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Late last year, I asked whether child themes should be listed on WordPress.org. Today at WordCamp Savannah, Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) announced that he would be releasing a couple of his old blog designs as free WordPress themes in the WordPress.org theme directory.

One of the sentences in Matt’s announcement post caught my eye.

The second theme, Mazeld, is actually the last from-scratch original design I did here on Ma.tt (then photomatt.net) and is built as a 2010 child theme.

I downloaded the Mazeld theme from WordPress.org and confirmed it was indeed a Twenty Ten child theme (as the stylesheet has the line “Template: twentyten” present) and tweeted Matt for further clarification.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, there has been a child theme sighting on WordPress.org theme directory although judging from Matt’s response, it doesn’t seem to be currently possible to submit them until the installer and UI are fixed.

Hopefully child theme inclusion in the WordPress.org directory will be a reality for theme developers very soon, this is definitely a big step in the right direction.

Related posts:

1. Should Child Themes Be Listed on WordPress.org?
2. Monochromatic – A Thematic Child Theme
3. Compact Child Themes – Black and White

A few days ago, Alex King announced a new WordPress product called Carrington Build. It is described as a “better way to manage WordPress content” and allows users to create custom page layouts without any programming knowledge.

For a better visual of how it works, check out this 1:21 intro video.

Read on to see my review, along with a screencast, information on pricing, and some other thoughts.

Screencast

You probably got a good idea of how Carrington Build works from the video above, but here’s a screencast from me.

How To Get It

I should clarify now that Carrington Build is not free. The pricing structure is a bit complicated so Alex King dedicated an entire post on the topic.

Here are the pricing options:

• Carrington Business Theme – A theme which showcases Carrington Build. This is designed for end users and is priced at $149.
• Carrington Build Developer Edition – This option is designed for developers working on paid client projects, and is used on a single site and is priced at $499.
• Carrington Build Royalty Edition – This option allows commercial WordPress theme or plugin developers to include Carrington Build in their products. It is priced at $15 or 10% of each sale.

Carrington Build isn’t a typical WordPress plugin or theme, and the pricing obviously reflects that being much more expensive than pretty much any other commercial WordPress product I’ve seen.

Commercial Themers?

I have to admit, the most interesting option on the pricing structure would be the “Carrington Build Royalty Edition” which allows other commercial developers to integrate Build into their themes or plugins.

I wonder when we’ll start seeing “Carrington Build-friendly” themes being sold? Most popular commercial themes already do include different page layouts, however nothing close to the flexibility of something like Carrington Build.

Integrating Carrington Build into already great themes would add instant value and allow users to customize their sites with nearly unprecedented flexibility.

Maybe even popular and established theme frameworks like Genesis by StudioPress could get in the game by developing something like a “sample child theme” which integrates Carrington Build into it.

This way, users who wanted the added Build functionality could purchase the child theme as an addon, more sales for the commercial theme company, times $15 back to Crowd Favorite. Everyone wins.

I’d imagine the new child theme route would be the best for already established commercial theme frameworks as it might be kind of tricky to offer a new version of the original framework with Build considering a lot of commercial theme companies offer free upgrades, and you’d probably need to pay Crowd Favorite a ton of money upfront for something not every user might want or need.

iThemes Builder

When I first heard of Carrington Build, the first thing I thought of was the undeniable similarity with another popular WordPress product, iThemes’ Builder theme.

I’m not sure if these two products would play nice together. My first thought was both of them combined would be a bit redundant as they both seem to have a similar “building block” stacking style.

Benjamin Bradley tweeted some differing thoughts on an iThemes Builder + Carrington Build combination.

For more information, check out my Builder theme review (there’s a screencast too).

Conclusion

First of all I want to note that I was not asked or solicited in any way to do a review on Carrington Build. I realize it’s a paid product and it may not be for everyone but I genuinely thought it was a really cool WordPress innovation and wanted to share it with my readers.

• Will it revolutionize WordPress theme development?
• Do you think it will be integrated in other commercial WordPress products sooner or later?
• Would you use something like this for your clients and would they find value in this?
• Would you use Carrington Build on your own personal sites or is pricing too much of a deterrent?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts on Carrington Build in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Commercial WordPress Theme Directory Launches
2. Builder Theme by iThemes – WordPress Theme Review
3. PowerTheme Premium WordPress Themes

I launched a site called WPCamelCase to help people learn how to spell WordPress. This is something I’ve tried to passively promote on this site by spelling every instance of “WordPress” with a capital P.

