Final 12 Entries WordPress Design Contest – Vote Now!

Looking forward to seeing Lorelei $2000 richer in 2 weeks! :)

Cheaters eh? :D

Im a member of an off topic forum and saw a post left by a member regarding this contest…

as a keen and at times freelance web designer/programmer i was interested and read the post…

the post made me aware of the contetest and the person was honest saying a friends work (Lorelei) is up for being voted on…

i was not told to specifically vote for her work and the link provided was for the main page and not a direct vote…

apon looking at the designs i did vote for Modern Magic as the “design” i felt was the best…

now having been part of both the design and programming parts of the web world i feel there have been grave mis-judgements to the works in hand

as the contest title says… this is a “Design” contest… my interpritation is then that i am judging the looks and feel of the blogs

i have worked freelance at over 90 different companies many of which being blue chip each have had a design department and web department.

the functionality and the coding of these sites is not in question, as like the companies i have visted and worked for the design teams knowledge of constructing a website/blog/cms is usually very basic if at all exsistant as its not part of or required for there job…

anyways im now rambling on i apologise! lol

if cheating has and most likely taking place (and sed suggestions regarding links to direct voting and proxys being used is all very easy also its easy to use anonymous website forwarding thus different/fake ips given) is very sad and should inherit a ban/disqualification!

i apologise for my lack of grammer, poor punctuation, most probably shorthand/txt talk and spelling mistake but im in a rush although felt i had to comment!

thanks for reading.. and good luck to all entries!

Michal might win but having looked at all of these forums, his is no better than what I can do with a Tabulis forum. If my wife, a graphics Designer, produced that design, as a professional, she would loose her job.

Okay Michal, it’s mindless, you just keep attacking me and I think unjustly. Either you are too sensitive, or just don’t fully understand what I say. I never said you cheated, if what I suggested sounded like a direct accusation in your address, then that’s a good sign if paranoia ;)

Btw, for the 3rd time: the “funny” part, just like my one and only initial comment targeted at YOU personally, refer to the fact that you first asked for votes everywhere, then got to lead, and THEN complained that others will do the same, suggesting that it won’t be fair. Yes, I find it funny; we all asked for votes but somehow managed to live with the fact that others did the same. It’s like to come and participate in a sport competition yet complain that your competitor is better trained… Anyway, didn’t we mill over this subject enough by now..?

If LP didn’t gain enough publicity with this contest, they sure got plenty of unique written content here :P

Hmmmm, ok..since we decide to go full of sarcasm and cynism, and winks incinerating enough.

I want to add something to my last response as well, where YOU brought the personal factor in…

**checks first if I indeed are logged in as Captain now and not as Lorelei or any other**

What does a personal relation with a contender has to do with the comments which are made?
Everyone knows it, a stranger to someone would not even bother to go into it, but just say: ok, that theme won, allthough i gave my vote to another.

If I know Lorelei personally, or just from online, or even if she was my girlfriend or wife, it does not make sense why that should be an issue.
But for sure, if I wouldnt have told you, I bet a link to some threads in Lorelei’s forum would have been brought up, because you are a member there to, wow…the “truth” revealed, shocking news: Captain knows Lorelei.
Happy it got revealed now?
What does it say? who does it a favour? What was your purpose for asking me that?

Oh, and I am not Lorelei’s manager, because if I was for sure she would have known as soon as i advertized for her on any other site, may it be high or low traffic, and not having to find out “later” ;)

Friends help friends when they THINK unjustice is done, now you are the “winner” and you dont need defense but wanna bet when Lorelei or someone else would have such a vote-increase pattern in the last hours of the battle (in OUR europen time that is) YOUR friends would have complaint also? Even when they dont have “proof” just like no-one has here, but simply by stating their findings and raising a SUSPICION.

ps. you calculated with 20k visitors from that soccer, while in fact it was 14759, I could do some math-calculation now and compare it with ctr from any other sites and say something about it, but lets not.

Whats next? Saying that Lorelei’s “team” or community,as you call it,has been doing some major vote-increase on your theme to get you disqualified?
In case you do, read first the previous comments I gave the solution already for in case that happend and on what Lunar should do with that.

Been watching the movie “conspiracy theory” lately, or investigated the “complot” against JFK?

