I had asked about a month ago where the ecommerce solutions for WordPress were.

Tonight while I was browsing around I came across Ecommerce Themes by the fine folks at iThemes. There’s a cool video explaining the features of the theme.

This theme falls under the category of “premium” which means it costs a nominal fee to use (in this case, that means $49). For someone looking to launch an online store selling their own products or other people’s products through affiliate links this theme might be the solution for you.

I’d like to see someone release something similar for free to help broaden this market a bit. Or, maybe, have iThemes lower the developer license cost to get more web developers out there using their theme.

There are a lot of great WordPress themes available online that you can download and use for free. A free WordPress theme is an excellent solution for anyone looking to start a new blog on a small budget.

Of course, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Anyone considering using a free WordPress theme needs to be aware of the dangers involved in using one on their blog.

There is an entire industry of WordPress theme designers who build designs, sell links in the theme’s footer and then release the theme for free online. After these sponsored links are sold they are embedded into the theme’s code in a way that makes them almost impossible to remove without some programming knowledge. An inexperienced user who tries to remove the links almost inevitably breaks the layout of the theme in the process.

The motivation for the theme designer is to make money (and there’s nothing wrong with making money) and the link buyers are looking for ways to raise their relevancy in search engines by getting more links to their sites out there. So what’s the problem? Everyone wins, right? You get a free theme, the designer gets paid and the buyers help their search engine rankings.

The problem is that using a free theme with sponsored links opens yourself up to having your blog tied with sites that search engines consider bad or spam. It’s guilt by association with the paid links in the theme you’re using. This then imposes a penalty on your own site whether or not your blog’s topic is related to the sponsored links.

If you’re looking to use a free WordPress theme on your blog remember to do your due diligence and make sure if the theme contains any links that look questionable. If you’re uncomfortable with the links then your best bet is to pick another free theme to use instead.

Adii has written a post today about some new video themes that have been released. He wonders if themes centered around video are about to be the hot new trend in WordPress design.

That’s a natural reaction but what I wonder is what ever happened to simple WordPress theme design? Are the days of easy to install and use themes gone?

I noticed this trend, and I’m sure all of you did as well, when the number of “magazine” style themes began flooding the theme sites. At first these themes were only premium items that required a fee but more and more of them are being released for free now as time moves on.

Is this a case of the market dictating more complicated and diverse themes for WordPress? Or are the WordPress designers losing site of what users really want?

I don’t have an answer to these questions yet but I sometimes think the old saying that “Less is more.” is a pretty good policy to have and that people are losing sight of that.