Template Monster’s Free Wordpress Themes
So, Template Monster now offers free Wordpress themes, with the intention to obviously profit off them no less. I am sure this is just to see how well they do and if they’re worth creating along with their billions of other templates for sale.
Well I say, don’t bother folks. The coding is atrocious! Wow, how they messed up the templates, what an effin disaster.
See, I have this little technique… something I include in some of my Wordpress themes and the Adsense on it gets a lot of clicks, well some people like me to add this to their existing theme.
I tried on this person’s Wordpress blog, which is using a Template Monster Wordpress theme, so that is how I know the code is a mess.
Just try validating one of those things, good God. They may look attractive, but why bother… I am sure the search engine spiders sent to index your page would get lost in there as if it were a big friggin cobweb.
I was going to say, well it’s good enough since they’re free, but I changed my mind. I’d stay away from those if I were you, unless they get their designers to actually code them properly. It seems they hire strictly designers with no coding ability.
I am proud to say I can do both, but I lean towards coding. 
If you want me to make something similar to one of those and offer it for download, all you have to do is ask.
March 19th, 2006 at 11:06 am
You’re very talented. I’ll bet you could make some $$$$ converting their crappy templates into good ones. Maybe start a thread on a few forums? Just for the SEO value alone, it would be worth it.
March 20th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Thanks Chris. I don’t think it’s allowed for me to convert/fix their’s and offer them but I can certainly try to fix them if someone asked, although I don’t like to because they’re just too messy.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I forgot to type the security code the first time and when I clicked Back my long post was gone
Anyway, here is the short version.
Why not make your own version of some of their themes and offer them here as i would pay for that.Note, I said SIMILAR, as most themes are similar on one way or another anyway.
I liked the Tropical Grunge theme and this one http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes/10779.html and even wanted to purchase it, but I can tell whoever created Tropical Grunge created this one too and the TG coding was horrible and I couldn’t edit it all all, so why waste my money on this one.
December 9th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Template monster does some great work… visually and that is where it ends.
I’ve never tried any of their word press themes and won’t (thanks to you) but I believe you unconditionally! The reason being is their flash templates… they are so poorly written you might as well make one from scratch (and you know how long it take to create a flash site) by the time you are done figuring out how they create a simple action script and making minor changes you should be able to do it on your own.
You know they offer an additional service of customizing all of their products for you…. makes you wonder if they produce crappy coded products so you they can up sell you on the customization.
Jason