It does constrain ultimate flexibility, because there is such a range of things to think about – but if ultimate flexibility is what you are after, perhaps start from somewhere else.

For me, I love the flexibility that allows me switch my featured post section of my politics site for a video feed for two months of the year when a lot of videos are being released again, and then just switch it back.

Horses for courses, and I like the Options horse.

I think that perhaps it means a little time playing up front before committing to a particular theme.

I think that was more or less what you said when you started.

As for upgrading to the latest version, just delete your old Options folder and add the new folders you get with the latest download. If you run into any trouble, stop by the support forums.

Due to a major move I have just now come back to that project and find that you have advanced your design significantly. First of all I don’t fully understand the relationship between justintadlock.com and themehybrid.com. Despite that, I like your work so I signed up as a paid member on themehybrid.com and would like to upgrade my site before going further. I assume the Shadow child theme will be the same as the Options Dark theme I have now. How do you suggest I proceed? Do I wipe out my theme directory structure and start from scratch with version 1.3 or overwrite?

And, users have definitely embraced those “ideas” and “initiative.”

If I put so little price on the users of my themes, I suppose my Ideas forum is worthless.

Bad sign for business, if I may say…

It has never been about business for me. I just like to experiment, but I definitely don’t like people coming to my site telling me things such as they’re leaving or won’t support me if I charge money. Folks have their own blogs; they can say whatever they want there.

midv
Thanks for stopping back by and clearing that up a bit.

Trust me, as an English-language teacher, I understand imperfect English better than most.

Sllouan Thompson
Good point:

seems to me it also opens the floodgates for every single user to ask for more features and customizations.

This is a major problem I deal with every day. Don’t get me wrong, I like helping users out, but when the word “options” comes out, people tend to think we can keep piling more features on.

Tibor
I think it’s actually better to make users start diving into the code. At least that way, they’re learning a bit about how things work.

The more theme options we put in the backend, the less users know about how their sites run.

Hning
Thanks. Empire Online does have a magazine-style design, but it doesn’t suit my tastes. I think it’s too busy, but it’s definitely better than some others I’ve seen.

Carmi
The Keep It Simple rule should apply to all aspects of design. My next theme release will probably be more powerful than any other theme I’ve put out there, but it will be very simple in design with few options on the backend.