternative, but uneducated users are only able to judge these themes superficially.
What frustrates me most is that some of these “premium” developers are harming the reputation of paid-for WordPress themes and it’s they that add fuel to the flames in discussions of the validity of paid-for themes. If paid-for themes were truly better than their free alternatives (in every sense), then the discussion would be much easier: “You are paying for this theme, because it is better!”.
I’m not entirely sure to be honest… This is more of a rant than a solution and my hope is that it will at least evoke a little discussion on the topic.
This is also not a discussion about the licensing of paid-for themes, because we’ve been there and I’ve got several of those T-Shirts. And in anyway – licensing doesn’t change the fact that some premium themes are just, plain shitty.
This post wasn’t targeted at any of the premium theme developers specifically (as there are quite a few others that I didn’t mention above, who I respect as well), but was instead just a rant in general.
Premium should be a theme that is exceptional in quality which offers advanced functionality even basic users can use and understand. This is entirely subjective and completely up to the theme author to dub their theme “premium,” unfortunately. It would be nice to have a governing body that keeps a list of themes that are stable, mostly bug-free, easy-to-use, which offer premium-quality features.
I would say my Gallery theme is a great example of a premium theme with it’s use of custom fields, a custom write panel, and integrated plug-ins that instantly enhance functionality and appearance.
Commercial simply means it costs money and should be the word of choice for themes that suck but still cost.
Adii,
I couldn’t agree more! Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the solution is or how it could be enforced.
Maybe we just need some better terms, such as commercial themes, purchased themes, free themes, premium themes, etc. Then you factor in the fact that some themes have better support, a better control panel, more options, etc. Who do we differentiate these?
If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past two years with my involvement in the WordPress community, it is what is premium to one person, isn’t to another person necessarily. I think that is why several websites have popped up over the past year to help shoppers to differentiate between the different themes available. Anyone can look at the designs, but there is much more to a
premium theme than just the appearance (which can be altered after purchase anyway).
I tend to agree with you. I think one of the main complaints of these self-proclaimed “premium” (paid) themes which you speak of is not necessarily their “shittiness,” but rather their lack of support. I think most would agree with me, that if you’re paying for a theme, you deserve quality support through forums, tutorials, whatever.
While I’ve never personally used a WooTheme, I have no problem recommending recommend your themes to others, because I know they’re well supported.
Our business was always based on a service offering (like your Radiiate) and we thought we’d test the waters of a premium theme site with Spectacu.la – the plan was always 80% GPL because we wanted to contribute back to the community more than we wanted to pull money from it. We’d been using WP for some time for purely custom sites. Seemed only fair.
But sadly the community didn’t want that – the feeling seems to be that it’s 100% GPL or you’re a rapacious capitalist. So, given that our investment there wasn’t that great we decided to say sod it and go that way. What’s noticeable is that since doing so downloads have gone up markedly… and whilst it’s currently impossible to join, we’re hardly hearing people clamour to get in. In other words, the return per GB of traffic has dropped markedly.
If a themes club was our only source of income then being 100% GPL would probably make us rather hungry. More specifically, we can’t afford to develop just for the themes club. Some of the tech we developed for something like Telecoms.com would likely have made it into a premium theme at some point, but no way are we going to put it to a general GPL release because that would effectively be giving away one of our unique pieces of intellectual property. There will be a filter down, but only once our internally developed technology has moved forward a step or two.
But the GPL is like a religion – in some circles speaking out can mark you as a dangerous heretic. Be careful…
A good read there. I agree with alot of what you said, I have being researching WP for at least 5 months now and have tested quite alot of Free Wordpress themes and they are varied, some are good quality but most of the ones I have found do the same job the only differance is they just have different colour schemes.
Now what I understand a Premium theme is something completely different to a free theme, i.e. The functionality, the feel and look is unique and makes you think WOW. As Adii said I have also started to see some sort of a trend of new premium services releasing themes that could / should be classed as free.
To release a theme as ‘A Premium Theme’ you should find that there isn’t another theme like it.
That’s my opinion anyway
just started commenting now I feel I have got to grips with the WP community
Cheers
Wholly agree with you Adii. It is a shame that some people have taken the use of “premium” and used it to make people pay for services that are really not premium.
At the end of the day, the best is to educate consumers and hope people rally for what’s right.
I feel your pain but I think the ship has sailed on the word “Premium”. While I am sure there is always going to be some confusion I think the consumer is pretty savvy when a vendor uses a term like that. We see terms like “premium”, “#1!”, “Best Value” and so on all the time in advertising, for instance.
