Blogging Tips – Who Is Linking Out Of Your Free Theme?
Do you use free themes in either your website or blog? There are literally thousands of free WordPress themes available and while 99% of them are quite safe to use, there is that little minority that could be harming your blog. The WordPress community is full of blogging tips – just look at your Dashboard every time you log in. That is where today’s blogging tip comes from.
Free themes may be free when it comes to money. They are not free when it comes to outgoing links. Most themes, whether custom made or free, have a link to the creator, generally in the footer section. Free themes often have two or three links in the footer and some of these links may even be paid links. Yes – you can buy link space in a free themes footer.
Today’s question then is do you know who you are linking to in your themes footer? Have you ever clicked through to follow the link? You may be surprised at who you are actually linking to.
There is a WordPress plugin available that will check the themes on your site and report back on the number of static links found in the code. Note – these are the links that are written into the themes code – not links from posts or widgets that you may have put in place.
The Theme Authenticity Checker also checks for Base64 code. This is the code that is generally used to mask the spammy type links that you probably don’t want your site associated with. These are the links you need to find and remove.
The plugin is easy to install and run. I was surprised on one site I checked to find seven external links written into the code. All were harmless and lead to legitimate sites, but do you want every one of your pages linking to an additional seven sites? Probably not. Leave the link for the theme developer in place – they are entitled to that link.
Of course, the best solution is to have a theme custom built. That way you know that all the links coming out of your site are the ones you planned for. You can always run the Theme Authenticity Checker anyway just be to sure.
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