Posts by Kriesi

Although thats a good thing, its actually only part of the story. The 1.X branch will be in development for another 3-4 years at least so as a Theme Developers it doesnt really make much of a difference for us

Will unfortunately take a little more time for us to be able to drop ie8 support…

Sounds nice Only thing I am wondering: If you need a rating of 4.76 or higher to get a 5 star, will there be any 5 star items or authors left on the marketplace?

Welcome Sir

iHelp said

pixelentity said

iHelp said

ait said
if you sell 100% GPL licensed theme here on themeforest, you cannot charge for support nor updates. You sell a license and then you need to support and update the theme forever for free. No support fees, subscription fees, absolutely no difference to split licensed theme.

That’s not true, unless it’s sarcasm.

why not true ? that’s how TF works. In theory you could charge an extra for the support but i don’t think you would be allowed to advertise such service here.

In this particular case ait was saying “if the product is free, you have to support and update for free – for a lifetime” – it was not about bluntly advertising “free product – paid service”.

I don’t see the logic behind having to support a product for free forever – when support is not even obligated due to tf policy? Am I misunderstanding or being misunderstood?

I am with you on that one. You definitely dont need to do any support for your themes, either GPL or no GPL. GPL only says that the customer can do whatever he wants with the theme, and not that the author needs to support it or is not allowed to support it for an additional fee.

Pretty sure if you want to charge for access to your support forum thats fine. The real question is: how much competitive edge do you lose if basically every other author on TF offers Support for free?

doru said

Kriesi said
Since they were invited by Envato maybe they didn’t know about the restrictions or thought it is part of the deal to ignore them. In any case, if I were WooThemes I would of course link to my existing live preview and website to try to drive traffic to my site. Until proven otherwise I will give them the benefit of the doubt, since I sure as hell did not know that you are not allowed to advertise your own “marketplace” even if you are not exclusive. Reading the terms of use solves that but who on earth does that? ;D

VF said
Definitly not woothemes mistake.

you probably didn’t see their previews. Let me sum up. When you pressed the preview button there was the themeforest banner at the top with the purchase button. But then there was another banner from woothemes with another purchase button. If you clicked on the second one you get redirected to a page that offers different solutions to purchase the theme from woothemes website. Any of those solutions was better than the price you paid on themeforest. The themeforest banner remained displayed. In my opinion this would had created confusion, like give the impression that themeforest is a partner in that offer. Also is wrong, not morally correct from whatever point of view you can take this

There is a big difference in linking to your website, and authors are allowed to do it in their profile page for support and such, but there is another level to trick buyers in buying from you instead of the marketplace. And in fact, the marketplace rules clearly forbids this behavior and for a good reason.

I don’t think it was part of the deal with envato, else envato would had not disabled the items previews. Note that is not envato fault here if woothemes did this move.

And they knew about this rule, first they were authors here in the past and that rule I’m sure was present at the time. Also is a standard rule for every marketplace out there, and since they have a marketplace they clearly know about this.

Everyone those that. in fact most of us even exchange the themeforest banner with our own. I know there is a difference in linking back to themeforest or linking to your own site.

But as I said before, I am now on this marketplace for 4 years and I didn’t know about that rule. Why should they know? To assume they did, just from the fact that they sold some items 3 years ago, when the terms of use were completely different is simply unfair…

doru said

Kriesi said
I can see that its sometimes necessary to bend or break the rules but I simply dont see why this is the case here.

and woothemes they get this harsh welcome for a good reason. one shouldn’t forget they put a big button on their themes that redirects themeforest buyers to their marketplace where they offer a way better deal in terms of quantity to make up for the themes quality. This is really unforgivable and it was made on purpose. There is no “mistake” involved. So the harsh welcome is justified.

Since they were invited by Envato maybe they didn’t know about the restrictions or thought it is part of the deal to ignore them. In any case, if I were WooThemes I would of course link to my existing live preview and website to try to drive traffic to my site.

