whoopsguy

noted, thanks…. cheers..

Thanks, James, for your thoughtful answer.
Of course it is not a waste of time when an author supports their theme.
My point is that my experience in the past week (and I think other users share this experience at one time or another) is the following:
install a theme-
have a query, go to the support forum for that theme-
post the query
wait a few days, only to find that other posts have not had responses for months
try another theme, install, have query, etc
rinse repeat
I repeated this loop at least 5 to 7 times this week…. a total of at least 7 to 10 hours with no productive results.
There must be a way to avoid this- I am not in any way impugning wordpress or the community of theme authors- it’s just that as a user I would have really wanted to avoid this.
A simple statement such as: “The themes may or may not be supported by their authors. When you visit the support page for that theme, you will see a statement by author: I support this theme or ‘I do not support this theme’. Good luck and thank you for using wordpress themes.”

Then require authors to state clearly on that theme’s support theme page that they do or do not support.

I think that is easy- and would literally save users hours. Many users are not highly savvy and cannot afford IT staff- and we depend on support forums. If we do not know who supports or not it would enable us to streamline our process.

I really believe this would improve the usability of wordpress themes by a substantial %. For us users who depend on support, to not know which themes are supported really increases our install time by 400 to 800%.

It’s up to wordpress of course. But there may be another wordpress type entity coming up somewhere in the webiverse—– maybe tomorrow for all we know, there will be a real alternative to wordpress, that actually DOES point us to themes that are supported.

As a businessman, I know that any “missing piece” is an oppty for a rival who is interested in INCLUDING that missing piece.

Just saying. Thanks!

CORRECTION:
If, on the other hand, members need to apply to wordpress with their themes, then a central database could be kept and a statement made at the top of that base saying any theme not found here may function properly.

should read: “may NOT function property.” Thanks…:)

If it is as you say, a community with many of the themes made by the public, without any requirement for support from the authors or wordpress, that should be put front and center.

Further, it is very confusing to have a link to the support page for every theme when in fact they may not be supported. At the least wordpress could easily put a text on the main support page to this effect: “Please note that these themes may not be supported by the author and are NOT supported by wordpress, even if there is a link to a support page. Your comment may not be answered because the author may not support that theme.”

This would avoid confusion and frustration, and most of all, the huge waste of time. I have met at least one other user on the wordpress forums who has been frustrated by lack of support. Putting that disclaimer would at least warn people.

That is good info, brewinreview (and to answer your query, Andrew)- it makes me realize that members of the community are creating themes without feedback from wordpress- is that correct? If so, I understand it would be impossible for wordpress to oversee all of that. If, on the other hand, members need to apply to wordpress with their themes, then a central database could be kept and a statement made at the top of that base saying any theme not found here may function properly.

Still, I think it would be extremely helpful to have some statement at the top of the themes page to the effect that themes are not supported by wordpress and may not be supported by the authors. It would be so easy—-

Somehow I suspect it will not happen. I am not being conspiratorial- it is simply such an obvious thing to do- that the fact it has NOT been done means there wordpress chooses not to. If they do it I will be pleasantly surprised.

Jan thanks for your input also.

I really do appreciate wordpress and esp these comments, thank you.

Hi Don
I tried that and it still did not work for me.
Someone else suggested something that worked: Set each post as a featured post.
Then it went to the homepage.
You have to add post, then set as featured post— essentially you are adding the same media two times.
It seems very inefficient and frankly I am a bit exasperated with wordpress themes.
Many of them seem to have blatant flaws with basic functions—- one for ex appears as a grid in the demo, but when you install and add posts it is only a single column.
One wordpress theme that also appears as a grid on the demo even says it is a single column. It is a blatant and immediate self contradiction- seeming to be a grid but admitting in the description that it is a single column.
It appears that WORDPRESS is trying desperately to have a gazillion themes in an effort to corner the market on themes as they have done on websites and blogs.
However they seem to have almost no oversight of the themes at all.
Some support forums for certain themes have unanswered questions for weeks, one of them for almost a year. The people who built the theme apparently abandoned it. WordPress has no mechanism in place for flagging those themes.
It is fairly obvious to me, even an IT idiot that I am, that WORDPRESS could if it WANTED TO, build a simple flagging trigger for unanswered support enquiries. Then, if a theme builder went off the grid, an alert could appear on a theme——-
They could also control it from WITHIN the website. For ex, sometimes I search within the website and cannot find a theme, but then go to the web and find it. Obviously WORDPRESS has removed it —- but they don’t say why. If they have removed a theme because it is flawed or unresponsive, they should have a text appear to that effect when you search within the website.
Otherwise you are just downloading old nonfunctioning themes.
Wordpress is trying TOO HARD to corner the theme market and NOT HARD ENOUGH to QC (quality control) that SPACE>
They are in a unique position with their website niche to really control theme quality. But instead they dropped the ball and we waste our time.
I have wasted a week looking at flawed themes and unresponsive support dept’s.
Anyway thank you and if you happen to know someone at WORDPRESS please let them know they need to really improve in this regard.