PS. Lunar, I know I maybe got a bit personal too with this comment, and will have no problems with it when you decide to remove it.
But when a person asks me a personal question, I think I can reply in a personal way as well and i thought/hope have that right
It might be wisefull as well, to close the auto-approving commenting on this topic, and only manual approve comments, because I am stil behaving now…..lol

We brought up SUSPICIONS, nowhere did i say that you have CHEATED.
You are sure you have won fair, we arent, so why are you pushing yourself to look like a victim now?

Michal, this is why I said in my first comment after the poll was closed, that I did NOT want to respond on this at all, assuming you’d come and say “hahaha you were defeated and just envious!”.

So first of all, I don’t think I “lost” because: A. I will probably get the 2nd prize and it’s also very honorable. B. I got unbelievable support from people allover the world helping and encouraging me, leaving positive feedback and commenting on my designs and that means more to me than cash. C. Unfortunately, I didn’t lose to a “better theme” so it won’t shake my confidence. ;)

Not to mention that regardless the outcome, this contest gave my designs an enormous exposure and weather I will get ANY prize or not, I am really grateful to LP for this opportunity. And you should be too.

I remember over a week ago, when Modern Magic went from 175 to 240 in 5 hours (and that was the same day after it went up on Digg.com!) – you directly brought this issue up, because 11 votes per hour seemed abnormal and fake to you. So why are you surprised that to me, and many others, 200 votes per hour seemed like an atypical blast?

And where, if I may ask, “Lorelei lied in her thread”? Or are you going to say that I asked for votes in my own forum, and that is oh so unethical, what if others did it too? How unfair, Michal eh. Good thing you moaned about it right from the start.

And again, you contradict yourself. You said you had banners on “too” many sources which explains the voting fever, however, only on one (if I understood correct – football site) it was removed after a few hours, so how come ALL votes for your theme stopped? That would be a real conspiracy if people from all the other multiple sources would stop voting for you for over 4,5 hours after seeing you reached exactly 200 above me? It doesn’t make sense that visitors were casting a vote every few seconds and then all of a sudden discontinued.

If you know for sure that all your votes are 100% real (although I think none of the contenders can’t give that guarantee, we all have supporters who can give us an unwanted “favour”), why do you feel attacked upon every post? You don’t have to defend yourself Michal, LP said they will investigate, and logs are better witnesses than words so I am sure you can remain calm. Besides, you keep reading wrong into my words. I DIDN’T say you cheat, how can I say that? Based on what? …all I said was: you tried to come up with an *explanation* of your votes’ storm and I *personally* don’t think it clarifies the votes’ pattern. I could be wrong, I am not God almighty.

Oh and, well spotted btw. Captain, Lorelei, Kalina, Soldier, Dan, Ben, Rescuer, Mike, Master are all my aliases. I just tend to post from different nicks sometimes. In fact, this is my blog and contest, so I’m more inclined to give the prize to myself and not to you. Hope that clears it all.

Now, I will appreciate if the flood of insults in my address will stop, I don’t think I gave you a reason for that.

Why has lorelei lied in her thread btw?Why has Lorelei gained more than 100 votes in single day(before cca300 votes in 2 weeks)? Nobody has replied on it. When I was blamed for cheating I had’nt clue that it was my friends site. Than he wrote it, his name is Milos, so read his post please. I wasnt here that time after this big voting stopped, but than in about a few hours I saw that I gained a lot of votes as well as you. And why should I always now 2 weeks defend me? I have said everything what is true, now let the other people investigate all votes ;) I know I havent obtain votes by cheating or by other black way, so I am calm ;)
And btw , who are you Captain? Lorelei’s friend, manager, or even Lorelei personally? ;)

And the votes havent suddenly stopped after advertisement was removed. I gained votes after than as well as you. I think noone saw it because everyone was surprised of my inceasement of votes…
This is I think reasonable explanation.

They did, and a lot of people seen that, at 751 your incoming votes stopped for a few hours.
I hope Lunar will take a extra good look what happend 3 hours before you reached that ammount until a few hours after you reached that ammount, they will see also that you didnt gain any votes over that time

What I also dont understand is why in your first defense after their were several complaints made here, you didnt directly say about your friends site and came with that a few comments later, you just said no cheating, no proxies, if I had to defend myself when I am falsly (?) blamed I would directly tell it all and especially not forget to mention a huge traffic site I had a banner on.

