[uf-discuss] Theme designer woes

[Chris Messina]

This seems to be a citation issue... since we need to be able to cite
the author of a theme, just like you use blockquote to cite the
creator of a photo or piece of text.

Scoping becomes an issue quickly, as rel="designer" could apply to a
local widget in the sidebar or to the entire theme; additionally, for
open source themes that are customized, links are often left to give
credit to the source even if that original author isn't responsible
for the derivative works.

I wonder if this is really an issue for rel-license, where in linking
to the creator of the theme, you also link to the license -- in that
way making it optional to filter out links that go back to the author
in the context of a license block.

Alternatively, there's already a mechanism for this, which designers
won't really like (I know I wouldn't, but those default links are a
form of false-linking), and that's a general good-behavior agreement
to mark up themer links with rel-nofollow.

Just a few thoughts.

Chris

On 8/4/06, Andy Skelton <skeltoac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi again uf-discuss! I came across rel="designer" in a WordPress blog
> theme and it struck me that this could help alleviate the problem of
> artificially high numbers of incoming links causing some blogs to be
> banned from ranking services such as Technorati.
>
> This could be improved to encompass more default links, as Tantek
> suggests below. I'm interested in what this list can add.
>
> Andy Skelton
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Tantek Çelik <tantek at tantek.com>
> Date: Aug 3, 2006 5:27 PM
> Subject: Re: Theme designer woes
> To: Andy Skelton <skeltoac at gmail.com>
>
>
> Andy, I agree that this is definitely a problem, not only for theme
> designers but also for the "lead developers" like Matt who are in the
> blogroll by default.  Matt is one of my good friends, and this problem has
> been perplexing me pretty much since I started at Technorati :(
>
> Your suggestion of using a rel value to indicate that the link goes to the
> designer of the template is an interesting one.
>
> I'm wondering if we should have some more generic term that indicates that
> the link was part of the template, and thus could apply it to other links.
>
> Would you mind if we moved this discussion to the microformats-discuss
> mailing list?  I would prefer to develop this microformat out in the open.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tantek
>
>
> On 8/3/06 11:43 AM, "Andy Skelton" <skeltoac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Tantek,
> >
> > At WordPress.com we're trying to tackle the problem of theme designers
> > being banned from Technorati. We made the first move by adding
> > rel="designer" to the links in the theme footers. Is this something
> > you can use?
> >
> > If you do find this useful, we'll push for broad adoption among designers.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Andy
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>


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Chris Messina
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