I’ve written about the dangers of free WordPress themes before, but here is a great article on the topic demonstrating the risk of searching for “free WordPress themes” in Google.
The results? Nine of the top ten results contain backlinks to a host of sites, some legitimate, some less so. All encoded so they are obfuscated, or masked, from your average WordPress neophyte. To say that it’s an honest way to provide free themes via sponsored links is probably legitimate, but then to encode and warn users, incorrectly, that removing the links will break the theme is not.
Verdict: If you are looking for free themes, go to the source. Otherwise, there are some really good options for paid themes. I’ve written about the Thesis WordPress theme many times before, but I still recommend it for anyone who wants an easy-to-customize WordPress theme.
The choice is yours, but be careful out there.
