Today’s free WordPress theme is designed by Roshan of CSSHeaven.org (you might know him from his RamblingSoul themes). I ported the static template to WordPress and packed it with WordPress 3.0-specific features, including custom menus, headers, and backgrounds. More on that below.

WordPress 3.0 Menus

As stated above, this theme includes WordPress 3.0 menu support which means you have very flexible control over what links show up in your header menu. If you don’t set up a menu, it will default back to a list of WordPress pages.

For further reading on implementing the WordPress 3.0 menu feature into your own themes, I found these links really helpful:

• Goodbye headaches, hello menus! – A write-up by Justin Tadlock on WordPress 3.0 menus.
• wp_nav_menu – The official WordPress codex on the function used for the menus.

Custom Header

If you want to get rid of the red header image displayed directly below the nav menu, the custom header feature is for you. You’ll need an image 980 pixels wide and 170 pixels high to replace it. If it’s smaller than that, the CSS is coded to position the background image in the center of the div.

For more information on implementing this in your own theme, I found the add_custom_image_header page on the WordPress codex very useful, although I modified it a bit so it doesn’t load styles in the header, just an inline background image declaration on the “header” div.

Of course, feel free to check out the code in header.php and functions.php to see how exactly I did it.

Custom Background

If you want to customize the background image and get rid of the greenish background image currently used, use this feature.

This is by far the easiest feature to implement in a theme, thanks to WP Engineer for the one line code you need to add to your theme’s functions.php file.

add_custom_background();

You also need a wp_head() hook in your header so the internal stylesheet that handles the custom background styles can be embedded.

Custom Thumbnails

As you can see on index/archive/search pages, the posts are laid out in a gallery format. For this, I decided to use the built-in WordPress thumbnail system. It will automatically crunch the images to 270×140.

Thanks to Mark Jaquith’s tutorial for information on integrating this feature into the theme.

Widgets

Like almost all the other themes here, Green Tea is widget ready. The widgetized areas are the sidebar, left footer, right footer, and 404 page.

Conclusion

This should probably go without saying, but you’re going to need to be running WordPress 3.0 for this theme to not spit out a bunch of errors. It’s not backwards compatible, and I did this on purpose to help force people to upgrade to the latest version (which you should be doing anyway).

The reason I chose this particular template because it seemed to have as many elements that I could use to integrate WordPress 3.0 specific features. While I wouldn’t necessarily use these features on my own sites, I can see the value if you’re developing themes for public release or clients.

WordPress 3.0 menu integration is pretty much a must for those, as it makes things so much easier for users in customizing links in menus versus the old way: page lists, category lists, or hard-coded menus. Depending on the design, custom headers would be nice and to some extent, maybe even custom backgrounds (although I’m not a huge fan of this one).

Thanks to Max Luzuriaga for the suggestion of the Green Tea name which I got on Twitter.

Let me know what you think of the theme in the comments, I’d love to hear your feedback!

License: Everything is licensed under the GPL, the original template (including CSS and artwork) and the WordPress portion.

Related posts:

1. WP Clean & Green – Free WordPress Theme
2. RS16 – Free WordPress Theme
3. RS11 – Free WordPress Theme

WordPress includes a lot of stuff through the wp_head() hook included in most themes. Most of this stuff I would consider unnecessary. A few lines of extra code in your header probably won’t slow your site down that much, but I like to keep things as clean and efficient as possible.

In this quick tip post, I’ll go over how to remove the following from being output through the wp_head hook.

• Really Simple Discovery (RSD) link
• Windows Live Writer link
• WordPress generator notice
• Post relational links

Read on for the description of each of these to see if you need them or not, and how to remove them.

Really Simple Discovery

This is the code that displays the following code in your header:

<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://example.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />

This is the discover mechanism used by XML-RPC clients. If you have no idea what this means and/or don’t integrate services like Flickr with your WordPress site, it’s probably safe to remove it with the following code in your theme’s functions file.

remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');

Windows Live Writer

This is why you see the following code in your header.

<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="http://example.com/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" />

If you don’t use Windows Live Writer, then this code is completely useless to you and should be removed.

remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');

WordPress Generator

This is what displays your WordPress version number in your header.

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.8.4" />

Noone really needs to know the exact version of WordPress you’re using, so it’s safe to remove this line of code.

remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

Post Relational Links

Post relational links are why this stuff is displayed on various pages.

