May 5, 2009

I have lived in a premium theme world for some time now. The theme I use is premium, the themes I read about are premium, the buzz is all about premium. So can we just drop the ‘premium’ and assume that all themes are appropriately optioned up?

There are two ways of looking at this question:

  1. Most decent themes have some premium features (the option for adding code into the footer for example); or
  2. Most decent themes don’t have it, premium are still a cut above.

In either case using the ‘premium’ to refer to enhanced feature sets and quality code is letting other theme authors off the hook. In the first instance we need to be highlighting the bad themes, not the good. There need to be themes, and decorations. It either meets a certain level, or it doesn’t.

In the second instance we need premium themes to be the baseline, to make it clear that the expectation is there. No longer will we decide whether to look for premium themes or themes, we want all themes to be on a level. If you can’t theme to that level then that offer a child theme skin of someone else’s base theme. If you can’t do that? Then stop.

The most popular 5 themes right now on WordPress.org are:

  1. iNove Downloaded 9,245 times
  2. Pixeled Downloaded 7,773 times
  3. Atahualpa Downloaded 7,092 times
  4. Fusion Downloaded 5,833 times
  5. Gear Downloaded 5,522 times

All of these themes make some attempt to offer extra options to manage the theme from the back end with a greater or lesser success:

iNove

Pixeled

Atahualpa

Fusion

Gear

I certainly wouldn’t classify most of these themes as premium, however, it is clear that the community is moving in that direction so some action is needed to spur things along. Making the distinction between premium themes and the degrees of theme beneath them really only lets the less than premium themes get a free ride. For the good of the community I think it is time to stop using the ‘premium’, and start using ‘Themes’ to mean well designed, well created, well thought-out themes produced by competent coders and designers. Everything else should be a skin, decoration, or wallpaper.

Update:It occurred to me after hitting publish that a grading system on WordPress.org would be really useful so we could tell the difference in intent.



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  every 1742s, 1s ago, in 0.03s.
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 Call that premium? – Fun with WordPress

[...] week I argued that we need to get rid of the whole concept of ‘premium’ themes because that creates a two tier system which makes it OK to release poor themes because “they [...]

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 What Kind Of Theme Is This?

[...] days, it’s getting harder to define what exactly a premium theme is. Andrew Rickmann over at Fun With WordPress tries to give us a better understanding of what premium means now a days as well as providing a [...]

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 Webdev

As always there were non-premium themes, always will be too. Of course, at a point most of the designers/developers can reach the level of developing great, multi-purpose, configurable themes, but novice, beginner developers can’t share premium themes at first. There is need for an evolution :) Everybody have to go through a period of learning the basics.

Ps. installing subscribe to comments plugin won’t be a mistake :)

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 Kyle Eslick

The term “premium themes” is not exclusive to WordPress. I purchase a number of premium Blackberry themes for my Blackberry Storm. There are premium Joomla themes I believe, as well as other software.

The term premium is used to imply that it is “better”, but in fact means there is a cost associated with it. Like Leland mentions you have all sorts of terms like freemium now, so the only true way to separate them are free and purchased. Then there are GPL paid and non-GPL paid, etc. :)

It truly never ends unfortunately. Great post!

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 What Makes a WordPress Theme Premium?

[...] our friend Andrew of WP-Fun.co.uk wrote an interesting post titled A New Name for Premium Themes:

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 andrew

I tend to think that as well Leland and I would like to stop. I really think there is a difference between premium and commercial, although the commercial authors clearly have a much greater incentive to get things right and that tends to make them more premium.

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 Leland

When I think “premium” themes, I automatically think “themes that cost money,” not necessarily quality themes or feature-filled themes. Some have even started labeling their paid themes as “commercial” or “pay-for-use.” I’m not even going to get started on the whole new “free premium” or “freemium” phenomenon. Although I think the term is way overused, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

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 John (Human3rror)

hmm. thanks! nice that someone’s keeping tabs on the dloads.


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