Ian Stewart of ThemeShaper fame has joined Automattic—the parents company of brands like WordPress, Intense Debate, Akismet, and Gravatar—founded by Matt Mullenweg. As a result, Stewart has decided to make his own “child themes” from the WordPress theme framework ThemeShaper available for download free of charge.
If you’re unfamiliar with ThemeShaper or theme frameworks in general, they work by creating a sort of generic template for a theme, on top of which different sub-themes or child themes can be applied. ThemeShaper is a little bit different from The Thesis Theme for WordPress, the framework we used here at ReadyMadeWeb and most strongly recommend to new bloggers, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out, especially considering the price.
One interested aspect of Stewart being hired by Automattic is the distinct possibility that WordPress will begin to create house-brand themes or incorporate some of the ThemeShaper ideas into a baked-in framework for a future version of WordPress. While this could be seen as a good thing given that many WordPress sites needlessly suffer from bad SEO thanks to poorly coded themes, it may also hurt the theme and theme framework marketplace, which currently benefits from a huge amount of competition between fantastic designers.
Cord is the director of new media at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has been a web developer for over a decade, working with non-profits to rein in their web development costs and grow their online audiences through simple best practices.