<link rel='index' title='Main Page' href='http://www.themelab.com' />
<link rel='start' title='Article in the distant past' href='http://www.themelab.com/hello-world/' />
<link rel='prev' title='The Post Before This One' href='http://www.themelab.com/post-before/' />
<link rel='next' title='The Post After This One' href='http://www.themelab.com/post-after/' />

I have yet to find an actual reason to keep these around. Some browsers may use this code to navigate your site, although you can probably get the same effect from a well designed theme. You’ll need three lines to nuke them all.

remove_action('wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link');

Functions.php Template

For your convenience, here’s all of them combined for easy copying and pasting into your own theme’s functions.php file.

<?php
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
remove_action('wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link');
?>

In fact, this is the entire functions.php file I’m using on my new tweet archive theme. If you take a look at the code, the <head> tag only contains three lines: the meta charset declaration, the title tag, and the stylesheet link.

A Note About Released Themes

When you’re developing themes for release, be careful in removing some of these, especially the first two: XML-RPC and Windows Live Writer support.

The reason should be pretty obvious, because some of your users will likely use something like Windows Live Writer, and will come back to you asking for support when they can’t figure out why it doesn’t work with your theme.

The other items, the WordPress generator notice and post relation links, can probably be safely removed in almost any situation.

Conclusion

Like I said in the intro, it’s not a huge deal if you don’t remove these and I wouldn’t call this a “must” on every new WordPress site you develop. If you’re like me and don’t like useless lines of code, you’ll probably want to anyway just to keep things running as cleanly as possible.

Can you think of any other functions that you use to remove lines of unnecessary WordPress code? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Ever Wanted To Remove The /category/ Base?
2. Get a CSS Killswitch Effect With Only One Line of Code
3. Dissecting Astatic – Thematic Child Theme Tutorial

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?

Got a couple requests today to port this template by Mohd Huzairy to WordPress, so I did. As you can see, it’s super simple with a very minimalistic design. In the WordPress theme, I added a few features like a widgetized sidebar and threaded comments.

Related posts:

1. Simple Gray – Free WordPress Theme
2. RS11 – Free WordPress Theme
3. Jungleland – Free WordPress Theme

First of all, thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes to Theme Lab’s third birthday. The response was way bigger than any of the previous birthday posts, most likely because of the massive giveaway contest.

The Winners

As announced on Twitter yesterday, the winners are @momma_money, @WPminme, @ronaldb.

I have already gotten in touch with all of them and in the process of organizing the prize distribution. Big congrats to them.

The Prizes

As a refresher, here were the prizes again:

• A copy of the Genesis Theme Framework from StudioPress – $59.95 value
• A copy of the Genesis Buddy child theme from PremiumBPThemes.com – $24.95 value
• A personal license of the BackupBuddy plugin from PluginBuddy – $45 value
• A single site support license to Gravity Forms – $39 value*
• A PDF copy of the Digging into WordPress book – $27 value

Thanks to all the generous sponsors, couldn’t have done it without them! Well, actually I could have but it would have cost me $587.70, so it’s probably better that they donated the prizes.

Conclusion

I plan on writing up a review of the service I used to draw the winners, Tweetaways on my personal blog soon. There were a couple of minor glitches but overall it worked as advertised.

And now back to your regularly scheduled content. WordPress 3.0-friendly themes anyone?

Related posts:

1. Theme Lab Is 3 Years Old Today – Massive Three-For-All Giveaway
2. We Have Four Contest Winners
3. BackupBuddy Contest Winners Announced

Update: The contest is now over, and the winners have been chosen.

I left a little hint at the end of my last post, and to some this may not be a surprise to you, but to any Theme Lab is three years old today! It’s exactly three years after the first post here.

In the past year, lots was accomplished. Most notably, a new design, along with several new free theme releases and various coding tutorials and tips.

I wanted to celebrate the third birthday with a giveaway, so I contacted a select few of the leaders in the commercial WordPress product arena to donate three of each of their respective flagship product.

Giveaway Inspiration

My inspiration for this giveaway is pretty much all thanks to a tweet from @bradleypotter.

Note: Genesis 1.2.1 was released yesterday. Contest winners will receive the latest version.

So I thought, those prizes would be perfect for a giveaway. And there should be three of each, since it’s Theme Lab’s third birthday, it would only be fitting. But I didn’t stop there.

The Prizes

Three lucky winners will win each of the following:

• A copy of the Genesis Theme Framework from StudioPress – $59.95 value
• A copy of the Genesis Buddy child theme from PremiumBPThemes.com – $24.95 value
• A personal license of the BackupBuddy plugin from PluginBuddy – $45 value
• A single site support license to Gravity Forms – $39 value*
• A PDF copy of the Digging into WordPress book – $27 value

*This is actually a $39 coupon which could be used towards a Gravity Forms multi-site or dev license as well.

