New Premium Anime Theme (2.7.1) Tested

That’s cute. The theme comes with a copy of the GPL_license.txt but ships with a footer.php filled with recursive obfuscated crap in it.

Geez, how many times did you run that through the gzip/rot13 loop anyway? What are you doing, pushing your ads onto other people’s blog?

And the domain name runs afoul of this https://www.ads-software.com/about/domains/

Lesson here children: It looks pretty but avoid using this theme like the plague.

Jdembowski – It has one designed by link in the footer that’s it!

Whats’ the problem???

wiredcinema,

This is going to be lengthy and I’m going to ask you to bear with me so we can have a good and hopefully productive conversation.

I’m going to start with a few assumptions just to get the conversation going.

– You created this good looking theme
– You want to share
– You want credit for your work

– I am not trying to piss you off with my glib comment
– I am cautioning people to not run code on their blog that they cannot verify

My problem is these three points:

– You are including obfuscated code in your theme
– You are distributing the GPL license text file but are not adhering to it
– You are using “wordpress” in your domain name wordpresspluginsformovieswebsites.com

Obfuscated Code

Obfuscated code in footers has been abused before. It’s a dodgy and suspicious thing to do and distribute, and it is NOT effective at stopping people from modifying your work.

Some of the more egregious examples are inserting the theme’s authors ads into other people’s blog or force inserting a link into someone’s blog roll and making it difficult to remove as long as they use that theme.

Your theme’s footer.php has recursive gzip’ing/rot-13 code in it. When I wanted to see the actual code you put in, I ran it repeatedly replacing the eval with echo each time.

After 5 times, I gave up. I’ll probably write a shell script to automate it for me, just out of my curiosity.

If you want credit for your work, try adding a readme.txt or HTML comments in the footer that says “Hey, I worked hard on this. If you want to use my work, you must give me credit via a link on your footer.”

That’s above board and your users will thank you for your honesty. Will your work get used without credit? Probably. But that’s how it is now and putting that obfuscated code there does not prevent that.

Not GPL’ed but sure looks like it

Not being able to examine the code is the simplest GPL test there is. I don’t believe you are explicitly stating that that theme is GPL’ed anywhere on your website and certainly not in your theme’s zip file.

But adding that license file is either a mistake or you are being dishonest.

Using WordPress in your domain name

Aside from the fact that www.ads-software.com clearly states “Don’t Do It”, some really bad sites use WordPress in their domain name and distribute Really Bad Things in their obfuscated code.

You have both obfuscated code AND you have wordpress in your domain name. Do you really want to be lumped in with a crowd that does dodgy and suspicious things on their site?

That’s not a bad looking theme and I don’t blame you for trying to protect your work. But do it above board. Each of these points can be easily resolved.

Or not, it’s up to you. But if you post to a public forum like this one, don’t be surprised when someone looks closely at what you are doing.

jdembowski.

Especially for you as I realise that you have nothing else to do apart from put down peoples hard work I have revised the theme especially for you.

Now the theme is completely gpl licence compatible and there is no obfuscated code in the footer. I hope it is to your liking!

Since I have better things to do with my life than scour the wordpress site 24 hours a day looking for dos and donts I wasn’t aware that it is “advised” not to have “wordpress” in my domain name.

Therefore my domain name will stay the same until I get told to remove it by a lawyer or someone of authority.

Good Day!

Domain name Rule – https://www.ads-software.com/about/domains/

Interesting. I assume you’ve removed it now (I just checked, and couldnt find anything), but I would have liked to see this obfuscated code – I’ve helped people install themes before, and I always check for that sort of thing, so I’d like to know exactly what was going on in there, just for curiosity.

As for the rest – wired, even though jdembowski was a little over the top confrontational right off the bat, can you blame him? There is all kinds of malicious code out there, using obfuscated code is sneaky and underhanded, and you ARE using a public forum to promote your theme.

As for the wordpress in domain name bit – I had no idea, and I’d guess that the vast majority of other people out there dont either. I’m not sure how, but this rule should be publicised better.

Especially for you as I realise that you have nothing else to do apart from put down peoples hard work I have revised the theme especially for you.

I appreciate your hard work and I’m grateful that you’re releasing that theme under the GPL. You might want to put that theme in the WordPress theme repository if only to get more visitors to your site; that too is entirely up to you.

But let me be clear: I did not put down your work. I raised issues with your coding (the footer) and the GPL. You dealt with that, and that was your choice. You could have ignored this but you didn’t; you took care of it.

Like I said, I’m not trying to piss you off. Thanks for contributing and have a nice weekend.

Edit: Last thing, and you can chalk this up to a jealous lack of CSS/XHTML skills on my part. That’s a good looking theme and if someone is looking for an anime based theme then wiredcinema’s fits the bill nicely.

Thanks jdembowski, your comments are appreciated.

* Peter Butler – Hi Peter it was only to stop people removing my designed by link. It’s taken me ages to create this theme which I’m offering completely free of charge. It was just to stop people from removing my credit, NOTHING malicious.

cool