The Spelling

WordPress is spelled in a CamelCase form. If you notice on any official WordPress websites, it is always spelled with a capital P, although as far as I know there is no real explanation as to . The most common misspellings are “Wordpress” or “Word Press.”

Being in the community for a while, I personally cringe if I see it misspelled, and I’m sure the creators of WordPress do too, which is why a patch was introduced in WordPress 3.0 to automatically correct the lowercase P misspelling to an uppecase one, much to the opposition of certain members of the WordPress community.

The Problem

Unfortunately with the way it filters your content to convert Wordpress to WordPress, it is possible to break links such as images or other URLs. For example:

• An image with the URL of http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/Wordpress-image.jpg would be renamed to http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/WordPress-image.jpg and a broken image would show up
• Your blog is installed in a directory called http://example.com/Wordpress, any of your internal links would be renamed to http://example.com/WordPress and you’d have a bunch of broken links

To “correct” this behavior, you can install the Remove Wordpress to WordPress filter plugin.

Conclusion

Instead of forcing users to spell it correctly, I think it’s better to educate users on how to spell it, which is exactly why I made WPCamelCase.com along with my GPL-licensed haiku.

Adding this sort of code to the WordPress core doesn’t help the software at all, and probably makes it worse with the broken link issues people are reporting so far over something that is relatively inconsequential.

I usually don’t talk about these sort of semi-controversial, community-oriented issues here on my blog, because frankly, I think the majority of my audience, along with the vast majority of WordPress users, couldn’t care less about these things.

I thought it was worth mentioning due to the fact this addition to WordPress core has the possibility to break things.

Further Reading

• Lowercase p, dangit! by Justin Tadlock
• The dangit filter by Benjamin Bradley
• Automatically Correcting The Wordpress Mistake by Jeff Chandler
• Changeset 14996 – The original trac ticket

Related posts:

1. New Community Links Page
2. How Do You Feel About Sponsored Themes?

If you’ve visited ThemeGarden.com or seen some of Jason Schuller’s tweets recently, you’ll notice that ThemeGarden will be moving in a new direction as a community WordPress theme marketplace.

I got a chance to catch up with Jason to get the skinny on this upcoming marketplace in an interview. For those not familiar with him, here’s a brief intro:

Jason Schuller is a digital creative professional living and working in Seattle, WA. Jason has been developing themes and plugins for WordPress since 2007 and launched his commercial theme store (Press75.com) in June of 2008.

The interview is after the jump.

Leland: You announced recently that ThemeGarden would be converting to a WordPress theme marketplace where third-party theme designers would be allowed to sell their work, as opposed to your own theme club model. Why the change in business model?

JS: I had always intended for ThemeGarden.com to include work by 3rd party theme designers, but had to launch with at least a few themes.

With this in mind, I created 3 new themes of my own and launched the 100% “subscription based” site (phase 1) in April of 2010. The plan was to have the primary site 100% subscription based with exclusive themes by me and a few other hand picked designers, then launch a secondary “Community Theme Garden” (phase 2) a few months later.

After running the primary site for several months, I have come to the realization that ThemeGarden.com should have always been a community WordPress theme marketplace from the start which is what I am focusing on with the relaunch.

Plus, I have a successful business of my own over at Press75.com, so now it’s time to share the wealth by launching a community marketplace focused on serving all the other talented designers and developers out there who might be interested in selling their work.

Leland: Can you tell us what separates the future ThemeGarden marketplace from other potentially competing theme marketplaces like ThemeForest or Mojo Themes? Why would a theme seller want to sell at ThemeGarden?

JS: It’s really not my intention to compete with sites like ThemeForest or Mojo. These sites focus on multiple platforms, quantity and maximizing their return on whoever has anything to sell. As a new seller on one of these sites, you stand to make only a 40% return on your work, and up to 70% if you end up being a top seller several months down the line.

ThemeGarden.com will provide the tools necessary for talented WordPress theme designers and developers to sell and support their work with an 80% return on any theme they sell.

Leland: Why would buyers want to buy themes at ThemeGarden?

