Kick The Tires [Hard] When Purchasing Wordpress Themes

I recently purchased a Wordpress theme over at Digitalpoint forums and it's been an experience.  I have purchased a few uncoded templates in the past but never a fully coded theme until now.

Let me just say that I know it's not an easy job to develop a Wordpress theme.  There's a lot that goes into the process and it's very, very easy to overlook a few details.  There are a few stones that should never go unturned...never, never, never:

1. Make certain that your theme works in ALL major browsers.
2. If there are browser specific issues with the theme DO NOT suggest that they are easily hacked to support all browsers. Especially when the hack is a half-hearted work around.
3. If you plan on including a feed - twitter for example - don't use a block of javascript code that chokes the living shit out of IE6. Instead try the fetch_rss() function. It's much more friendly.
4. Ensure that attention to detail is a priority. Doing so will save you from selling a theme with links (the natural kind found within a paragraph) with a font-size set to really, really BIG.
5. And last but not least - Include all of the "standard" php files (eg: archive.php).

The original design was absolutely amazing. A beautiful use of transparency and ajax...very web 2.0. Due to IE6's inability to handle transparent png's used as repeating background images, I was force to eliminate much of what made the design unique and appealing. Unfortunately, design is where the greatness ceased.

For those looking to buy a theme - do take your time checking out the theme and developer. Most people who deliver "digital goods" do NOT offer refunds so it's important to get it right the first time. At the very least, ensure that support is available should you need some help.

Rant complete