That said…

I have begun offering Child Themes for the Hybrid Framework…at a cost. So far I have received some great response on the themes…and added to the mix…some real criticism. One went so far as to tell me that I was not welcome in the community if I was going to charge for a simple child theme.

I had avoided the open source community for a long time…long before wordpress I charged for service and development on a couple of other “Free” products…and I often was criticized for “Making Money”. Comments such as “How can you charge for this…the software is free?” My response has always been…and remains…”But my time is not free…”

I am in business to make money…plain and simple…I offer service, selection and second to none support on all my products and services. Sorry, not going for selfless self promotion here…just stating a fact. My services and themes are not free…but my support is…I have never charged for a minute of support…ever. Even back in the day when long distance was not free…I called and supported my clients on my dime…

Sorry I am rambling…I just get angry…not with you Justin…but with the others that take the time to email and tell me that I am some sort of carpetbagger making money off your back. grrr…going to stop being an angry designer now…lol.

I love your theme Justin…without Hybrid, I would not be in business…I truly believe that. I made one mistake in the early days developing a site for a client and using a non child theme based “Premium” theme…I spent hours designing a new layout, and style sheet…then an upgrade to WordPress…and an upgrade to the “Premium” theme…and all my hard work was gone in a click of the mouse…thank god for backups…but it cost me and my client valuable time. I have never made that mistake again…Child Themes are the future of Wordpress…and I hope in a small way I can help move it forward with my Child themes…even if they are not free…

- Lotus Notes Developers when collaboration tools were all the rage
- Y2K remediation coders when the world was about to fall apart
- HTML drag-and-drop designers who were considered “coders” back in the day

I know plenty of people on a personal level who jumped on these bandwagons and fizzled out after a couple of years because their coding stunk and their hype stunk even worse. Those who overpromise and underdeliver are rooted out sooner or later.

It’s been over a year since this post… do you feel differently about the state of the premium theme market? It sure doesn’t seem to be fizzling out.

I’ve always been a let’s-share-and-it-keep-it-free kinda bloke, and occasionally ventured into using paid solutions for web design (paid Joomla plugins for example, when the free versions just didn’t cut it)….but I’ve always come back to using free stuff wherever I can (360 degrees so far!).

But then I came across the Thesis Theme for Wordpress. And no, it’s not because of the affiliate scheme that’s in place to spread it virally (see – no affiliate link here!!)…but that did help me be motivated to spend the money on the developer’s version.

No, what *really* ’sold’ me (literally) on Thesis was that it *finally* has the web-based design features that make it incredibly flexible, and what’s more VERY useable.

What I mean by this, is the sheer simplicity with which changes can be made to the design without hacking PHP code.

I’ve done a fair amount of php coding in the last few years for a telescope project that I run at my school (do a Wikipedia search on: Project Galileo if you’re interested…or a Google search for that matter).

So why do I shy away from make customized changes to my Wordpress blog by rolling my sleeves up & getting down ‘n’ dirty with the PHP???

The simple answer is: TIME.

Thesis saves me bucket-loads of time because of the way it separates the design layer from the features layer.

OK, so Wordpress, it could be argued does the very same thing..so why *pay* for a theme, when you can mod it for free?

Well, as I say…TIME…is the issue…I’ve got time to ‘waste’ by posting comments like this on other people’s blogs, instead of debugging php code that I’ve screwed up.

So, that makes up the other 180 degrees.

I’m with Thesis – a true Theme Framework.

And I didn’t get paid to write this either (really!!).

Cheers,

Dez Futak.