I have always picked up my wordpress themes from wordpress.org, but recently, a friend turned my onto a wordpress theme site that's not official. No big deal, and the site is fantastic!
I hate sticking anything on my box unless I do a cursory review of the code as I did with a theme I just installed for a few new sites. What I found in the footer is listed below (except that I replaced the feed url with my own for testing):
Code:
<div class="feedx">
<?php
require_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss-functions.php');
get_rss('http://tweakedoutthemes.com/feedmenow.xml', $num = 2);
?>
</div>
Here is the section of the style sheet that contains the class 'feedx':
Code:
.feedx {
position:absolute;
overflow:hidden;
left:1px;
top:1px;
width:0px;
height:0px;
z-index:0;
}
What this little bit of code does is grabs a feed from the author's site and places it in the footer of your site. So, the author can place any type of link on your site he/she likes! (even site promoting, well, you know).
The author even styled the links so they appear off the page (hidden), so you would never even see the links unless you looked at the code.
What's the harm in that you ask, after all, the links are hidden anyway, right? Well, link to the wrong site and you could end up getting removed from a search engine's index for linking to bad sites (read - no more traffic!). Same can happen for hiding links like this.
So, make sure you review your theme (or ask me to do it for you) if you get it from a site other than wordpress. This Wordpress Theme Scam is dead wrong, especially when no warning is given to the person downloading it!
By the way, a better looking method would have been:
Code:
<?php
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$rss = fetch_rss($uri);
// Get RSS Feed(s)
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$rss = fetch_rss('http://tweakedoutthemes.com/feedmenow.xml');
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 2);
foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>
<a href='<?php echo $item['link']; ?>'
title='<?php echo $item['title']; ?>'>
<?php echo $item['title']; ?>
</a> ·
<?php endforeach; ?>
12-29-2007,
Wordpress Theme Scam
Linear Mode