Check out the screencast below for a more in-depth overview of the various prizes.

And as promised, here’s my BackupBuddy WordPress plugin review.

How To Enter

I said in the video the giveaway would be like the previous giveaways here. I have since decided to use Tweetaways so you don’t have to leave a comment here to enter the contest.

• Make a tweet with the phrase “Rocking for 3 years” and “@themelab”
• More happy birthday wishes are welcomed, but not required.

Note: You have to use the exact phrase “Rocking for 3 years” because it’s how Tweetaways keeps track of the entries. And also make sure to put “@themelab” somewhere in your message. This is the bare minimum of an acceptable entry.

On Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 12:00 PM EST this content will be closed to new entries, and I’ll pick three winners (besides me) at random.

It would help if you followed me (@themelab) so we can communicate via direct message if you’re one of the three winners.

Conclusion

Time has really flown by. I’m using Tweetaways for the contest so in the comments, feel free to sound off with feedback of Theme Lab over the past few years. What do you think of the content? What do you think could be improved? I’d love to hear about it.

Related posts:

1. Three-For-All Giveaway Winners Chosen
2. BackupBuddy Contest Winners Announced
3. Theme Lab is 2 Years Old – Another Year In Review

I installed the TweetMeme WordPress plugin the other day, and I’m pleased with the results.

Not only was it really easy to install and configure, but I’ve noticed several people actually using the button to retweet my posts. You can see it in action in the top right corner of this post.

In this WordPress plugin review, I’ll go over installing the TweetMeme plugin and give an overview of the options. And there’s a screencast too! All after the jump.

How to Install TweetMeme for WordPress

You can install TweetMeme for WordPress just like any other plugin. Also since it’s available in the WordPress.org plugin repository, you have the option of installing it automatically via your WordPress admin panel.

After installing and activating, you should see a new “TweetMeme” menu in the sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. The settings page should look something like this.

TweetMeme Plugin Settings

Check out the screencast below.

• Display: I set all of these except on pages, since I really don’t see a need to have a retweet button on my pages (like Contact, About, etc.).
• Position: For both normal and RSS position, I have it set to display before. This basically places the button at the top of the post where most people will see it.
• Styling: I use float: right; margin-left: 10px; to display it on the right side of my posts. The opposite would be float: left; margin-right: 10px;
• Type: I use the normal-sized widget, mostly because I think the compact one is too small.
• Source: Set this to your own Twitter account. Mine is @themelab if you didn’t already know.

Everything else is pretty much up to your preferences, like your URL shortener of choice (mine is bit.ly).

Advanced TweetMeme Plugin Usage

If you want to manually place the TweetMeme button in your theme, you have to first select “Manual” under the display settings so it doesn’t automatically display anywhere. Then insert the following code within the loop.

<?php if (function_exists('tweetmeme')) echo tweetmeme();?>

Remember the function_exists part is so there’s no fatal error in the event that the TweetMeme plugin is disabled for whatever reason.

Conclusion

If you want more retweets, you have to make it easy for your visitors to do so. The TweetMeme button a recognizable way to encourage this. I wish I set it up a lot earlier since I’m already noticing an increase in my retweets all thanks to this simple button.

By the way, something big is happening in three days. Long time followers of the blog might have a slight idea of what might be going on.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Theme Tweaker Plugin Review
2. How to install a WordPress plugin
3. Social Bookmarking with WordPress

It was just announced today that WordPress 3.0 has been released and you can get it here. This is considered a pretty big release with many new features and bug fixes, I’ll list some notable ones below:

• A merge of WordPress MU and WordPress, making it possible to run multiple sites from one installation.
• New features for theme developers including new APIs to have custom backgrounds, headers, menus, and more.
• New custom post type and taxonomy features for posting new and different kinds of content (besides posts, pages, etc.).
• A new default theme called Twenty Ten, which shows off all this new functionality. Say bye bye to Kubrick!

Watch the video below for more information:

If you’re upgrading, remember to backup your site. Also remember your themes probably won’t break but if they do, you can at least revert back to your backup and figure out what the problem is.

Have you upgraded to WordPress 3.0? I’d be interested in hearing your experience in the comments.

Related posts:

1. BuddyPress 1.0 Just Released!
2. WordPress 2.9 “Carmen” Released
3. WordPress 2.8.5 Released

Let’s face it, the Twitter search sucks and you’ll be lucky to find tweets over a week old with it even though they still exist.

Twitter has been plagued with service issues and the fail whale (which someone coded in pure CSS) is a regular occurrence once again.

I came across a tutorial the other day on how to create a browsable, searchable archive of tweets which you can use to host your own tweets. And the best part is? It’s powered by WordPress.

