I’ve used themes from envato for three years now, and during this time 2 of these themes have been removed from the store. This is somewhat catastophic, since Wordpress keeps getting updates and the theme doesn’t. And suddenly changing your appearance with a new theme isn’t always a good thing.
So I have two questions for you theme authors out there:
What’s the most common reason for which themes are removed from the market place by you?
How can we, your customers, feel some security that the theme won’t dissapear whenever? Do you have any insider pointers/tips to help us choose more wisley?
Idealy, I would like to have the same theme for a minimum of 3-4 years. Today I’m not sure it will last for even one year…
Some authors have lack of support team and developers team to update wordpress themes regulary and provide dedicated support. Some authors has many freelance Wordpress developers who work for one theme and don’t carry on for further themes that’s why the author can’t provide updates, bug fixes and support.
If the theme is removed from store, you can contact with author at forum or via author contact form and demand for updated version of the theme.
My suggestion to Envato that it should provide download link to buyers when author removes its item from marketplace.
Thanks for your reply! Your second point about contacting the author and demanding an updated version; surley the author have no obligation to do this for the customers?
Perhaps a solution to the problem is that after a certain number of sales (say 1000), the author is obligated to keep the theme updated for atleast two years. What’s your take on this idea?
The author has the obligation to provide updates to make it compatible with latest version of Wordpress and supported plugins. Although my suggestion for buyers is, they should upgrade Wordpress or Plugin until they get the update version of theme.
Author should not be obligated to give the update till specific period as Wordpress doesn’t stop giving the updates. Author must provide updates always
As a big buyer and someone well connected to authors on here - answers are:
Q1 - often personal circumstances, lack of time, unable to provide necessary support etc (rarely legal issues) and a lot changes in 3-4 years in web development.
Q2 - buy from very established authors helps but far from always any better than newbie ones.
Envato can’t allow updates or downloads post removal because they don’t own the files.
If envato adjusted their model around this then it would drive some authors away and have a negative impact on the wider marketplace. Even if buyer could still download the latest version there is no guarantee it will be compatible with the latest WP.
The bottom line is of corse it is frustrating if a file is removed but:
just like with anything in life you (to a point) will always get wage you pay for. A full WP theme like what we see here from an agency, which is likely to be more secure long term, would be thousands of $ let alone retainer fees to keep support and updates on going.
just like e.g. a TV - if the manufacturer removed a model then it may be hard to fix in the future and You would need to pay for an engineer to help you, as would be he case of you hired a developer to update and fix a theme with issues.
Getting something this valuable for $50 comes with considerations like authors removing files.
We’ve bought hundreds if not into the thousands of files and only around 10% have been removed so we’ve been lucky.