Certainly any sort of governing body or someone judging who coudl or could not use the term would be a disaster. The conflicts of interest would be staggering.
Over time in every market that contains an Open Source alternative it matches or surpasses the product quality of proprietary offerings, even in spaces that have tens of millions of dollars of investment like L7 load balancing. (Or blogging/CMS software.) The product becomes a commodity.
The exception to this rule has been, and will continue to be, services like support which actually become more valuable over time even as the product is commoditzed.
As a rapacious capitalist myself, I enjoy focusing on the areas which are going up and to the right in the long term.
Nice post… I feel the same way about the WordPress Theme development community. The solution is probably to create more awareness. I think its hard for the average person to get the big picture in terms of all the theme available and what they should expect in a theme without trying out every single one. Although, I do think theme sites are creating awareness by providing videos on the features available with each theme, as well as posts that show point out the quality that comes with a theme. As theme sites provide more and more information than just a preview of the design, then the low quality theme packages will become more apparent to everyone.
Great post Adii, and I fully believe it’s ok to “rant” as you call it. Thankfully most of the GPL debate/talk has subsided, as Jeff’s interview with Matt a few months back pretty much settled his/their stance on it.
Moving along, here’s my original post when I used Premium themes (http://www.briangardner.com/blog/how-much-would-you-pay-for-a-premium-theme.htm) and I’ll apologize to the WP community for using that word – not sure if in fact i was the one who coined it, but nonetheless it was used somewhat arbitrarily. (not to mention I had no way of foreseeing what ramifications it would bring years later. LOL)
The bottom line is that the user needs to do research, view demos, ask questions, etc – as they are the ones responsible for their purchase. I completely agree that here are theme developers who are misusing the term “premium” to market their product (or lack thereof.) But if the user purchases a theme that’s called premium, but really isn’t, it’s their own fault for not fully checking out what the theme offers before the clicked the buy now button.
Demo sites really do show what a theme can do – and that’s why they exist. So a user who purchases a theme knows what the outcome will look like before they spend any money.
The WP theme community is really am oxymoron to some degree, in that some themes which are really advanced are given freely (or carry the GPL license) , while ones claimed to be premium cost money.
I will back what Matt said and affirm that users really appreciate the support end of a theme – take a look at all of our testimonials. While many say how great a theme looks/functions, the ones that really shine through are written by the folks who rave about how they were taken care of, and their questions were answered within minutes of posting them.
I still think most premium themes are better than most non-premium themes to be honest. I have recently tried out a lot of free themes and was thoroughly disappointed at the amateurish and in some cases slapdash way the premium features were added.
Overall I am still waiting for something that I feel to be truly exception in either space. Sure there are a lot of good premium themes out there, many who have commented above, but I think so much more is possible.
Judging by all the agreeing going on here, I probably won’t win any popularity contents but here goes anyway…
I find this whole discussion a bit humorous, especially since the people who usually get hung up on the word premium to begin with are part of a clique-ish group of “premium” theme developers. Reminds me of a child who throws a fit because someone else is playing with his/her toy.
The fact is, it’s not for one person (or group) to dictate how other theme authors should run their business. The WordPress community is vast. There are tons of people making a living with WP (and not necessarily by selling themes). It’s arrogant to think that a “governing body” (or review site for that matter) should have any say over another themer’s product or the language used to describe it.
That would be like Zeldman trying to dictate which designers are allowed to call themselves professionals. So ludicrous. The word “professional” indicates that someone can earn enough income to support themselves in their chosen medium. It doesn’t matter if that person is lousy at what they do. If they make a living at it, they’re a professional. The point I’m trying to make (probably unsuccessfully) is that the word premium is no different. Only consumers/clients can judge what is premium/professional – not competitors.
I can think of a few well-known “premium” theme authors whose product line has left me wondering why they’re so popular. But it’s not for me to say whether they can label their work as such. I can see for myself that I don’t care for their themes regardless of how they’re promoted.
Frankly, the guys who have impressed me lately (Ian and Justin) are not boasting premium themes at all. However they are creating some remarkable themes, made freely available, which speak for themselves and are considered by many to be premium.
It’s capitalism, man. The best products and companies will filter to the top — do you really see anyone with “shitty” “premium” themes stealing your business? If so, they must have some pretty amazing marketing skills.