JS: ThemeGarden.com has “seller requirements” for a reason. As a seller your themes must be unique, have valid code, and must always be up to date with the latest stable version of WordPress. You should also be active in supporting and maintaining any theme you sell on ThemeGarden.com.

These are just some of the reasons why end users will come to ThemeGarden.com to purchase themes. The focus is on quality of the product (not quantity) as well as customer support.

Leland: Do you consider WordPress theme companies like StudioPress to be competition for the upcoming ThemeGarden marketplace? Why or why not?

JS: Absolutely not… nor will ThemeGarden.com ever be competition for them. In fact, I think ThemeGarden.com would only boost companies like StudioPress by allowing child themes within the marketplace based on their frameworks. In order to use any child theme purchased from ThemeGarden.com, the customer would also have to purchase the framework from the source.

Either way, when it comes down to it, customers are going to choose the product that best suits their needs. Whether they find that “perfect fit” on ThemeGarden.com, Press75.com, StudioPress.com or any other company providing a similar product is entirely up to the customer.

Leland: The new ThemeGarden marketplace will allow the sale of child themes for popular WordPress theme frameworks. As far as I know, most other marketplace sites (and even WordPress.org) will only host standalone themes. Do you think this gives ThemeGarden an advantage over other WordPress theme repositories, and do you expect others to follow suit?

JS: This absolutely gives ThemeGarden.com an advantage, and I don’t see any reason why others would not follow suit. Frameworks are big business which is why it makes total sense to allow child themes in the marketplace.

Leland: Part of the seller requirements state that themes must be licensed under the GPL. Will child themes (or skins) of notable non-GPL theme frameworks like Thesis and Headway be allowed to be sold on the ThemeGarden marketplace?

JS: This is a hard call for me, and I am on the fence with this requirement because my own themes on Press75.com are split-GPL licensed. That is my choice, and Press75.com will never be supported by WordPress.org because of that decision.

However, in order to provide the most exposure for a community of sellers, I believe that ThemeGarden.com needs to be 100% GPL. This will ensure that ThemeGarden.com and the community surrounding it is in line with and supported by WordPress. I would love to hear some feedback on this by potential sellers as well.

But to answer the question, as long as the child theme is GPL licensed, I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be allowed on ThemeGarden.com even if the parent framework isn’t 100% GPL licensed.

Leland: You state that theme sellers will be able to “maintain dedicated support forums” on the ThemeGarden website. Will there be a support policy that theme sellers will have to follow to remain active sellers in the marketplace? What about theme documentation requirements?

JS: Just my opinion… but if think you have a theme that is good enough to sell, you should be prepared to support it as well. Quality customer support is a big part of what made my own business a success, and is probably one of the major reasons that Press75.com continues to grow more than 2 years since I launched it.

If you are just looking to make a quick buck by selling a theme you are not willing or even want to support, ThemeGarden.com is probably not the marketplace for you. In other words… yes, only documented and supported themes will be allowed within the marketplace.

I haven’t drawn up a solid policy for this, but I think as long as the seller is active in maintaining their product and customer, all is good.

Leland: You describe ThemeGarden as being a “dedicated WordPress theme marketplace.” Does that mean you don’t have any plans to sell themes for other platforms like Tumblr, Posterous, or even regular old HTML templates?

JS: I want ThemeGarden.com to be the “Go To” marketplace for WordPress which is why I say “dedicated”, and is also why I think ThemeGarden.com will be a 100% GPL licensed site. There are no, and most likely will be no plans for other platforms in the future.

However, I could see launching spinoff sites for other platforms if things go well for ThemeGarden.com.

Leland: What will happen to the current themes you were already selling on ThemeGarden.com in the club format? Will you be just another seller when the new ThemeGarden marketplace launches?

The current ThemeGarden.com themes have already been moved over to Press75.com which will be their permanent home. I really want ThemeGarden.com to be about the community (sellers and buyers) which is why I probably will not be releasing my own themes on ThemeGarden.com.

I have already build my own success out of Press75.com, and now it’s time to share the wealth with others.

Leland: GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL, GPL. Discuss?

JS: It’s as simple as this… I want ThemeGarden.com to be adopted as the “Go To” marketplace for WordPress. Regardless of how I feel or what I do with my own themes, in order to achieve that goal, ThemeGarden.com should be 100% GPL right?

