Much thanks to Terry/Kineda for reviving the spirit of the WordPress 2.0 Theme Competition that was intended by the original competition (that was later discovered to be a hoax) by launching a new one at wordpressarena.com with trusted, named judges like Terry aka Kineda, James aka Shadow, Bryan Veloso aka Avalonstar, and Dan Cameron.

The hoax competition had a lot of juicy prizes associated with it (likely because none of them were ever actually going to be awarded to anyone seeing as how it was a hoax). Theme designers worked their butts off creating new WordPress 2.0 themes in an effort to win some of those excellent prizes. While the new WordPress Arena competition is offering an iPod shuffle to the overall winner, the runner up prizes of a year’s worth of hosting (which people aren’t necessarily likely to take advantage of, generous as it may be, as changing webhosts is quite a production) and a book on the Zen of CSS Design aren’t quite as tempting as the electronic and cash goodies these designers were originally promised as prizes.

So I ask the community: if you have the means, please help reward the designers for all of their hard work and sponsor the WordPress Arena 2.0 Theme Competition by donating some enticing prizes to be awarded. This would then allow for more categories for themes to be judged upon and more winners, as was promised in the original competiton that sadly turned out to be a scam.

These theme designers who submitted their hard work to the hoax competition must feel really scammed and taken advantage of. Let’s make them feel appreciated - honor them for their work. Surely there must be some companies or individuals who have the means to donate some more prizes (cash or otherwise) and be proud sponsors of the new WordPress 2.0 Theme Competition.

WordPress Arena has graciously extended the deadline for submission of themes to May 1st to a) allow for the time for more sponsors to get involved and then decide on judging criteria for the new prizes, and b) provide extra time for the many theme designers who got scammed to learn about the new theme competition so they can all get their submissions in and for the rest of us to spread the word about the new competition. Winners will be announced on May 15th, 2006.