It has been a very busy month in the web design community I belong to. To cut a long story short, OWD fell out of favour with most of its long-time supporters when the new owner inserted advertising links in the submitted templates without the permission of the designers. He followed this up by taking the forum offline.
Needless to say, rumours flew thick and fast as to what exactly was going on with OWD. The forum and its members have always been the backbone of OWD. Which was probably why they weren’t going to lie back and take it.
And thus was born OpenDesigns.org, which is, to quote:
a community owned and managed site, where users can share their free website designs and templates, discuss web design, and promote their services. OpenDesigns.org is owned and operated by The Open Design Community, a nonprofit organization headed by a board of 3 administrators and 10 moderators.
In a frantic few weeks, the three site admins, Lobsterman, SeanRox and Christopher, have done a terrific job of setting up the site. A contest is under way for the site’s design. Already there are over 150 free templates for download, and the forum is as active as ever.
It seems we are well on our way! 🙂
~PD
Thank goodness! You guys would not take any of that crap, and the new owner should have realized. 😛
Drama in open web design? Say it isn’t so!
And how! It just proves that drama can happen anywhere!! 🙄
*despairs*
Drama.