Of course I would love feedback on this. Let me know what you think.

Conclusion

Sorry, just had to get a GPL question in there. Like the last interview, I didn’t make any edits aside from adding a few links.

I’d like to thank Jason for taking the time to complete the interview here, as well as sticking around WP Chat a couple days ago answering other questions from chatters about ThemeGarden.

Of course I wish him the best of luck as it sounds like a really cool project that has the potential to benefit many theme buyers and sellers.

If you have any feedback on the interview or on the upcoming ThemeGarden marketplace, let loose in the comments. I’d imagine Jason will be keeping an eye on them for feedback.

Related posts:

1. Interview with the Owner of Premium Mod
2. Revolution Theme To Become Open Source
3. Video Interview at WordCamp Raleigh

I received word a few days ago that the paid WordPress themes from RichWP will be available for free download for a limited time. All you have to do is fill out your first name and email in an optin form and the download links will be emailed to you.

Keep in mind this offer is available directly from the source, no shady sites involved here. More information on the various themes and when the offer will end are below.

The Themes

Here’s a selection of selection of some of the themes that will be available with demo links. There are 11 in total.

Affiliate Theme – For what I’m guessing is for… affiliate sites.

BigNews – A newsy layout with lots of room for pictures.

Photo – A gallery style layout great for portfolios and such.

Conclusion

You’ll notice all of the themes have the exact same minimalist style, although each individual theme has a different layout and may have different functionality depending on which one it is.

Why? It seems to be a marketing move, and I guess its working considering all the people retweeting it, and people like me blogging about it. It also seems Felix is planning on updating all the themes for WordPress 3.0 with a framework/child theme mindset, which will be available to already paying customers.

When does the offer end? I was wondering the same thing, and here’s the answer.

You might as well just get them now. I signed up myself and had them all downloaded within a few minutes.

Related posts:

1. 10+ Most Creative Free WordPress Themes in 2009
2. WP Gorilla – More Free Premium Themes?
3. Wpdesigner $5 Themes Club FREE

To those of you who don’t know, this past weekend I was at WordCamp Raleigh. It was my first WordCamp, and overall I found it to be a great experience. I met a bunch of people in the WordPress community, and everyone I encountered was very friendly and welcoming.

While I was there, I met Jeffro of WP Tavern and he pulled me aside to do a video interview. In the interview I talk about:

• My experiences at WordCamp so far, including the quality of the cookies
• Anything new I’ve learned from the sessions, including what I can apply to theming
• Whether or not I will attend future WordCamps wearing a lab coat
• Future plans for Theme Lab, including the Underground

I’ve embedded it after the jump, check it out.

Let me know what you think of the interview in the comments. And now that WordCamp Raleigh is over, as well as the Page.ly contest, I’ll get back to the regularly scheduled content including themes, tutorials, and CSS tips galore.

Related posts:

1. I Am Attending WordCamp Raleigh
2. I Was Interviewed At 1stwebdesigner
3. Interview with Jason Schuller on the ThemeGarden Marketplace

For the past week or so I’ve been running a contest to win a free hosting for life from Page.ly. I closed the comments last Friday but being busy with WordCamp Raleigh I didn’t have a good opportunity to pick the winner until I got back home.

And the lucky winner is…

The Screencast

As usual, here’s a screenshot of me picking the winner on Random.org.

So congrats to Marek Zee for winning the contest.

Update: New Winner

Turns out Marek decided to pass on the prize so we decided to do another drawing for a lucky Theme Lab reader.

So congratulations to @nelsonecom for winning the contest!

35% Off Coupon

For the next few days, you can get 35% off of Page.ly hosting with the coupon “THEMELAB” so if you’ve been thinking about signing up to try out their service, you can get a discounted rate with this coupon.

Conclusion

Okay, Page.ly sponsored just one winner. I made a typo in my original contest post that said there would be two winners which @pseudoxiah on Twitter noticed after I announced the winner there.

The reason why this happened is I copied the text from a previous contest post which happened to have had two winners and I forgot to edit the copy. Dumb mistake on my part.

Sorry for the confusion, and thanks everyone for playing. It was actually the most popular contest yet at Theme Lab, beating our first one here.