If anything, I think it’s the responsibility of the premium theme creators to explain why their themes are better than other so-called premium themes. Show the customers why you’re better. Collect the testimonials. Why complain that your competitors are offering products of worse quality? I would think that would only make you look better by comparison.
It’s the same in any market, right? Like, why did google become the de-facto search engine? I’m sure there are (and of course, were) plenty of other search engines claiming superiority, but the fact is that google gave the best results and the best interface, etc.
I think a big part of what inspired this discussion is the fact that perception is reality for us. If someone has a crappy product and powerful marketing, they can really capitalize on the convenience shopper as well as the uneducated shopper. There is no set “what do you get for $XX.XX?” criteria, and on top of that you have the fact that the untrained eye will not scrutinize to the level that a fellow designer would. In the end, it comes down to effective marketing and beating the hacks at their own game. It’s just like getting sucked into buying imitation Rolex watches on the street corner somewhere. Buyer beware, know what you are paying for.
It certainly highlights a need for better reach in your marketing campaigns. Not pointing any fingers here though. I would never expect my mother to pick as well-developed a wordpress theme as I would because she simply isn’t as well-traveled, as it were on the internet. She hasn’t taken an active interest in design and product research and really would be buying out of convenience, if my mother ever cared to start a blog in the first place
Unfortunately you have to have a real hunger to go out and find the gems hidden amongst the ore on the Internet. If you don’t know what to look for you inherently risk wasting your money on sub-par products. The same is true across any product or service on the internet.
The solution lies in the ability to spread the word around, to reach the shopper before the shopper reaches Craptacular Templates Inc. and gets burned. Perhaps a network of professionals banding together not as a governing body but by handing out some sort of accreditation “Peer-approved theme” they can help shift the perception of the shopper, but even that has proven to be a tough pill to swallow (McAfee Secure Seals and the lot have been met with less than stellar reaction from ecommerce developers and businesses).
What we need are some beacons in the sea of themes. to steer us toward safe port.
Speaking as someone from the consumer side who has bought numerous themes on more than one platform, I agree that the “premium” label is often misused by developers creating subpar themes. On the flip side some themes have been released from established premium theme developers that I personally would consider less than premium. Basically, its a “buyer beware” marketplace much like anything else.
To me, a superior (premium) theme means clean code, sensible style sheets, custom write panels, unique functions & features, browser compatibility, good use of white space, proper padding & margins, balanced design and top notch graphics. Equally important is good documentation and timely support. That is a very tall order to fill and I would say only achieved by a handful of leading developers.
@Nathan – Holding each others feet to the fire? For such a friendly, respectful community that sounds awfully cutthroat!
I don’t think it’s the active, truly caring WordPress theme community members who need to be held accountable as suggested. Rather, it’s those Adii described in the beginning of this post… who just want to ride the wave… that need their feet held to the fire.
Unfortunately, those same people won’t care about being put to a standard on a review site. Protecting the potential customer with an idea like WP Theme Critic is noble, but don’t you think anyone with a bit of common sense can discern credible developers from shady ones anyway? I guess that’s why I don’t understand all the fuss about using the word “premium”.
@Adii – when you use words like “custodians of WP” I have to smile. That’s a really nice sentiment but I disagree. No one in the community is altruistic enough to take on that job. Even if there were, how could an opinion based site be the catalyst? For unfavorable reviews it would likely net them a lot of enemies and possibly fracture the supposed tight-knit theme community. How does that lend itself to “sustaining the WP project”? If there were no bad reviews, then it wouldn’t be taken seriously by consumers – defeating itself.
The site Nathan is talking about building would have to be non-developer, non-competitor reviews for it to work. Only then could it be an altruistic, custodial endeavor (unless the reviewers were also affiliates). IF the reviews were by people in the same niche, I suppose one other possibility for it to work would be if reviews were by request from each author. In other words, someone wants a critique by his peers, with the intention of bringing reassurance to potential buyers and raising his reputation. Not sure that business model would work either, however. It would be a bold move for any designer to risk a bad review by a competitor. I’ve digressed though, sorry!
What if you would ask the user/buyer ? I mean, you could have a survey on WooThemes and maybe others WP devs could do the same, just to know what the customers think what a “premium” theme is and should be !
Regarding to a “WP themes critic”, it could be a good thing if and only if it made by people outside of the wp devs bubble. Also, I think that here again the user has something to say. He should be able to rate and to comment the use and management of a theme, just like what you can find on Amazon for example. A lot of people just buy a book because it has 4 or 5 stars rating and because the comments are really good.