On that evening your voting looked like a bucket of water, you fill it and turn it around, all water falls out, and not a single drop afterwards.
Natural is, turn the bucket around, water falls out and it will stay dripping drops for some time to come.
Also remember that during the day you got at least 3-4 votes each hour mostlikli form other sites/forums where it was promoted, after 751 nothing anymore, can be because of the threads on several forums dropped from view, but the main issue remains big boost of votes, and it just stopped as if the poll was closed, there was no flow.

It is well known that in the final hours of every single open voting contest, someone will try and pull a trick and hope it doesnt get noticed.
Because which fool would actually sit behind a computer and watch how the final stages of a voting contest evolve, well….sometimes I am one of them.

Again Lunar, please have a good look at votes received from about 3-4 hours the 751 count was reached, until 3-4 hours after, and notice the oddness in the situation comparing it with the whole voting-cycle.

Lorelei, I think you cant understand it because you lose. Who lose have rights to be angry. But you have rights to complain as well. You have gained more than 100 votes in that single day as well, I maybe 3 times more than you in that same day.

It doesnt matter what kind of site it is, if someone want to vote (support me, not other themes) he will click on it and vote for my theme. Maybe they clicked on your theme as well thats because you gained more than 100 votes in that day ;) Other themes had not many votes so very few votes were going to them.(it was only “fight” between your and my theme).

But all the votes that I had in exactly that day I had from (too) many sources. You write it as I had all votes from 1 site…

And the votes havent suddenly stopped after advertisement was removed. I gained votes after than as well as you. I think noone saw it because everyone was surprised of my inceasement of votes…
This is I think reasonable explanation.

And if you dont believe me, I can make it 2nd time , everyone can look on that site and again on increasing number of votes… ;) But let the LP team to investigate this.

And Lorelei, on that football site was 15-20k UNIQUE visitors/day so many much page views, just count how many unique visits in that 4 or how many hours, 4 hours make 5k unique visits + votes from another sites which makes also many votes and as I said before vote wasnt only from that site.
Youre right if I had it on the biggest WordPress site I would definetely gain maybe 1000 votes in that few hours… But this was a football related site so I gained not so much votes.

Anyway , Lorelei , why are you still looking for some reason? I know why… I would maybe do it also with my friends if I was in another position.

Dan I can say you that everyone likes something else. Not everyone think that the Modern Magic is the best, not everyone think that Daisy Dream is the best.

Dan please at first read all the comments, how can you say again I’m a cheater? Than I can blame Lorelei as a cheater aas well ;) think about it ( more than 100 votes for lorelei in single day and more than 300 in a few weeks )
btw my entry didnt started to fall back as you said. I dont know where you saw it but everytime I was in the lead or Lorelei ( both with max.20 votes lead ).
Why should LP staff do it as you said? Because you dont like my theme I know… Never mind at the start again it was stated that maybe not the best design will win, and now this is here.

Darin, maybe some people from that football site voted for another themes ( for lorelei’s, only because there was a competition between us , if will someone vote for another theme he will be maybe stupid ).

Darin you’ve got various people, someone is glad to support and someone is not. Maybe footbal fans like to support my theme more than Lorelei’s because its more oriented on something what has with football in common than ModernMagic…

Darin, that I think was in this case not possible to vote direct for my theme from banner.

I wouldn’t make any posts here anymore, because as I said before it is a waste of time… Let the LP staff investigate all votes. ;)

Okay, what I am going to add is based on dry marketing analysis, anyone who has advertised before in their life will know what I mean, others can just try to follow and I hope I can explain my point it well.

There is such a term as “relevant traffic” and “irrelevant traffic” — and visitors from soccer/freebies site to wordpress oriented site is definitely irrelevant traffic. While an advert for free soccer wallpapers COULD work on a wp themes page, because that leads from narrow webmasters niche to wide entertainment / freebies niche (and entertainment niches cover a bigger percentage of online surfers), when it’s the other way around, it’s quite surprising. If you are interested in downloading free football wallpapers, how fat is the chance you are also interested in web design >> blogging, wordpress in particular? So potential % of visitors from so to speak “irrelevant” site can’t possibly be huge unless they all suffer from unhealthy curiosity. (Again, Adsense will get clicks, because it displays relevant-to-the-content ads.)

