Justin Tadlock, a well-known WordPress theme designer, has just announced his new WordPress theme club - Theme Hybrid. Theme Hybrid offers 2 types of memberships - free and exclusive (paid), which costs $25 per year. At the moment, there seems to be several free themes and one exclusive theme.
Exclusive members will get to enjoy 2 new “Child” themes per month. These are themes which hook onto a parent theme for added styling and/or functionality. As far as my understanding goes, they can also make it easier to upgrade themes, especially in bulk. Only the “Parent” theme would need to be updated.
I know this whole child theme/parent theme sounds really confusing. Hopefully once I learn a little bit more about them I can start writing about them on Theme Lab.
Be sure to check out Justin’s new project. It looks to be an exciting step forward in the world of WordPress themes.
I love his Banner too, especially after their banner bagging on wpdesigner.
Looking forward to the themes and see what he has up his sleeve.
@Jay: It definitely is a great slogan that I think captures the essence and community spirit of the site. It’s also a nice play on the banner of that other recently launched theme club.
Thanks for commenting.
@Leland, thanks for blogging about Theme Hybrid.
Child themes aren’t really that complicated either. I’ll be doing some tutorials on some of the stuff I’m working on with them at some point. Also, check out Theme Shaper where Ian Stewart is really pushing this concept.
They do make it much easier to upgrade themes. I could roll out bug fixes on a weekly basis if I wanted to with this system. Not that my themes are that buggy.
@Jay
I’ve got a few plans to change things up in the WordPress community in the coming months, expanding on the theme club idea with a lot of extra neat stuff.
I’ve become a fan of Justin’s theme all this while.
But, yeah… It is not really “ready to use”.
Need some modification before it really suits my need.
But this is what I’m waiting for all this while since WordPress 2.3.3 (First moved into WordPress CMS).
For Theme Lab, I always use your theme for the source of inspiration…
Hey,
I’ve been a fan of Justin’s themes as well. I am glad to hear that he has finally made a way for people to buy “Premium Themes” without the “Premium Prices”.
Good luck, Justin!
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Aguair