OStatic

Towards a Beautiful WordPress Future: Automattic Hires Theme Wizard Ian Stewart

Gearing up for WordPress 3.0, Automattic has hired Ian Stewart as a Theme Wrangler to help an assembling "Theme Team" for Automattic. The move is good news for the millions of users with WordPress blogs, especially for those looking to extend their blogs with better themes.

Stewart is known for his ThemeShaper blog and Thematic WordPress theme framework. The WordPress community has produced thousands of free (and paid) themes, but most are intended to be deployed as-is on other blogs. The Thematic theme is a framework that's designed to be customized and extended, and supported a number of child themes based on the main Thematic framework.

While Thematic was freely available under an open source license, not all of the child themes were. With Stewart's hiring, he's released the commercial child themes Travailler, Acamas, Thematic Power Blog, and Thematic Feature Site. The child themes require the main Thematic theme to be installed as well.

Stewart is also expanding his Theme Shaper blog to provide "the best possible experience for everyone involved in WordPress theming." He promises resources for the "noobiest" of beginners all the way to WordPress wizards. He hasn't said much more about what will be changed, but suggests keeping an eye on the Theme Shaper blog for more info.

Automattic has been growing by leaps and bounds lately, and it's good to see the company bringing Stewart on to improve the theming experience.

The WordPress 3.0 release is scheduled for April, and should include some interesting improvements like custom post types, the ability to set custom header images, and more. A few screenshots of the 3.0 interface are available over at the WP Engineer blog.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

• wordpress
• Drupal
• Joomla
• Themes
• automattic

by Berrie on Apr. 11, 2010

I like the menu additions very much, when will the release be? Thx for sharing this!

http://hosting.ber-art.nl

0 Votes

by El Spamolito on Jul. 27, 2010

Good to read that Stewart hasn't forgotten about us newbies when coming up with his resources. Everyone has got to start somewhere!

0 Votes

by Joe Jollands on Aug. 01, 2010

Personally I don't mind free themes being made into commercial ones, as long as people add value. I'm currently working on some wordpress 3.0 themes of which some will be free and a few will be commercial. Open source communities like wordpress need commercial opportunities to keep them in the main stream.

0 Votes

by Michael Liggan on Aug. 24, 2010

I´m a big fan of Wordpress. It´s a very useful tool in many ways, both from a personal and professional aspect. It is often viewed as simply a blogging tool, but is much more than that.

0 Votes

by Dr Stoker on Sep. 07, 2010

Has Ian (or anyone else) ever created a Wordpress theme tailored for the visually impaired?

0 Votes

by Wordpress Help on Sep. 08, 2010

I must have missed this when it was first released - this is incredible news! No wonder wordpress is going to release it's own professional themes on a regular basis!

Wordpress Help

0 Votes

by Mark on Sep. 14, 2010

Great Ian Stewart. Keep up the good work.

Try visit this site - http://wordpresshostinghq.com

Full reviews and overview of the best Wordpress hosting solutions available with insider tips and secrets.

0 Votes

by stef on Oct. 21, 2010

The move is good news for the millions of users with WordPress blogs, especially for those looking to extend their blogs with better themes.

More Buying a Harley.

0 Votes

Share Your Comments