Never forget the user. Some of my clients came back from Drupal JUST because their users hated using and manage their websites with it. They thought WP a lot more simple and more “user friendly”. And I think that the options, code and other tech things are important, but it can be well coded, have a terrific design, if the user cannot use it, the theme won’t be successful.
So don’t forget the users, ask them what they think a “Premium” theme is and I think you will be the best answers you could have !
PS: sorry for my bad english !!
I definitely agree with the ‘only in name’ comment.
Personally, I think a good idea would be for some sort of standard to be adopted with WordPress themes.
Maybe like different stages of quality or functionality. At least then you would know what you are getting from a theme product, rather than just relying on a shiny name and demo page.
I’m not sure if this would be the job of WordPress.org though, with the GPL and stuff.
Great post Adii
As someone who has purchased many “premium” themes for my own sites and to help out friends and family I can tell you that whilst the theme itself is the content I purchase, it is the level of support offered that will make me purchase from the same designer or group again.
Both Brian and the Woothemes teams offer tremendous support and a great community of users.
To be honest if I was designing WP themes and hoping to sell them commercially I would try to hook up with one of these respectable resellers first.
I gotta agree. Unless a premium theme is offering an advanced feature or lots of support, I don’t consider them “premium”. Free themes offer a lot to the community and for those that know some html, they can create a unique theme.
I’ve purchased premium themes only to discover down the line it’s all rubbish…from well a celebrated premium theme vendor (tempted to name them, but I won’t) popular for creating celebrity blogger themes. I’ve switched from those themes to ‘Original News Theme’ by you Adii which is free of charge and too superior for those so-called ‘premium themes’.
It’s sad indeed, that us (users) are taken for an expensive ride.
I find your blog very interesting! Keep up the great work!
First up, I couldn’t agree with you more about the premium quality of your Gallery theme. It definitely goes a long way to showcase what’s possible with Thematic firstly and secondly WordPress.
A governing body would solve the problem, but would create a whole other problem, due to it’s lack of democracy.
I don’t have a problem with a product being labelled as premium by marketers, because that’s just marketing. But in the case of premium WordPress themes, the use of the word “premium” meant a whole different initially. So whilst the initial batch of paid-for themes were definitely premium in quality & support, some more recent themes aren’t, but still get the “premium” label.
So I guess the problem is that “premium” means one thing in layman’s terms, whilst we’re trying to use it for a different meaning (paid-for / commercial) to describe WP themes…
Agree 100%.
Totally agree that premium is subjective from one person to the next; and that’s probably just another reason why we need to distance ourselves from using the word to describe themes which aren’t available for free.
Premium should be the opinion of a community or a group of buyers / users. So anyone is free to market their themes as “premium”, whereafter democracy dictates whether the product lives up to the marketing.
I just have a problem with using the word “premium” to say that you need to pay to get the theme package and / or the support associated with that.
Cheers for the kind words re WooThemes!
And whilst support & additional help resources definitely plays a big role in a theme’s premium status, I do feel that there are other factors that play just as an important part (the design, the code, the features etc.). So whilst some of them are more subjective (the design), others (the codebase) can be evaluated according to best practice and I’d thus include these measures before labeling a theme “premium”.
Umm… Whilst I’ve enjoyed your comments in the past, your comment this time around seems to center on the one thing that the post was not about: theme licensing.
I really don’t mind someone releasing a paid-for theme, when (in terms of its quality) it’s not any better than a free theme. That’s their democratic choice in my opinion.
But again, I have a problem with that developer labeling that theme “premium” and then basically fooling the uneducated WP user into thinking there’s something absolutely wonderful about their product.
Yes, good point
I picked up on:
and from there I just went right off on my own merry arc.
So coming neatly back to yours… yes, you’re right. There’s a whole world out there that wants to sell themes, regardless of quality and support, because they see it as easy money. They don’t even have to do much – I’m actually surprised there aren’t more out there that aren’t packaging up lots of GPL themes and reselling… as is their right, of course.
Are the good for the community? Well, probably not. Does the community care? Yes, I think so. Do the people who are leading the community care? What about the GPL purists? Do they see the problems?
No worries… I do the same thing often and allow myself to be provoked by “keywords” and then go off on an ill-directed tangent!
And yes – I actually believe the community cares and that’s why there’s been so many discussions about the GPL. Because beyond the legalities and ethics, I think it’s wrong that some themes are deemed premium only because they can only be purchased (instead of being downloaded for free). So non-GPL, non-free themes became a marketing opportunity for some developers, instead of just being a business model.
