4 Reasons to Stay Away From FREE WordPress Themes

When you first downloaded WordPress for your website or blog, you found that it came with a few free themes. But who wants to use the same theme thousands of other webmasters are probably using? This kind of thinking usually sends you straight over to Google to search for a variety of themes so that you can give your website that uniqueness you’re looking for. If you have the money, there are plenty of professional, easy-to-implement designs that will give your website flash and functionality. But if you’re short on cash, you might find yourself tempted by all the free themes being offered these days. While free themes can be tempting, and some look very professional, here are four reasons why you’ll want to stay away from those free WordPress theme offers whatever you do.

1. Your Anti-Virus Software is Already Exhausted
It’s bad enough that your anti-virus is busy fighting off bugs that may originate from all the emails and websites you open on a daily basis, but when you download free WordPress themes you never know what sort of virus or malware you might be downloading right along with it.
According to Siobhan Ambrose, a WordPress blogger at WPMU.org, “I don’t advise uploading themes from random websites directly onto your server – you never know what you could catch!” And it turns out, she’s right. She did a study where she downloaded free WordPress themes and noticed suspicious code embedded into each one. And these came from the top Google positions for the ‘free WordPress themes’ keyword phrase.

2. Out of Date
Ambrose found that many of the free WordPress themes being offered today are designed for previous versions of the popular blogging platform. While some may work with current versions, you won’t get all the functionality of the current version of WordPress and that could spell trouble for your site.
If nothing else, your website won’t conform to current web standards, which could hurt your traffic numbers in a big way.

3. Hidden Links and Black Hat SEO
One main reason why you’ll want to stay away from free WordPress themes is because you don’t want to make Google and the other search engines angry. Some tricky web designers think that they can include hidden links and other black hat tricks into free WordPress themes. Then, when your business uses your new free theme, you unknowingly create backlinks to websites that you probably shouldn’t be linking to. While you’re helping the free theme’s creator’s websites advance in the SERPs, you risk the chance of your website being de-indexed altogether by Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines.
Unless you go through each line of code with a magnifying glass to make sure there’s nothing tricky going on, you never know what a free theme’s agenda might be.

4. You May Be Stealing
Ambrose, in her analysis of several major free WordPress theme distribution sites, found that most free themes are stolen from the actual designers. While the theme is being sold legitimately on the designer’s site, you may be downloading a free version, possibly with malicious code added in.
So by downloading the theme, you may be in violation of copyright. Of course, the webmaster who is offering the free WordPress themes is truly to blame, but try explaining that to the designer when he confronts your business for stealing his property.

The bottom line is that you always need to look at things with a clear head. Don’t get taken in by the word ‘Free’. Of course we all want things to be free, but what’s the motivation behind the free theme offering? Why would anyone go to the trouble of providing bloggers and business owners with the themes they need? Are they just good people? Is this their version of paying it forward? Unlikely.
When you notice that most free themes hide links and suspicious and malicious code, it becomes clear that nothing in life is absolutely free.
That’s not to say that there aren’t great free themes out there. The WordPress site has plenty of free themes to choose from that are checked for malicious code and that work with all versions of the WordPress platform. But if you want quality and you want to give your company a unique image that catches the eye, you should consider investing in a professional looking WordPress theme that you know for sure is legitimate.
Whenever you download anything for free on the internet, you never really know what you’re going to get. But paying for themes, even if it’s ten, fifteen or twenty dollars, will give you peace of mind in the long run, and you have a higher chance of downloading a unique theme that only a few other businesses are using.