Check your theme for the not so nice

After downloading your newly found WordPress theme unzip the files look for a file called functions.php with a text editor. Look for anything that looks like this:

What we have here is a cheap and easy encryption method. The bad news is we don’t know what the heck is in there. It could be anything from simple link back code to a algorithm allowing backend access to your WordPress dashboard.

If you find code even remotely like this don’t use the theme. Maybe another day I’ll show how to decode this.

Next look in the image directory; There should not be any text or php files in this directory. If you find one take a look for the same type code as above.

When I tear into a theme I open every file looking for any encription. I have seen themes with link backs in the 404 files too.

Title and Keywords

Many theme designers are very lazy when it comes to the title and keywords.  Most will use a very simple title such as this:

<title><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></title>

So lets get started, open the header.php file.
I would suggest changing it to something like this:

<title>
<?php
if (is_home()) {
echo bloginfo(’name’); echo “: “; echo bloginfo(’description’);
} elseif (is_404()) {
echo ‘404 Not Found’;
} elseif (is_category()) {
echo ‘Topics:’; wp_title(”);
} elseif (is_search()) {
echo ‘Search Results’;
} elseif (is_day() || is_month() || is_year() ) {
echo ‘Archives:’; wp_title(”);
} else {
echo wp_title(”);
$subtitle = get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘Subtitle’, $single = true);
if($subtitle !== ”) { echo ‘: ‘ . $subtitle; }
} ?>
</title>

Keywords

Most theme designers will not offer any keywords or will often use their own in the keywords meta tags.

so find this:

and change theme to your keywords.

WordPress Version

This is meta tag that is really not needed. You really don’t want hackers to know what version of WordPress your using. So just remove this entire meta tag.

Footer

Now open the footer.php file and look for the that encrypted code as we talked about before. Most themers who make themes for sponsors will add encryption so that you don’t remove the sponsor’s link.

But then again, there could be more in the code than just some simple link code.

Tracking code

Now don’t forget to add your tracking code for google analytic, mybloglog….

Did I miss anything?

Could you tell us a little about yourself
Thanks for asking. I am Sunny Nathan, a 32 year old husband, professional engineer and a part time web developer. I started learning HTML and CSS out of a desperate need to create database driven sites for a not for profit foundation I co-found with a school mate from Canada.

Where do you find your creative inspiration?
I am perpetually on the learning curve, since this is not my primary occupation I have not had an opportunity to obtain any formal academic training. With that said, I draw inspiration from many sources, magazines, television, the Internet, pretty much anything I encounter. I have lately taken to Blueprint CSS and I might use it in all future contractual work, maybe eventually use it to design free themes.

What tools do you use?
As of now, I am using Photoshop and notepad, I hand code the CSS and XHTML, so I seldom use any editors.

How much time do you spend on each theme?
Anywhere between 3 to 8 hours to design and validate, again some themes never see the light of day, so it totally depends on my mood.

Why do you do design themes for WordPress?
Mostly because people have come to expect of HeadsetOptions and MandarinMusing. We started off making themes to develop relationship with our user base and we feel it is a good way to give back to the wonderful WordPress community.

What is your favorite snack while hacking away at your themes?
I barely snack, but I do drink tons of coffee. I sometime work with the TV on, just to catch the news or a rerun of Seinfeld while coding.

Not including your own themes; What is some of your favorites?
I like most of the themes by Design Disease. Theron Parlin and Derek Punsalan make pretty nifty themes; Brian Gardner, Darren Hoyt (who I found out recently is geographically the closest well-known designer to me), Small Potato are some designers who are consistently good, I like hoards of other themes, too many to mention, but pretty much anything that gets of wpSnap is in my opinion pretty high up on my list.

What are some of your favorite hang outs on the web?
Frankly I do not get online as much as I would like to, I usually hit my Google Reader to catch on feeds, visit Seth Godin at least once a day ever since I moved from being a researcher to a marketer at my day job, and the rest are usually for emails and site updates. I visit your site every time I see you on my MyBlogLog friends list; I seldom log into MyBlogLog myself though.

When not at your desk, what do you do for fun?
My wife and I catch up on our respective experiences each day, we usually end up discussing politics, books or just about anything our mind wanders into. We watch a lot of classic thrillers; we both are Hitchcock fans and have only a handful of movies to go before we have seen em all!

Do you design for any other CMS?
TextPattern and Joomla, however WordPress is my favorite.

Where do you see WordPress heading in the future?
Undoubtedly towards becoming the most popular and the best free CMS in the world. It’s only a matter of time.

Be sure to check out some of Sunny’s themes.

Well we all know the official WordPress Theme viewer is a dead dog. But now you can find your new themes at the new WordPress Theme Repository.

The buzz is that it will work much in the same ways as the plugin repository. Who knows maybe sometime soon you will automaticly upgrade themes much the way you can plugins.

If you’re a theme designer you can upload your themes here.

Preview Kitten in Pink | Download

Download includes psd.

Download | Preview

RoseWood is a 2 column widget ready WordPress Theme The download includes the psd files.

WordPress Codex This is where I learned most of what I know about the template tags. But today there are a few better options.

WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide by DBS Interactive. It’s an all in one page encyclopedia of Template tags. It use a little ajax magic to present every template tag with example usage.

WordPress Template Tag Lookup Tool by Theme Lab. I nice little search engine that finds the tags in a pinch. I’m not exacly crazy about this one because you have to know the tag’s function name completely to use it.

TAGStention by solutoire.com. Dreamweaver extension for WordPress Tags. I don’t use Dreamweaver so I’m not sure how it works but it might be worth a go. Also the last release of this tool was in 2006, so it will not include some of the newer tags.

The WordPress Help Sheet by WPCandy Is a nice printable pdf file cheat sheet.

I hope ou find these helpful. If you know of other resources please give me a shout. I would love to add to this list.

Subscribers

MyBlogIt’s Subscribers has grown slow and steady from the very first post. But I have always felt unconfortable broadcasting the feed count. Well today that will change I’m putting the FeedBurner’s feed count widget on the site’s sidebar.

Comments

I have installed a few plugins to reward those commentors who post comments on MyBlogIt. Those plugins include: Top Commentators Widget and Commentluv So feel free to get involved with MyBlogit and comment.

WordPress Themes

I have been working, (or maybe I should say playing cause I enjoy it so much) on some new WordPress themes. I have created about 6 new themes. I’ll be fine tuning them and will be releasing them in the coming days.

Contest

I am working on a contest. It should be a lot of fun and will include a number of sponsors. More on this by Monday.

Feel free to stop by and list your theme.  I might be offering this theme and plugin set for sale soon. But I will need to work out some of the bugs first.

I know just what the net needs another WordPress theme viewer.

When I started using PhotoShop I found it a real pain to select layers and be the ability to change the size and shape with just a fast click. I didn’t think Photoshop was capable of this for a while. But here is how to do it:

Select a Layer

First click the move tool:

Now to auto select a layer click the option to Auto-Select and chose Layers:

Now if you want to edit the size of an object click the Show Transform Control.

Brush Tricks

One of the main reasons I wanted to move to Photoshop was the ability to use Brushes. But at first I thought it was odd that I couldn’t change the brushes direction.  The I discovered this:

First click the brush tool:

Then click the brush palette button

That will bring up the brush palette options:

Select Brush Tip shape on the left side panel. Now you can rotate the circle arrow thingy. (Not sure what you would call it?!? )

You can also set the roundness of the brush with this tool by dragging the top of the circle up and down.

One last trick is that you can change the size of your brush using the [ & ] keys.

I started designing sites back in 1996 for clients. Of course back then we used tables instead of css to layout a design. I was pretty good at that. But now I have a harder time working with xhtml and css. I am figuring it out to a degree.

So back on topic. The guy I had meet eventually told me he was Lorelei from TopTut.com. Up to this point I had never seen or heard of her or atleast I don’t think so. I would send him my css problems and he would send them back fixed. After working with this guy we came up with an agreement; he would devlop a css framework that I felt comfortable working with and I would do some php work for him.

At the time it seemed like a good deal, but as time went by he changed the deal a few times and seemed to not be doing what he promised.

So this last week I told him I need him to keep up his end of the deal. So he suggested that he would let me use his cuurent design as a tempary framework until he had time to get me the complete framework. I was not really happy about this but he told me I could use it in anyway I wanted, as he already had a new design in the works for his site.

He sent me the css and a copy of the html, css and a few psd describing the layout. I was a bit suprised that he hadn’t given me the entire theme files but I was ok with it because I wanted to convert it to a WordPress theme myself.

I was however disappointed that he had not included a file for the single or comment file so I emailed him and never replied back.

At that point I decided to get to work first I designed the images in Photoshop, then I copied the files to my development server and started the conversion to theme and worked on the css.

I started to have a few questions so I emailed hi again, still no reply. I had come to the conclusion that he was upset with me because I hadn’t finished his php before he gave me the css. But I felt justified because what he gave me was just the start not the entire framework he had promised.

I did try getting in contact with him by posting a comment on what I thought was his site

But of course still no reply. I was able to figure most of it at on my own, and was getting excited. the theme was looking amazing. I couldn’t wait to get it up on my site.

I even anouced  my twitter

So After working on it for a few days I uploaded it to my site. Later that night I was reading my rss feeds and was shocked to read this: Ripped My Theme? You will Get Reported! I was spinning! I couldn’t understand what the hell had happened. Why was this guy that I had been talking to over the last few weeks turned on me.

I went to bed, confused and angry. When I got up the next day I decide to try and figure out why this had happened. I emailed him a few times. I got no awnser so I decide to try and find out as much about him as I could.

After a bit of poking around I relized that the guy I had been dealing with was not Lorelei. I downloaded one of her themes and was looking at the theme’s function files. The person I was dealing with told me that they new very little php.

The more I looked into Lorelei the more I realized I had been scammed.

So the answer to everyone question is; Yes I did rip Lorelei’s design. I was told that the design was mine and all the rights were mine as well.

Lorelei, I am very sorry this has all happened. You are an amazing designer!

I have no idea why this guy did what he did, but when it comes right down to I should have done more research on this person.
Here is a screenshot of the design.

I will not be using it!

Feel free to share your thoughts, I will not edit or delet them. (Sorry Tijger)