Wordpress Theme Viewer destroys Wordpress community

The Wordpress Theme Viewer have banned all sponsored themes. As a result the number of themes available for download from the site has dropped from maybe 5,000 to 1,500. And of course, several of the removed themes have been of a really good quality.

The reason for doing this, accordingly to Theme Viewer, has been that sponsored themes destroy.. well, I dont know. In reality the sponsored themes often have been the best themes available for download. Designers tend to do better work when there is some money to gain from the effort.

The only true loser in this is actually the WP community. Wordpress is being used by several hundred thousand people all over the world, and I don’t see how offering free themes could harm them in any way. If the users find that sponsored links in free themes might be offending they are free to both remove to links and of course not to use the theme.

I’ve made almost 20 themes for Wordpress, all of them sponsored. I’ve not made a lot of money on this, but I love to make stuff that other people may enjoy and even use. Now, I guess I have to do something else. If I can’t get my expenses covered in making themes, I simply won’t make any. What expenses, you ask?

Well, instead of making themes for all to download free-of-charge, I must work on projects that actually pays me money. I think that banning sponsored themes do more harm then good to the growing WP community. No question about it. The more themes there are to download, more people will use Wordpress on their blogs.