[wp-forums] Disastrous Coding Practices in Premium Themes

[Francisco de Azevedo]

Hi everyone!
So, I've been stuck for a few days on some custom jQuery functions for some
friends' site using the Retreat theme (premium) by WooThemes. Since I care
a great deal about optimization and HTTP requests, I started working on the
theme's *general.js* file rather than creating a separate one from scratch.
After doing some debugging, I was able to narrow the issue down to the *
(window).load* event, and finally able to determine the cause of the
problem: It seems the original theme developers had stuck the following
piece of cr... **cough** code inside the JS file:

> var window = jQuery(document).height();

This "pearl" had been written not once, but twice (in two separate
functions) and, get this, the "variable" wasn't even being used (I kid you
not...)! Now, after cursing in every language I know all the developers
involved in this coding atrocity and fantasizing about murdering every
single one of them with a rusty dull spoon in a Kill Frenzy worthy of Grand
Theft Auto, I calmed down a bit and the following thoughts sort of crawled
into my head in the shape of three premises and a conclusion:
*1.* This is not the first time I find such coding atrocities in Premium
themes. For instance, in the Newscast theme (another "premium" theme,
released in 2009), I found that *content="IE=EmulateIE7"* had been
hard-coded in a meta tag inside the head section of the document (yeah,
discovered it completely by chance because CSS3 properties were not being
picked up by IE9). In addition, I also found a significant amount of
deprecated core functions had been used, even though the theme was
supposedly still supported and updated (there had actually been an "update"
a couple of weeks prior to my findings).
*2.* Some premium developers don't seem to know what the hell they are
doing, and thus could cause a lot of harm to WP users who are just
beginning to understand how the platform works or who do not have the time
and/or the desire to learn that much programming.
*3.* These premium themes are not cheap. For instance, premium themes on
WooThemes  are worth 35 dollars but you have to buy them by packages of two
(so, that means it costs 70$ dollars to have access to the theme).
*Conclusion:* Should something be done about this from WP.org or would that
be against WP's policies regarding theme development? I am really open as
to what that something could be, as long as it involves:
*a.* Making these errors publicly available so theme users can learn about
them and fix them;
*b.* Some sort of bad publicity for the developers involved, so as to
discourage these reckless and irresponsible coding practices from occurring;
*c.* Generating awareness about the importance of using properly coded
themes and plugins to enhance the overall WP experience.

Any thoughts about this are very much welcome. I am also open to the
possibility that I may be over-reacting a bit, but at the same time, giving
the serious nature of these issues, I would rather over-react than
under-react.
Cheers!


On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Mika A Epstein <ipstenu at ipstenu.org> wrote:

> I was chatting to Templatic about GPL (which the twitter account claimed
> not to understand) and did a tl;dr for them "Anything that requires a GPL
> product in order to work (i.e. themes/plugins to WP) must use a compliant
> license."
>
> Herytuj made a twitter account http://twitter.com/herytuj and proceeded
> to tweet me. I blocked him ASAFP and he's been deleting his tweets (and
> account it seems, that was fast). I blocked him on my server too, after an
> email that essentially said I'm a terrible mod.
>
> And I blocked him on WP forums, since harassing people isn't cool.
>
> Bitches get shit done.
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