Today, I was thinking to develop two WordPress sites for the upcoming projects of mine. While searching for the good themes, I recalled that Revolution themes have become open source. So went to http://www.revolutiontheme.com/ and it redirected me the http://www.revolutiontwo.com/. Site was looking nice. I browsed through the site, but unable to see any download link. What I was seeing was $99.95/year Pro Package and $149.95/lifetime Pro Plus Package. I thought that being open source these themes will become free for download. Clicked the support link to see if there is a link, in vain. It was telling me that I should sign up to see the threads. Surprised! Should I need to signup to get these themes? Confused! It is approx 100 dollars, which I can’t afford.
So, opened Google and asked “Big G” to show the way to “revolution wordpress themes download” and landed on http://www.wphacks.com at this post http://wphacks.com/revolution-wordpress-themes-2/ The post was showing Revolution themes with links to download. When I clicked on the link it has gone to e-junkie and returned to the homepage of RevolutionTwo.com. It was frustrating. So I had to go through all the comments of wphacks’ post to see if anyone is having the same problem and stuck at a comment where a guy was having the same problem. What he was seeing was just the signup links like me. Kyle Eslick commented that he should see a download link in small text.
Kyle Eslick's comment at WPHacks
Then I returned to the site and now I can clearly see the download link, which is in very small font and was looking like a footer note. So, it took half an hour for me to find the download link.
Theme download link, which will be ignored as footer link
After downloading the theme, I opened the zip file and found no instructions on setting up the theme. Again I went to support site and was able to get a little details on setting up the themes, one or two threads, which are open to anyone.
So, what I want to say is:
- Though it says Open Source, I don’t see the things like what I see on many open source sites. Site is misleading the visitors making them to sing up for the 100 or 140 dollars membership, looks like playing a cheap trick to get signups.
- Why don’t you people put the download links more prominent rather than making it look like footer links?
- Why there is no setup guide in the themes?
Read the below comment by DerFrankie at WPHacks, that is what came into my mind after half an hour search.
I think, that the way Revolution is doing this is quite the oposite of open source.
You might think that a normal open source project will focus on developing a product (theme), documentate it, and release it as a base for contribution and a community to build upon it.
To monetize the effort of the releasing firm, some firms offer service and support agreements (btw a new forrester research has shown that most open source projects relying solely on support contracts don’t pay off).
I cannot see this with this themes. The site states that is open source – but it’s main goal is to sell the service.
On the site you have to “search” for the download link. There is no “project” behind it and the customization has to be done, by “hacking” into the theme, making it difficult to upgrade.
And, many more questions, but when somebody is offering things for free, we can’t question them. Anyway, if you want to download a theme and use it for your blog, below links will be helpful:
- Download links are at the bottom in small font as you can see in the image above.
- Theme tutorials are here: http://www.revolutiontwo.com/support/viewforum.php?f=14 though they do not cover all the things.
- Go to Justin Tadlock’s http://themehybrid.com/ and you can find few free themes similar to Revolution. Read the documentation and experiment with those themes.
- Play with Darren Hoyt’s Mimbo theme to understand setting the categories and custom fields.
- Now, go to Dashboard>Theme Editor and edit the theme files to setup the themes correctly.
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