In this article, I’ll go over my experience with how I set up my own @themelab tweet archive powered by WordPress, including:

• Backing up my tweets with a third-party service
• Importing those older tweets into WordPress
• Setting it up so new tweets get imported automatically
• Installing the theme to display them nicely

Backup Your Tweets

The first step is to backup your tweets. There are a few third-party services to do this, I personally used TweetBackup with good success. It’s important to remember not to expect to backup all of your tweets.

I was only able to grab 910 out of over 6000+ at the time. Even using other Twitter backup services, the same number of tweets were backed up which suggests it’s a limitation by Twitter itself. It’s best to backup as soon as possible, especially if you’re a frequent tweeter.

I had some issues logging into TweetBackup at first but eventually it worked. If you get frustrated you could also try BackupMyTweets.com. It’s worth noting that BackupMyTweets makes you “pay” by posting a tweet promoting their service. If that’s too painful for you (it’s pretty painless, I promise) you also have the option of paying $9.95 per year.

After the backup process is complete, look for the “export” option and save as RSS. You should have an XML file with all the tweets that were salvageable. The next step is to import those into WordPress.

Import Tweets to WordPress

First of all, it’s suggested you create a new WordPress installation for your tweet archive so you don’t have to worry about separating it from the rest of your normal WordPress content. I personally used a subdomain so it wouldn’t interfere with any permalinks from the blog.

The next step is to browse to Tools→Import and select the “RSS” option.

On the next screen, upload the XML file you just grabbed from whatever tweet backer-upper service you just used. Your tweets should now be loaded in your WordPress site.

• Obvious Tip: Assuming this is a new WordPress installation, you’ll probably want to delete the “Hello World!” post.
• Not So Obvious Tip: Since tweets from the backup file are formatted like “username: tweet message is here” (i.e. “themelab: My actual tweet is displayed here”) you might want to use the Search Regex plugin to delete this. Just replace “username: ” in post content and remember to include the space after.

Automatically Grab New Tweets

Now that you have all your old tweets stored, you’ll want to make sure any new tweets are automatically grabbed and stored as WordPress posts. For this, we’ll be using the Twitter Tools plugin by Alex King.

After installing and verifying your Twitter account details, make sure the following two options are set on the plugin’s settings page (Settings→Twitter Tools):

• Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog? NO
• Create a blog post from each of your tweets? Yes

I’m not sure what would happen if you set “Yes” to both, but I don’t intend on finding out for myself for fear of annoying the crap out of my followers. Douglas Bownman, the author of the original guide, described it as an “endless loop of repeating tweets and blog posts.”

All of the other options, like whether to exclude @replies, are either not necessary or up to your personal preferences.

Note: After installing Twitter Tools I noticed a few duplicate tweets (in conjunction with my backed-up tweets) that I went back and manually deleted.

Tweet Archive Theme

Douglas Bownman of stopdesign was also nice enough to release the tweet archive theme he used for free.

The theme works out of the box but it requires some *gasp* direct theme editing to personalize the hard-coded area (that I’ve highlighted in red) with your own account information. Just open up your header.php and scroll to the bottom.

Make sure you have the following handy to copy and paste into the “user” div area in the header file:

• A 48×48 image URL of your Twitter avatar (or whatever you want really)
• Your name (I used “Theme Lab” for example)
• Your Twitter username (@themelab)
• Location and website URL (themelab.com)

Or you could just remove it completely, it’s up to you. There is also a nice display of archive links which don’t seem as dreaded on an archive-oriented site like this.

If you’re making your own custom theme make sure to display the post content and have the full date and time as the permalink to the post. I’m not sure comments are really necessary on a theme like this, but again, it’s your site now, so you can do whatever you want with it.

Update: I just noticed the search form had the /tweets/ URL hardcoded into the form action, which obviously won’t work if you’ve installed anywhere besides a /tweets/ subdirectory. To correct this, replace the following code in searchform.php:

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="/tweets/">

And replace with:

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/">

Conclusion

I really wish I set this up a long time ago. I’m a Twitter addict and have over 6000 tweets (follow me at @themelab) and unfortunately I wasn’t able to back all of them up, only about 15% of them.

Once again I’d like to thank Douglas Bowman of stopdesign for the guide on settings this up as well as the theme. It was actually a lot easier than I thought and it’s great that it can be powered by my favorite CMS, WordPress, with the help of some extra plugins.

Related posts:

1. Useful Alternatives to the Dreaded Monthly Archive Links
2. How to Create a Comments Central Page Template in WordPress
3. WordPress Weekend Resources – July 25, 2008

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