But we are assuming one *did* click on the wp banner, and went to the Lunar Pages blog. Okay, so you are there. You need to scroll down about 5 pages until you see the poll and there are pictures and written content on the way that can distract. You might not even know where the poll is and close the tab. But you are patient and did search for the poll. By the time you located it, do you remember who the banner ordered you to vote for..? And if you do remember, but liked someone else’s design, you still completely disregard your own will..?

Well… evidently 350 people last night followed exactly this path. And that means (dividing the traffic by the hours ), every 7th visitor came here to *vote* for only one theme.

People might be “loyal” in forums but Like Darin say, why would they vote for someone following an advert just because they were told? It could be a mere spam after all, they cannot know it.

I am not saying it couldn’t potentially bring votes, of course it could, but considering that at some point when I was only 9 votes away, there was a real a shower of them, I think to justify such a percentage of votes you had to advertise on a much higher traffic site, and slightly more relevant to the niche.

Moreover, if you say a lot of people supported you on webmasters boards, those your posts, I guess, were posted earlier and weren’t removed suddenly, so it remains an enigma why after you reached 751 votes (precisely 200 ahead of me) the votes for your theme stopped for more than 4 hours completely.

While many things can have a reasonable explanation, just like others, THIS is what I totally fail to understand.

I don’t know, maybe it was luck that I received so much votes and probably at that time I had banner there when there was the highest traffic. But anyway let the LP staff to investigate this.

And I have votes from some forums with loyal members that want to help to other people ( onlajneri(dot)com, etc).

I would like to thank to all people they have give me their votes and they helped me.

Hi all, seems like the comments section is overheating, so allow me to have a say as well.

I had seen the rather unusual blast of votes last night, it was hard not to notice, but I didn’t want to comment because others would have said I just want to push a “competitor” out of my way. That’s not true, I feel really really bad about the better designs in this contest that was left behind and didn’t gather enough votes for any prize, such as ‘Spa’, ‘One Winged Angel’ and ‘Light’. I believe ModernMagic is not bad, but these 3 had to be in (on?) the lead. These are the themes you’d see widely used by tons of bloggers.

“Lorelei made a banner as well”.

May I comment on this, Michal?
Yes, on the last I made blog posts calling people to vote on most of my highest traffic blogs, and I have a network of them, some receive up to 2,000 visitors a day (+ pinged it to 50 servers and friends helped me with social bookmarks). I also put a banner up on my own forum, which receives over 3,000 uniques daily. Moreover I bumped it in all the high-traffic forums and the result is, over 8 hours I managed to gather about 100 votes or so. So out of thousandSSS of people who viewed my banners, only very small percentage actually did go and vote (for me). And this is, IMHO, a natural percentage, pretty much equivalent to Adsense or any other advertising CTR.

You got about 200 votes (not only visits!) in less than an 1 hour, so I can only assume you put your banner on one of the highest traffic sites on the internet to get such a “CTR”. While this is possible, reasonable and understandable, judging by the tendency, that would mean if you left the banner up for 24 hours there, you’d have got almost 4800 votes more? If this is the case, I guess we all will seriously consider advertising our sites there. I see on Andrej’s and your own site the banner is still up so probably this was not the main source of votes. Don’t get me wrong I am not blaming or accusing anyone, there is a big chance that, additionally to the fantastic exposure opportunity, one of your fiends just wanted to “help” you with the voting, and believe me, I am not protected from it either, I can’t guarantee that all my votes are authentic, because a lot of people wholeheartedly wished I’d win and there is no guarantee any of them didn’t “help” out of best intentions. That’s why I am really happy to see that LP staff will look into it, believe me, I’d not want to win in a dirty way and compromise my reputation. 1k + 5 years of hosting is a very generous prize, but I am not going to rip anyone’s throat for it. period.

Anyway, let’s not forget that LP is a *hosting* company and there are countless ways of checking things through. If like you say the blast of votes came though this football site, means at these hours there was min. 200+ unique visitors to this page from that site. Proxies or scripts, as far as I know, have no “referring” URL.

