Can I include plugins in a paid theme?

Will the theme be released under GPL?

He said PAID so I don’t think it’d be GPL ??

the ethical answer is no… but you don’t need to distribute them – you can simply do a if (function_exists()) … on them to determine if they are installed or not – and have your theme display a “plugins required” page with links to install those plugins from the plugin repository here on www.ads-software.com.

What you could also do, if you were feeling a bit more brave about it – which would be better… is see if you can exploit the wordpress automatic plugin installation feature as part of your theme.

So the first time your theme is activated it can display a notice saying that two plugins are required… click here to download and install them.

That would be nice and simple for the end user.

A paid theme can be GPL. There is no contradiction in terms although some people do tend, incorrectly, confuse GPL with “free”.

There’s no confusion here, I just think that 99.9% of cases where people sell a product, they expect to be the only entity allowed to distribute it. You are talking about the 0.1% as if it is in any way statistically significant.

Under the GPL, the author is allowed to charge for the distribution, which in many respects is the same as selling it – but once it has been sold to 1 person, who then puts it up on their own site for free the GPL grants the author no protection – this is in direct contradiction to what the vast majority of people want when they intend to sell a product…. so playing with semantics aside, my point stands: “I don’t think it’d be GPL” It is a pretty safe bet that people wishing to make money off product sales won’t attach GPL licenses to them.

Anyhow, that point aside, I think coding around the plugin requirement with function_exists() is a worthwhile suggestion – failing gracefully is always nice as making something a requirement can be a bad idea when plugins can so often conflict with each other.

Just want to bring to everyone’s attention that I was spanked by a moderator for making this post. Couldn’t login for hours directly after making this post.

That’s very childish.

… and very unlikely.

We don’t have a spank button.

@katyakarski: sorry to post if comments aren’t welcome, but…

What are you trying to say in your last post? Without sufficient explanation, it is so enigmatic that very few people will know what you mean. Would you mind explaining?

That’s very childish.

Who? The Mod, for taking action as a result of your post? Or yourself, for making the post?

I don’t mean to exacerbate any problem further, I am just interested to see your comment explained.

Thanks for understanding,
MindBlender 3D

MindBlender, there’s nothing to be gained by further discussion or your passive-aggressive fanboism. My comment was very clear. I voiced what I thought was the case, but Chris_K informs me that there’s no such feature so I have to accept that.

The coincidence is astounding – being logged out of the site, and not being able to log back in for some hours directly after having a difference of opinion with a mod… but I can’t argue if an admin says there’s no such feature, there’s no such feature.

Okay, that is exactly the kind of comment I was trying to avoid. I did not want to hit on any nerves, but my attempt at careful handling was misinterpreted as passive-aggressive.

In all honesty, your comment was not very clear, given that there was nothing marked or edited in your post that would indicate disapproval by a moderator (which, in general, is standard moderating procedures; making sure that people know why the post was moderated). It also did not help the matter that I couldn’t see anything contrary to the Forum Rules in your post. People aren’t penalized for simply disagreeing with a Mod, though they might be if the user started trashing the mod insensibly (which was not the case here). I have seen plenty of people who disagree with moderators in the forum before.

Frankly, I was just trying to understand the situation. If I had thought about it for a very long time, I probably would have come to a reasonable conclusion as to what you were trying to say. But then again, I wouldn’t have had complete assurance of being correct.

Once again, sorry if I offended. (That is not more passive-agressive, BTW. I genuinely care.)

P.S. I still can’t figure out what rationale you have to categorize my response as “fanboism.”

If themes are dependent on plugins, simply say so. The nice gesture, since you’re profiting from it, is to kick some of your fee back to the plugin author(s) upon whom your theme relies.

Themes shouldn’t rely on plugins anyway. As I said before, the best thing to do is just list the plugins the theme requires. And degrade the code gracefully if the plugin isn’t present, as Katya suggested.