Happy Holidays from Theme House, you're BANNED!

[SneakyDave]

Mike Creuzer from Audentio / Hex Themes / Theme House / Nova Web Design / LaundryMate must have a bee in his bonnet a comment I made about his business practices.

 

I recently logged into Theme House to update a few styles for my XenForo sites, and noticed a big "You've been banned" message on my account.

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I thought this was pretty strange considering I have a number of licenses with Audentio / Theme House for a number of years. I'm not even really sure when this banning took place. I really don't understand what I might have said that pissed off The Creuzer so much, but I'll get into that a little bit below.

 

This banning is pretty severe, I can no longer view my invoices, tickets, licenses, purchases, or even account information.

 

Although I'm banned, Theme House has no problems sending me exciting spam updates of their XenForo 2.0 products, or spam about the ForumApp that (I think) they are reselling. It was as recently as December 8th that I pointed out that their pricing for the ForumApp was confusing, and got a prompt response from Mike.

 

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On another occasion, I replied to a promotional email about how excited they were about their XenForo 2.0 styles that were in development. I commented in one of those emails that I hope they get that nasty bug fixed on "relative post dates", or whatever they were called in their XenForo 1.x styles, that hadn't been fixed in about 2 years or so. I got a kind reply on that email too that it was an oversight they had with the FireFox browser.

 

These few emails are about the only communication I've had with Theme House / Audentio in a few months, I'm not sure if something in one of them cause me to be banned or what happened.

 

I emailed Theme House, and sent a PM to Mike Creuzer, but as of yet, haven't received any response.

 

Mike Creuzer has a history of being a loose cannon and immature when he faces criticism for any of his business practices. I've been one of the many individuals that have questioned some of the things he's done, usually in threads on XenForo.com. Most of the time, these threads start off with Mike talking about how amazing his products are, and "welcomes input" as to their progression. Eventually Mike gets uncomfortable with the customer comments in these threads, and requests the thread to be closed and/or removed from view. Sometimes, before the thread deletion, Mike will go on and on about how many mouths he has to feed, owning his own business, which falls on deaf ears.

 

Following are some of the things I've been critical about, or questioning, regarding Audentio / Theme House, and may have contributed to my banning. If anybody finds themselves also banned by The Creuzer, do you have any of the the following complaints in common with me?

 

1) Mike tries to sell Audentio back in 2012. Not sure what brought this on, but to go from practically throwing in the towel, to having so many mouths to feed, is quite a accomplishment. I don't think I had any experience with Audentio back then, but recently they've been claiming to be celebrating 10 years of being in business. I don't know how that can match up.

 

2) Audentio "Idea Funding". I think this was my biggest complaint about Audentio in the past. It was a harebrained idea that everybody knew wasn't going to work. It was supposed to be a way for customers to pay chunks of an addon's development, a'la crowdfunding. The problem was that there was no guarantee that Audentio would even work on the addon, and there was no timeline, or mechanism in place to get your money back if Audentio decided to never do the addon. Thankfully, Mike came to his senses and nixed the idea.

 

3) Audentio buys Waindingo addons. Audentio bought all of Waindingo's addons, and didn't have the capacity, or maybe didn't even plan, to fix their bugs, unless customers wanted to pay to do that... again. It was a big mess of course, Mike got way over his head, and the NEW plan for XF 2.0 is that Theme House has pledged not to have so many products that they can't support.

 

4) Audentio / Hex Themes / Theme House. Pick a name already!

 

5) Audentio takes over xfuniverse.com from Sheldon. Promises "great things to come" for it. Promptly abandons it for a number of years. It irks me to spend a lot time creating content on a site just to have it abandoned.

 

6) There was a strange beef going on a couple years ago with Mike Edge (running xenBoost), and Max/The Dark Wizard (running VelocityIO). Somebody had submitted a comment to VelocityIO's Contact Us page, claiming to be me, and telling Max to get is act together or some shit. Anyway, I believe VelocityIO was in bed with Audentio about some hosting arrangement they had, and JakeB from Audentio raged at me about this comment I didn't make about VelocityIO. I wouldn't think this has anything to do with my banning, but I bring it up because it was a strange event, and maybe a something similar has happened again?

[Cloaked]

I inquired about taking over xfuniverse after he shut it down. I was told he wanted to leave sleeping dogs lie. Never did understand what was there that he didn't seem to like.

[SneakyDave]

It's all sorted now. Had a conversation with Mike. He admitted that it was probably something he did as a result of something I said sometime in the past, along with Mike Edge and roo (lol).

 

Anyway, we've hugged it out. No hard feelings all around!

[Ruby]

Hey I only spoke the truth about what happened with my site.

[SneakyDave]

I didn't even see the craziest Latino of all time's commentary on this thread!

https://twitter.com/username/status/947245447319396352

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/CarlosX360/status/947245447319396352

 

 

Carlos. Where you been? I don't remember "talking trash" about ThemeHouse/Audentio/Hex Themes. I probably asked some questions that Creuzer didn't like. Who knows? It was probably a year ago.

 

But you keep on raging, you crazy Latino. Post some more tweets of your pics of PS2 games modeling with a can of Coors Light you crazy mofo!

Edited January 25, 2018 by SneakyDave

[13511]

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Why screenshots are dandy!

[SneakyDave]

I thought i had taken a screen shot of Crazy Carlos the Latino Loon's diatribe above, but I guess I didn't. He deletes tweets less than a month old, but the crazy mofo can't update his pinned tweet that is almost 4 years old.

 

Carlos Morales, it's 2018. You're not gonna find any suckers to fund your "PS2 game and a can of Coors Light" photography startup.

