Why does my theme have strange weblinks in the dashboard?

[keyon]

I'm poking around in the dashboard of a blog I manage, and when I open the theme "appearance" panel, there's a very odd-looking link at the top of the page wrapped in an h4 tag. I can't think of any good reason why it should be there (I didn't put it there).

My WP Theme ---- homesweethome 3.5

The link at the top of the "appearance" panel --- Theme Page: Memphis Apartments (with a link to memphisapartmentstv dot com)

At first I thought the link was there for the purpose of showing me an example of the theme I'm using -- but that's not the case at all. The apartment blog doesn't even use the same theme.

What's going on?

[deepsand]

Theme developers frequently embed all sorts of links for their own purposes in their handiwork.

[keyon]

This stuff really irks me....it's bad enough I have to defend against all the comment spammers and hackers -- now I have to wonder what the theme developers are doing behind my back. I'm about ready to ditch the whole WP system and go back to static html.

[deepsand]

No different than the developer who embeds credits and links to himself in the footers and elsewhere on pages that are work for hire without permission from the client.

[pepnak]

I hope I downloaded the same version. If not, my references to the line numbers may be off.

You could eliminate the promotional line for Memphis Apartments by 'comment-ing' out line 118 of the file functions.php of the theme. The rest of the function containing this promotional line might actually be useful for customizing the theme to your site. This function is added on to the Appearance panel by an 'add_action' function on line 227.

Hope this was helpful.

[keyon]

Hope this was helpful.
Thanks, pepnak! I'll check it out.

[Ravenhawk]

If it is a free theme keep in mind there really is no such thing as a free lunch so you might also consider purchasing premium themes or donating to the theme developer before removing their link. Remember you often get what you pay for...