Not entirely sure the consumer is that savvy in all situations… Viewing the traffic analysis of WooThemes, I’ve noticed that about 30% of our Google traffic comes from searches like “premium themes” or “premium WordPress”.
The reason for this is obviously due to the word “premium” having a dual meaning (generally) when using it in conjunction to WP themes. So I maintain that the uneducated user won’t be able to filter through the BS because of that grey area.
Couldn’t say I disagree… And thanks for dropping by to comment; sure it means a great deal for people with a stake in this conversation that you indeed take part in these conversations.
Just re-reading your comment…
Am I right in saying that you believe the level of service influences the “premium” quality of a WP theme more than its other features (design, codebase, etc)?
I do agree with Matt… I really think that what makes a theme “premium” is the services, support you give to the theme, and less the functions or the design. I mean it is really important at the end, but on the long term the support for example will make it “premium” to me. I used different “paid for themes” for customers and I have seen HUGE differences in support !
I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s saying, Adii. At iThemes, it’s pretty clear to us that part of our “premium theme trifecta” is support.
I think that Matt is indicating that Premium themes could:
1. Survive even if they weren’t sold as themes, but “packages”
2. Not follow the previous trend of buckling under, due to free competition.
With both his points, I would tend to agree.
Wholeheartedly agree with Matt here. For that reason we offer our “premium” themes GPL with a paid support option.
Adii: I don’t think Matt is saying anything about what makes a theme quality, instead making the point that most of the time open source quality “matches or surpasses proprietary offerings” and the support for that open source quality becomes the product.
While that may be true if you allow the term “over time” it include the distant future… it simply isn’t actually true in my experience. Of course this is a semi-religious discussion, so I will keep my reply short
I use lots of Open source tools – but rarely are they head and shoulders above the best commercial offerings in their market. Often they trail behind significantly in features but the price point (free) is a deciding factor.
For those tools that have to be top notch, the commercial choices (again, for what I use) win hands down. The reason is simple – Open Source does a great job of emulating discoveries made elsewhere, but _rarely_ drives innovation. The resources simply aren’t there.
Obviously this is not a universal truth but that is my point… a blanket assertion that OpenSource inevitably surpasses the commercial offerings is to my opinion a bit myopic. Things are much more complex than that.
I am thinking it might be for the other reason – that users who want to pay for a theme (and thus get support) know that the word in the WP community is “premium” to track those down.
Just a thought.
I couldn’t agree more, but that only works for the users that actually knows that premium generally means you need to pay for the theme, instead of necessarily reflecting on the quality of the theme or its support.
That still creates confusion for the inexperienced, uneducated WP theme “buyer”.
I too agree; just wanted to make sure that I was understanding him correctly!
I am however still a firm believer that when someone buys a WP theme, that they shouldn’t be made to think that they’re only paying for the support, because there are many more things that goes into the creation of a WP theme.
Definitely not a universal point, as WordPress is case in point of an open source publishing alternative which is currently hands-down the market leader in terms of functionality and popularity!
Definitely.
I also think sites like Theme Atlas will go a long way in differentiating the good from the bad. But ultimately you’re right in saying it’s down to the developers to make sure their marketing is top-notch in terms of “educating” a prospective user in the quality of their product offerings.
Never knew about your themes before, but quite like the design!
Thanks Adii! I appreciate it.
Yes – it’s all your fault Mr Gardner!
One your point about the buyer deciding what is premium or not… Don’t you think that it’s important the larger community takes responsibility in pointing out the non-premium “premium” themes? If the community does this, it ensures that the opportunists are weeded out and end-result should be a benefit to everyone within the WP community!?
Just typing this as the thoughts goes through my mind… So just trying to evoke a discussion…
You’re absolutely right. People can call their product whatever they want.
But those would-be customers need some sort of way to filter the good from the bad … what is “premium” and what isn’t (free or paid, it doesn’t matter). It’s a service that I think people could use, if for no other reason than buyer protection, if they decide to buy a theme.
By holding each other’s feet to the fire, we spur innovation and quality in the products we produce. It’s not JUST about exposing the crap. It’s also about constructive criticism for the good of everyone.
Really great comment! I was mulling over how I’d communicate my counter thoughts to Charity’s feedback and you’ve basically worded my thoughts!
It is about filtering and it’s about acting as custodians of WP. This also isn’t an exclusive task of certain theme developers, plugin developers or community members, but instead the democratic task of the community as a whole.