Related posts:

1. BackupBuddy Contest Winners Announced
2. WPShift Contest Winners Announced
3. We Have Four Contest Winners

Thanks to a bit of last second planning and a ride from Benjamin Bradley, I am going to be attending WordCamp Raleigh 2010. I realized a lot of you probably wouldn’t recognize me if you saw me there, so I made this quick video.

Apologies for the crappy web cam quality, but hopefully you got a good look at me. If you see me there, I’d really love to meet you. It should be a lot of fun and I’m definitely looking forward to my first WordCamp.

Related posts:

1. Video Interview at WordCamp Raleigh

This is just a quick post to let you know about an interview of myself over at 1stwebdesigner, a popular web design blog. The interview was conducted by Saad Bassi, who you may recognize as a frequent commenter here at Theme Lab, and also as the co-editor of 1stwebdesigner.

In the interview, I go over:

• A little bit about myself
• How I got started in web development
• My personal views on the WordPress GPL issue
• My thoughts on startup premium theme companies
• What I see as a “quality” WordPress theme (and what isn’t)
• My work over at Custom Theme
• How I concentrate when writing code
• My code pet peeves
• My future plans

It was a really great interview and Saad asked a lot of insightful questions. So be sure to check it out if you’re interested. It’s actually only my second interview like this, with the first being on WPTavern.

Related posts:

1. Just Interviewed on WPTavern
2. Video Interview at WordCamp Raleigh
3. Interview with Jason Schuller on the ThemeGarden Marketplace

There have been a lot of great WordPress themes released over the years. Not all themes are actively maintained and supported by their developers, and while they might have been very popular back in the day, that doesn’t stop them from slipping into obscurity.

These themes slowly become forgotten about, an afterthought, so what do you do to remedy that? It’s simple, bring them back to life, and here’s how I’m doing that:

• First, find some outdated (but previously popular) themes. I chose an old (GPL) theme from WPDesigner.
• Choose a popular, up-to-date theme framework. Preferably completely free and open source. I thought Thematic fit the bill nicely.
• Convert the outdated theme as a child theme of the previously chosen framework.

What Others Think

Remkus de Vries, who is who I originally got this idea from, said the following:

I think it’s great to revive some of those older themes who have not seen any updates since WordPress 2.7 or who are just completely abandoned. A big miss for me personally are threaded comments and a good semantic markup, but there are a lot more features I can think of that should be added to those updates. The best way to do that is to convert those older themes into Thematic child themes. They would get the best of everything from a code perspective. Also, the community would have a great opportunity to get their hands on a lot more examples on how to develop a child theme.

The first themes in need of a quickening that spring to mind are Small Potato’s. Such a shame…

He continued to say:

Maybe this will finally be a prelude to admitting child themes to the repo.

Ian Stewart, creator of the previously mentioned Thematic theme, had this to say:

Wow, Leland. I think this sound like an awesome boon to not just the community of people using Thematic but to fans of Small Potato’s best WPDesigner themes. What a great idea. I hope too that this project will help more people learn how to get a jump start on WordPress theme development with child themes.

Update: Tung Do (aka Small Potato) formerly of WPDesigner said this below in the comments:

I’m +1 for theme resurrection. Plugins get abandoned and re-supported all the times. It’s about time someone does it for themes.

What I’ve Done So Far

You can check out my port of WPDesigner’s Braintied WordPress theme to Thematic with this demo link.

If you compare it to the original demo, you probably won’t notice much of a difference at first glance. As a Thematic child theme, however, there are significant markup changes. There are also threaded comments available in the updated child theme.

Expect this child theme to be released very soon, for free. And maybe a theme dissection post, like the Astatic tutorial, soon to follow.

Update: The Braintied child theme has been released.

Conclusion

The themes which I plan on porting to Thematic are explicitly GPL compatible. I feel that it would be best if the themes I port are licensed under the GPL to avoid any potential licensing issues upon re-release.

This is kind of a two-for-one deal. Not only will the WordPress community benefit from outdated themes being brought back to life as child themes of Thematic, but developers can also learn more about them with additional examples and tutorials on making child themes.

I’d really love to hear your thoughts about this in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Braintied – Free Thematic Child Theme
2. Should Child Themes Be Listed on WordPress.org?
3. Wpdesigner $5 Themes Club FREE