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No Respect from WordPress.com

I’m annoyed at WordPress.com for removing the my credit link from the footer of WP-Andreas09!

I have never claimed that it was my design, and full credit for that goes to Andreas, but I put so much work in to the theme. I spent hundreds of hours porting it and responding to requests. Changing the menu, adding colours and being one of the few theme coders who are preparing themes for localisation so it can be used all over the world in any language.

Even now I respond to many support requests and questions about the theme. I also get support requests for WordPress.com!

Seems they are too big to be concerned about the little guy any more :-(

It may seem petty but I have removed my WordPress link form the footer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 12:32 am and is filed under WordPress Themes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

13 Responses to “No Respect from WordPress.com”

  1. nicky Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    Hi Ainslie

    sad to read that. You’ve been great help for us.

  2. Ainslie Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    Hi Nicky,

    Thanks. I don’t suppose it is a big deal. I was just a little annoyed with them when I discovered it.

    They are so big that I suppose I can’t do much about it anyway. I’m a big believer in giving people credit where it is due, but I seem to be unworthy ;-)

  3. Scott Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Could not agree with you more…They should have given you credit.

  4. Ainslie Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    Thanks for the support Scott. I’m not going to worry and whine about it.

    I’m going to rise above it all :-)

  5. Scott Says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 12:29 am

    Just remove Wordpress from the footer of all the themes you release or give intrctions on how to remove it.

  6. TechZ Says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 10:41 am

    That was wrong of them, credit where its due I say and you deserve it!

  7. Ainslie Says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 7:43 pm

    Hehe… I’ve put the link back in my footer.

    I don’t want this to get blown out of proportion.

    Thanks for your support and kind words.

    I’ll continue to support WordPress even if they don’t want to support me :-)

  8. Andreas Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 12:15 am

    Wait a minute, this is way wrong… They did the same thing for Tara Aukerman’s Andreas04 theme, removing her name and keeping mine. The result is that people e-mail me about the theme, when they should really e-mail Tara…

    And that was done despite the fact that Tara was listed as the theme author - just as you are listed as the theme author for WP-Andreas09 (which they obviously also have renamed into Andreas09). Don’t accept this. Write a feedback message to the keymasters, ask them to either put your name back - or replace my name with yours. Ask kindly and say ‘hi’ from me as well, and I am sure that they will correct their error.

  9. Ainslie Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    Hi Andreas,

    Thanks for your support. I did write to the support but I’m not sure it did any good. I get the feeling that they have a big corporation attitude these days and little things don’t matter to them any more. Somebody obviously took the decision to remove mine and Tara’s credits from the themes and maybe some others as well. Their attitude doesn’t seem in harmony with the open source way of thinking. Considering the amount of credit links the default theme has when first installed it seems a little odd :-)

    The amount of support requests for WP-Andreas09 have drastically decreased. I bet you are getting them now! I know you can handle them but it doesn’t seem fair - I’m sure you get enough e-mails of your own.

    I love WordPress and everything about WordPress so didn’t realy want to blow this up too much. Very few seem prepared to criticise the WordPress team and I’m not sure I want to be that person either.

  10. I Made This Theme « Ainslie Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    This theme that is actaully called WP-Andrea09 was made by me from a design by Andreas Viklund.

    It was released under these terms:

    “The original template was released as open source and free to use for any purpose as long as the proper credits are given to the original author. This theme is released under the same conditions so please respect this and leave the credits in place to Andreas and myself as we have both put a lot of time and effort into the design and the theme. Other than that you may change the included files as you want.”

    Go figure, WordPress.com removed my credit link from the footer. You coud say I support WordPress even though WordPress don’t support me.

    Check out the discussion here

  11. myITAnalyst Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    Sorry to hear how Wordpress has treated you on this. It does make them have that corporate look that goes against the open source community style of doing things.

    Wonderful theme by the way. I am going to play with it some over the next couple of days.

    Does your theme have any Ajax support at the moment? Ajax commenting or Ajax searching? Are you considering adding any Ajax abilities to the theme?

    Again… your theme is looking great. Keep up the awesome work!

  12. Ainslie Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    Ajax isn’t really my thing, so it is unlikely. It takes me all my time working with php.

  13. Webgazette.co.uk » Blog Archive » What Do You Think to Sponsored Themes? Says:
    April 12th, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    [...] I agree with Matt and think that sponsored links shouldn’t be put on themes but it’s a pity they aren’t quite so ethical when it comes to giving proper credit when it&#…. [...]