I believe that this kind of thinking will enable greater sustainability of the WP project and should allow it to stay abreast from “elements” that pulls it down.
to be clear, Adii, I’m not pointing the finger at YOUR marketing campaigns as much as sort of an aggregate finger-point at the theme-producing community in general.
Great post!
I wholeheartedly agree about the capitalism, marketing & competition bits. But you need to consider that we’re talking about an Open Source project here, which means that there’s a few other factors to consider. In this case, I believe that educated users in terms of what makes a good theme good and a bad theme bad, adds to the sustainability of the core WP project.
No offense taking at all.
I don’t believe a type of “stamp of approval” would ever work, even if it was to be handed out by a community-chosen, board of credible individuals. The WP community is just too diverse in their opinion to ever accept something like that. I mean look at the Themes Repository, which is probably the most hotly debated theme-related topic ever (okay, well probably 2nd to the GPL stuff).
But large parts of the community can still take a stand against shitty themes and at least broadcast their opinion to that extent, which will make it less likely for an uneducated user to buy those themes.
> But large parts of the community can still take a stand against shitty themes and at least broadcast their opinion to that extent, which will make it less likely for an uneducated user to buy those themes.
Absolutely, it is all about raising awareness!
I think the problem is in the word. How do you really define what “premium” means in terms of a WordPress (or any other) theme? I think “premium” might mean something very different for every customer that visits WooThemes or any other theme store. You mentioned “functionality, features and support”, but I think that is just the tip of the iceberg.
When it comes down to it, a customer looking for a theme has something specific in mind. Premium or not, that customer is going to choose the theme that best matches what they are looking for. Of course “features and support” are going to be part of that decision, but does having the word “Premium” associated to your themes really make a difference? I would argue that it doesn’t.
I use the word “Premium” in association with my themes not because I think they are better than other themes out there, but because it’s the word commonly known by WordPress users looking for an out of the box solution for their website. I think we have already established that Mr. Gardner is at fault for being one of the first for using the word
, but it’s the rest of us who continued to use it which has since blown up into a huge mess.
So now we have a so-called premium theme market that consists of a hand-full of decent themers (hope I make the cut) surrounded by a few dozen other people just looking to make a “quick buck” by slapping the word “Premium” on anything they can put together or re-style for their own freeloading ways.
My solution is simple… just take the word “Premium” out of the equation. Instead of “WooThemes | Premium WordPress Themes”, maybe you go with “WooThemes | WordPress Themes” or whatever tagline you come up with. This way it’s just “WordPress Themes”, which allows the user to decide which theme is better for their particular situation.
Agreed about dropping the word “premium” and this is something that we’re most definitely considering with our upcoming redesign!
So whilst change needs to come from somewhere, there’ll need to be widestream adoption of the “premium” word dropping before it affects the themes community as a whole.
One thing I forgot to add above. Although Brian is credited as the founder of the term “premium themes” (and rightfully so as he got it all started and coined the term), premium has long been associated with paid versions of themes outside of WordPress.
For example, my BlackBerry Storm, and all BlackBerries for that matter, has a huge number of themes available. The ones that have a cost associated with purchasing them are called “premium themes” or “premium BlackBerry themes.” I have seen this in other areas as well to describe a purchased theme.
I think the internet has kind of just associated the word premium with purchased, whether we are talking WordPress or not. What does Joomla, Drupal, and other systems call their purchased themes?
Agreed that no one person or group of people are altruistic enough to be effective in terms of acting as “custodians of WP”. And that’s exactly why I believe that this is a WP community responsibility; not the responsibility of any premium theme developer or a themes review site.
Whilst I’m backing Nathan’s idea of a theme review site and I never said that it would become the de facto standard in terms of good vs bad free or “premium” themes. It will however be another resource with a potential influence on a prospective buyer / user, which increases the potential “education” value of that buyer / user before deciding on a new theme.
Your “buyer beware” concept kinda intrigues me… Any ideas on how to combat that?
The reality is that there are limits on how well an industry can monitor and police itself. Ultimately it is up to the consumer to be diligent by thoroughly inspecting the theme and consider the support and track record of the developer who created it. Kicking the tires is not enough, you have to look under the hood, take it for a test ride and check for leaks.
If an individual or a body of members within the industry could put together a checklist outlining what functionality/features to look for and other considerations when buying premium themes, that might be beneficial to all theme consumers and definitely serve as an aid for first time buyers.