Until proven otherwise I will give them the benefit of the doubt, since I sure as hell did not know that you are not allowed to advertise your own “marketplace” even if you are not exclusive. Reading the terms of use solves that but who on earth does that? ;D

So overall I dont feel that this harsh welcome is justified. They simply built their landing pages and themes according to what they thought was best for them. It was Envatos fault to not review the items and pages thoroughly enough, especially when you think about the statement that they were submitted some time ago and were held back until the 100% GPL is in place. Plenty of time for Envato to educate WooThemes about their mistakes.

After reading the whole thread i have to say I have never seen a better example for the saying: “the way to hell is paved with good intentions”. Lets recap:

What Envato wanted to do:

• Offer Authors the possibility to sell their themes under 100% GPL. Makes GPL Advocates and Matt Mullenweg happy. Authors can now finally speak again at WordCamps: http://wpdaily.co/org-envato/
• Draw some attention to the fact that 100% GPL is supported now by inviting WooThemes to the marketplace
• Grow the marketplace by adding the Woo Theme Library.

In theory that sounds all good. How it tuned out:

• Neither a lot of authors nor customers care about or understand the 100% GPL. Lots of confusion.
• Authors are unhappy because:
  1. there is a new big direct competitor who gets a better deal out of this than any of the authors sticking to the marketplaces for the last years
  2. this competitor gets 30 themes approved that should not have been approved for reasons already mentioned
• WooThemes is unhappy because:
  1. They get bashed big time by half of the forum. Hardly a nice welcome.
  2. They dont sell very much on themeforest although receiveing a lot of attention. So lots of extra work with submitting themes, integrating envato api into their forum registration etc, and no extra income?
• Envato is unhappy because:
  1. They made their authors unhapy and now have to deal with a bazillion forum threads were everyone is complaining
  2. 100% GPL was supposed to be a great deal, but is hardly acknowledged because of the introduction-fiasco of WooThemes
  3. WooThemes with their 30 Themes doesnt make any money for them. Either because customers dont like the themes (indication that the review preocess was indeed “slopy”) or because all of the sales are happening directly at the WooThemes website. Whatever the case might be, it doesnt help envato grow.

Did I miss anything? Seems like a classic lose/lose/lose situation

By the way I am not really thrilled either by the fact that someone who abandoned the marketplace a few years back now gets a better deal than the authors who stayed and helped growing it. I can see that its sometimes necessary to bend or break the rules but I simply dont see why this is the case here.

doru said

designcrumbs said
Wow, thanks guys! I’m constantly amazed by our community. I was just drinking my morning coffee while reading what happened overnight (for me) and then I see the community “nominating” me. It was a pleasant surprise.

I see that some of your themes are now gpl. Can you explain more why you chosen to use this license?

Would be really silly to not be allowed to sell your own GPL licensed items elsewhere. What would make the most sense to me is that if you want to sell your items 100% GPL you forfeit your exclusive rights and become non-exclusive.

Thats also one of the options that would make sense from envatos point of view, since allowing exclusive authors to sell GPL themes elsewhere would simply lead to a few hundred new theme shops and marketplaces and some of them might even succeed

Actually I think WooThemes joining is less of a big deal than some might think. It already happened before that authors from other theme-shops joined with their full library, and as of now that didn’t work out all too well for any of them.

I think over time themeforest customers have come to expect certain kind of styles and features in our themes, none of which WooThemes are currently offering.

It might still work out for them, since they are obviously hugely successful with what they do, but it always seemed they are competing on other levels than those that made themeforest what it is today. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds, maybe they prove me wrong

What I am really curious is: did they really accept the usual terms of a non-exclusive author? Seems odd to sell an item on themeforest and in the end receive less than a fourth of what you get on your own homepage, when you already have such a big audience

Anyways, welcome on Themeforest, both WooThemes and 100%GPL ;D