Thanks once again to everyone who supported me and chose to give their vote for ModernMagic, and thanks to LP staff for going into so much hassle and checking things for the sake of the contenders.

Liza

I have answered it but unfortunately you havent understand it in that question, which was my 2nd sentence.

It seems that there are votes that have been casted after my friend has removed the banner. If you had a site with so many uniques and the adsense banner there , it would be better for you to make on my advertisement (instead of adsense) thousands of votes, or to earn on adsense a lot of money in 1 day? So therefore I had there my advertisement only a few hours… Everyone would make it so, if he could earn so much on adsense and would help me with votes as well…

On the banner was : “Please support Daisy dream WordPress theme by Michal Uhrin. Thanks!” I think it was written in certain way, not as on my site wptemplates(dot)org… But doesn’t matter. My friend has managed it all.

I have already wrote that you can check that big site here:
extremetracking.com/open?login=lbcfootw
It’s my friend’s football related website. The status of visitors you have on the link I wrote you.
I could have my banner there on the top where now adsense is only for a few hours, because if I had it all the time I would have more thousands votes… As well another themes would have many more votes than. And this site was also the last intension, the idea that I have seen at first on Lorelei’s site, than my friend offered me his help.

That page has around 20 000 unique visitors / day…
extremetracking.com/open?login=lbcfootw

Our websites receive over 300 unique visitors daily who are looking for WordPress themes, so it seems like the banners have worked. It was the intention to try the banners on last minute.

so about every visitor single visitor has voted?and visited your site in that amazing outburst of votes
Great, support….hehe

I know Lorelei has a banner on her own forum which has over 10k members, and she didnt manage to get even close to get 300 votes from it I think.

Stil doesnt explain why the incoming votes came to such an abrupt stop 1-2-300——-0, or did all thoose sites all go down due to server-issues?Just before central european midnight, allthough Lunar is in the USA and I think they have a “other” midnight then we have in Europe.

Will just post my findings from yesterday without blaming anyone here:

Yesterday,
Around 15:00 CET ModernMagic was leading with about 10 votes.
Around 16:00 CET Daisy Dream was leading with about 50-60 votes
Around 21:00 CET Daisy Dream was leading with about 10 votes
Around 23:30 CET Daisy Dream was leading with exactly 200 votes, precise number of votes 751
Around 03:00 CET today Daisy Dream was stil on 751, ModernMagic had maybe gained 10 votes over that time.

What I wonder about, if you started such a huge final campaign for promoting your theme, how come your votes STOPPED at 751 exactly (ModernMagic was at 551) at that time, so exactly 200 votes ahead.
Normally when people start a final campaign you would expect a natural outflow of votes.
A lot of votes when you launch it, and slowly the vote-income should decrease.
Daisy Dream went as a rocket to 751, after that NO vote for about 3-4 hours (after that I went to sleep…lol), now 8-9 hours later it only gained 7 votes more.

You would expect after you launch a campaign, that incoming votes just NOT stop as if someone closed the poll, but that slowly the vote-icome should decrease.

I didnt blame you directly, but I thought considering what I seen happening (and I was not the only one), we had the right to bring it under the attention of the Lunar-staff.
If you did it fair, you did very good, and deserve to win based on your campaigning.
But I will have my doubts forever, because it does not look natural at all.

Also, why do you have to mention Lorelei again?Where did she comment?
300 votes in 200 minutes, thats 1,5 vote a minute, then you and your friend must have some HIGH traffic sites, can we get the urls and maybe some traffic statistics over that period of time?

Luckly Lunar is going to investigate this issue, and if they cant find any suspicious, sad, but so be it.
But when they do find something, lets hope we have a fair winner, let it be the one with the BEST design or the one with the biggest online family or campaign

Hello,
I am Michal Uhrin manager and I must tell to you that all his votes are clear. We place some ad on site http://www.football-wallpapers.com/ yesterday and he get big number of votes from visitors of that site. Please check stats of that site: http://t.extreme-dm.com/?login=lbcfootw. How you can see football-wallpapers.com have about 15000 unique visitors and about 60000 page views.

Thanks,
Milos