WordPress themes, and assumed responsibility

I’ve had a number of emails recently about an Islamic website that is using my free WordPress theme – Regulus. People have been emailing assuming that, because I designed the theme, I am a terrorist.

I can’t actually comment on the website as none of the emails (or blog comments!) have actually explained anything – the authors jumping straight into threats and accusations, but the fact that they have found me because of the theme and automatically accuse me without checking their facts surprises and upsets me.

This is not the first time I have been emailed about websites that use my theme, previously I have had people contact me because they want to get in touch with someone using my theme who doesn’t have a contact page. Generally a short response explaining the situation is enough, but I don’t like the idea that people are jumping to these conclusions.

For the time being I am going to change the theme so that the credit in the footer says something like “theme downloaded for free from Binary Moon” but this won’t solve the problem for all the old blogs using my theme. This seems to be a case of 1% of the people, the vocal minority, ruining things for the other 99% (or 0.01% for 99.99%?).

In a perfect world there would be no terrorism, or racial/ religious hatred but we don’t live in a perfect world. I don’t want to stop creating themes but things like this put me off.

Whilst writing this post I received an email letting me know that the website in question was featured on Fox news in the US.