Thinking about getting a Wordpress site? Thinking about grabbing a free template?

Don't.

Wordpress is a wonderful platform and for people who want a DIY site for their new small business, hobby, or club it's a great place to start. For a content/blogging based site it's perfect.

And it's free.

The Wordpress platform comes at such a low cost (other than your domain name and hosting), it's tempting to carry on and download one of the 1000's of free templates out there.

This article Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else explains in detail why this is a very bad idea.

Complete with screen shots of dodgy code, if you want to skip to the bottom the article writer found that 8 out of the top 10 search results had free templates that contained dodgy if not down right malicious code.

The idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch still stands.

While you can get lots of good advice and there's a few free tools that are worthwhile (Google Analytics being an example), most of the time there is either an ulterior motive such as some of the sites mentioned above or they have severe limitations.