With the recent redesign of the site I made it clear that the Hybrid theme has been wonderful to me. Since I began using it I’ve built all client sites upon it and plan on doing that from here on out. Theme frameworks in general are the best thing for WordPress since I’ve been around.
Its also given me the motivation to get back into theme development. Building child themes (why child themes are so great) is a bit different than the usual process. You normally have to build templates for every page and take into consideration lots of things pertaining to standards, SEO, plugin compatibility and the such. With child themes, the process is a lot heavier on the design and usability and much less on the development. This is certainly helpful in creating beautiful themes.
WP Full Site’s Future
While this theme has been good to a number of people I’m not particularly pleased with it. Its purpose is fitting for lots of uses though, so I’m not getting rid of it completely. However, soon I’ll be discontinuing the 1.x branch and releasing version 2 which will be a child theme of Hybrid.
Why is this a good idea?
- Flexibility (at the moment Hybrid already has 18 different page templates!)
- Hybrid-specific plugins that are super high-quality
- You can upgrade Hybrid when new version comes out to get more functionality without breaking your site
- Already available in numerous languages
- It’ll be part of the large Hybrid community
This will be the case for all new themes, not just WP Full Site.
This Site’s Future
In general, I’m bringing back some life to this site. Its become quite stale. I’ll be making some effort to post more, post better content, and offer more and more to the WordPress community.
Consolidation
I’ve got projects spread out all over the place, some you’ve never heard of simply because I didn’t do a great job of making them available.
Roping everything back into this site will greatly benefit everyone. For me, I’ll be able to more closely tend to everything. For you, access to all things ‘Develop Daly’ will be a click away.
Support
Because of the lack of consolidation, its been easy to neglect things I wish I would have and could have supported better. So, I’m in the process of setting up a forum where I’ll provide support for each of my themes.
I Need Your Help
Honestly, I need a kick in the butt sometimes. To a fault, I’m motivated by the needs of others and when I feel unnecessary I lose interest. I really love…love being part of the WordPress community and offering my help where I can. So keep me going by asking for help when you need it, letting me know you enjoy my work, and even critiquing it. I’d love to improve where I can, so let me know where I can!
For You Paying Clients…
Everything above is mostly aimed at the community. However, I’m working on a better process of doing client work as well. Hopefully, I’ll have a private client section soon. The goals of this new area will be to manage projects, view progress, and provide premium support.
This is in an early stage at this point. I’m still trying to figure out how all these pieces should work together and what’s even necessary. Any feedback on this would be appreciated!
Seriously, Invite Your Friends!
All of these goals won’t be possible without community! So, bring it on, invite your friends and help me kick-start the re-birth of Develop Daly!
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I’ll definitely be happy to see some new child themes coming out for Hybrid. One of the things we’ve lacked in the community is a great designer putting out some child themes, so I’ll be happy to promote any of the work you do for the community.
I can’t say thanks enough for the great work you’ve put into Hybrid (and the community at that). I’m glad to be part of it.