Fast forward a couple years and I went to upgrade my server to PHP 7.2. I did this first in my staging environment and the website broke. The theme could not handle the new version of PHP, which is much faster and more secure.
I went to the Themeforest website and told the author that the theme breaks with PHP 7.2. I didn’t hear back and a few days later noticed they took the theme down. I emailed them and they said it was too expensive to keep the theme up.
So I am writing this post to warn you to be careful of theme authors that don’t support their theme and abandon projects.
Here are some of the warning signs:
Sometimes in an effort to be original, we try new themes. The problem is unless it’s a good company; the theme may come and go very quickly. So I tend to like themes that are popular, but have tons of configuration settings. Most of the new page builders allow you a lot of latitude in what you want to do, so there’s no reason your site has to look like a duplicate of someone else’s using the same theme.
Suggestion for Theme Sellers: Minimum standards are needed. When a theme author takes down a theme they should be required to announce a theme is being discontinued and they should have to support the theme for a minimum amount of time. I would say 3-6 months.
Bottom Line: Do your research; check out the theme you will use carefully as well as the theme author. A few minutes of research up front will save you agony down the road when a theme is abandoned.
