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A Hypercritical Analysis of $35 WordPress Themes
http://wpcandy.com/thinks/about-35-dollar-themes
The Textpattern theme design community is nowhere near as large and/or lucrative as the Wordpress one but I thought this might make for an interesting topic. I think the fact that WordPress themes have been relatively easy to install has been a huge reason for the popularity of WordPress but it also led to a lot of neophyte designers trying to make money off designs that very difficult to understand and customize. If you are satisfied with the default look of the theme, you are in luck. If you aren’t, you are going to spend a great time of either time or money to get it customized to what you want it to do.
I think that is one of the strengths of Textpattern over Wordpress. A properly designed theme is much easier to absorb and change in the way you want. For much of the time, it often meant having to overcome some of Dean’s specific design choices but I think 4.4.0 and 5 allow for a much greater level of flexibility in getting a site exactly the way you want it.
Of course, I could always be an edge case. I have the skill to do decent but an absolute lack of creativity when starting with a blank slate. That makes for a dangerous combination.
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Re: A Hypercritical Analysis of $35 WordPress Themes
Michael, I think you seem to be stuck in the same place that I am, what to charge for themes?
Charge too low, and you might be inundated with work and support issues. Charge too high, and the neon lights glow onto an empty front stoop. Dilemma, for sure.
I’m not a creative soul myself either, but I can take any freely available XHTML template or competing project theme and convert it to Textpattern rather quickly. So that is the direction I’m heading, just can’t quite come up with the price point.
I know Stuart has been selling themes for $20, maybe he can tell us how things have been going.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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Re: A Hypercritical Analysis of $35 WordPress Themes
Bert,
I don’t actually have any aspirations to charge anything. What I really want to see is the community grow and having some free themes (if I can get them done) is an important part of that. But I also think commercial themes are an important thing to have as well.
The first theme I intend to release – and it is nearly done – is a Textpattern version of TwentyTen. Partly because I did the Textpattern port of Kubrick years ago, and partly because I think doing a full port and really understanding all the ways the theme work will make the next one easier. My thought is that having something familiar for WordPress users might help them if they are exploring for the first time.
And I really like to try get more people to post here – so I like to link to things that I think make for interesting potential conversation starters.
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Re: A Hypercritical Analysis of $35 WordPress Themes
michaelkpate wrote:
What I really want to see is the community grow and having some free themes (if I can get them done) is an important part of that. But I also think commercial themes are an important thing to have as well.
I want to see the community grow also, which is why I think charging a small conversion fee could spur that movement. I have some ideas, I’ll put them in an email and send it off to you, give me till the weekend to write them down.
The first theme I intend to release – and it is nearly done – is a Textpattern version of TwentyTen.
I’ve also been paying around with TwentyTen, just to get a feel for converting WordPress themes.
This is my conversion of Kubrick for Nucleus CMS, way back when.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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