Why you should avoid themes that come bundled with plugins – a $15 value!

kora

Bundled plugins usually don’t include automatic updates. Unfortunately most theme buyers only find out after they get hacked.

 

Who loves a $60 theme with free page builder and slider more than the site owner? The web designer. Their single investment gives them hundreds of possible combinations, all without writing a single line of code. Sites are not purpose-built any more. They are adapted from the starting theme design, limited by the web designer’s grasp of the page builder and slider, his creativity (and technical knowledge).

But all those possible combinations, all the features that came along with the theme add up to bloat. And that bloat translates to WooCommerce complaining that templates are out of date. Or slow performance because the site is carrying along a hundred other templates and features it doesn’t need.

So the website owner buys a website from the web designer, not knowing of all these issues. The site is left to grow outdated as it is not kept updated with new versions of the page builder and/or slider plugin. Then the inevitable security vulnerability rears it’s head. Visual Composer and Revolution Slider were both affected fairly recently, the latter indirectly compromising up to 100,000 sites.

The website owner realizes that their site is hacked, leading to panicked messages like the above.

So, don’t buy themes with bundled plugins. If you do, buy licenses for them to keep them updated.

And if you’re a web designer for gods sake take the time to educate your customer you lazy bastard.


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