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[SneakyDave]

Audentio / Hex Themes / Themehouse has thrown in the towel once again, removing all of their XenForo add-on products, just like they did with their XenForo 1.x addons. More than 15 pages of deleted add-ons!

 

Mike Cruezer claims that they simply have too many products and licenses to keep track of, and keeping track of all the things is HARD.

 

Mike did this same song and dance toward the end of the XenForo 1.x life cycle. He claimed that he needed to pare down the number of products Audentio was providing, promising to make subscriptions and licenses easier to understand, not harder. He also went on and on about how much he cares, and how many mouths he has to feed as a full time business. Sound familiar?

 

Mike is a good developer, and with all those mouths to feed, he might even be a good person, but he's got a terrible business plan.

 

Pffft, good riddance to bad rubbish.

 

Audentio and ThemeHouse: Community strategists, designers, and developers

 

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Edited August 20, 2021 by SneakyDave

[Cloaked]

No great loss. Most of their shit was buggy as hell anyway. Not to mention you needed to install an addon to install their themes and addons.

[SneakyDave]

The Creuzer didn't like me laughing at his posts, and he must have complained. I can't use reactions on XenForo anymore. #sad

[Sheldon]

Are you fucking serious?

 

Banned from reactions. I thought that was the fucking point of them.

 

For fucks sake.

[SneakyDave]

Yeah. No warming or notification. Maybe The Creuzer threatened that he we couldn't do any more zoom meetings with XenForo unless I faced consequences for my heinous acts?

 

Why would he care? Themehouse is abandoning XenForo anyway.

[Sheldon]

I've read enough to know if you aren't sucking up at XF, you aren't in the crowd.

 

All anyone has to do is read, actually. It has become a toxic shit show over there. Unfortunate. They had promise, then they let the imbeciles run the place.... and the vocal minority become the gatekeepers.

[Cloaked]

I've read enough to know if you aren't sucking up at XF, you aren't in the crowd.

 

All anyone has to do is read, actually. It has become a toxic shit show over there. Unfortunate. They had promise, then they let the imbeciles run the place.... and the vocal minority become the gatekeepers.

Same thing happened at vBulletin. No surprise it would happen there.

[SneakyDave]

Wahhhhhhh! Don't any of these fools understand how much you should be LOVING Audentio / ThemeHouse / HexThemes?

 

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Poor Matt here probably doesn't remember that Theme House released a shit load of xenforo 1.5 addons to github a while back, When Mike Creuzer went through this phase before. There were no descriptions, no organization to them, no documentation. I went through the trouble to starting to download the packages, but I think I was only able to grab 40 or 50.

 

Those addons are nowhere to be found on github now. Wonder what happened to them? That was certainly a misleading statement.

 

None of this is poor Matt's fault, he's doesn't even belong to Audentio's github team.

 

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They won't distribute any of these new open source packages on github. There is no ability to control or upsell people there.

Edited September 8, 2021 by SneakyDave

[SneakyDave]

I have to make a correction. The old ThemeHouse / Audentio addons for XF 1.5 are still available on github. I had to go through Jake.B's history to find them. Maybe The Creuzer can just dump the XF2 addons here too?

 

ThemeHouse - XenForo

 

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[Cloaked]

Their stuff was bug ridden shit anyway. Themes were nice, but, you needed to install a bug ridden addon to install them. Best news ever was when they said they are moving on.

[SneakyDave]

As soon as XF 3.0 is hinted at, The Creuzer will be back with even more employees to develop crap that won't be supported after 2 years.

[SneakyDave]

Wow, Mike Creuzer is still lingering around XenForo, months after saying Audentio / ThemeHouse / Hex Themes was going to abandon the platform.

 

He says he'd REALLY like to release a new UI product for XF that's in beta with a few customers, but users are weary about the rug being pulled out from under them, again. But Creuzer wants people to know that he simply can't release the new theme because XenForo's is the one pulling the rug out from under HIM, and then throws Chris D under the bus.

 

Looking for feedback: A new look at forum user experience

 

The Creuzer went through a similar hissy fit when XenForo added post reactions, when ThemeHouse (and other developers) had a similar addon.

 

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[Sandyman]

waaaaahhhhhh waaaahhhhhhhh waaahhhhhh.

 

Grown boys arguing on a forum, so 1990'ish.

[Sheldon]

That thread is getting popcorn worthy....

[SneakyDave]

The Creuzer got so worked up that nobody was respecting his contributions to XenForo, that he changed his username to "Mike C".

 

This is the best quote from the whole thread:

"The fact I have been personally attacked by official XenForo staff and official XenForo discord clique is profoundly troubling"

 

Yet, he won't go away! He keeps on bloviating. XenForo, just ban him already FFS. Anytime he gets butthurt about somebody having an accurate opinion on him, he needs the thread to be locked.

[Sandyman]

Yet, he won't go away! He keeps on bloviating. XenForo, just ban him already FFS. Anytime he gets butthurt about somebody having an accurate opinion on him, he needs the thread to be locked.

Don't know him, never used his products, don't use XF at all any longer. BUT, seeing his tantrum would certainly make me shy away from doing business with him.

[13511]

Time to do some Mike C trolling

 

Seems he got butt-hurt when I told someone I wouldn't use anything from ThemeHouse until hell froze over.

 

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/best-theme.210655/post-1602309

[SneakyDave]

Yeah. He doesn't like that attitude. Throws around words like "defaming" and "tortious interference" when people are simply giving him their opinion of theme house, or audentio, or hex themes.

 

Terrible manager, thin skinned, and petty