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Jeff Chandler

iThemes Responds To Speculation – All Is Well

ithemeslogo The other night, I participated in a conversation with a few other people on Twitter regarding iThemes. There was some talk that iThemes was losing momentum and that the company was stagnating. Others said that iThemes was not producing innovative themes and pushing the boundaries of WordPress. While we speculated on the current status of iThemes, Cory Miller who is the co-founder took notice of the tweets and responded in a post on the company blog.

We respect and appreciate our customers who have gotten us here. We are deeply committed to the products and goodwill we’ve built with iThemes. In short, we love what we do!

For as long as I can see or forecast, iThemes will continue to be a creator and innovator of WordPress themes – focusing specifically on CMS and Business themes as we’ve consistently done since we opened the doors in January 2008.

I’m pretty happy to find out iThemes will continue into the foreseeable future to churn out business and CMS specific themes for WordPress. However, I’m really appreciative of the fact that Cory Miller came out and responded to the community discussion in a post on the company blog which not only answers our speculation, but also reinforces the companies stance to their customers. This is the sign of a co-founder who is paying attention and responding when necessary before speculation turns into false facts. If only other companies would be as responsive or alert, I think it would save them a lot of trouble in the long run.

By the way, take a look at Yukon which is iThemes latest offering. A Clean, business oriented theme with a few different post templates and drop down menus.

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11 responses to “iThemes Responds To Speculation – All Is Well”

  1. Jeff, I appreciate this post … and also even caring enough to ask if everything is well at iThemes.

    I have to admit …. business is a roller coaster ride and we’re not immune to the ups and downs of building a business. But it’s been great as I look back on almost two years at iThemes and beyond that with just WordPress and theme design personally.

    It’s definitely a challenge …. it seems like everyday a new “premium” theme is released — for better or worse. We’re taking the long view of things though and working hard to build a company that will be around for the long haul.

    Cheers to WordPress for making it all possible!!!

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  2. Thanks for commenting on this Jeff.

    I’ve been so focused on getting projects rolled out the past few weeks that I’ve turned off all distractions, including Tweetdeck. So I was very surprised and dismayed when Cory shared with me that rumors about the company were floating around.

    We’ve got some cool stuff coming up, and we can’t wait to share it with our customers. Now I need to bury myself in the work again so that I can get it ready. :)

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  5. @Cory Miller – Well, it’s not as if we were demonizing IThemes or anything, just public chatter regarding the company but as co founder, you did the right thing in noticing the chatter and addressing it face first before it became anything more. And hey, no better way to hear it than from the horses mouth :)

    @Chris Jean – Well, in this day in age, if no one sees any public activity on a company blog or in various other circles for about 2 weeks, people start thinking the company/service is dead. Weird, but that is how it is. Until proven otherwise, speculation about the death of the company ensues and only continues to grow and get wilder. Of course, if there is nothing wrong with the company, the longer they keep silent the worst the chatter becomes.

    @Nathan – Do you have any further information to backup this opinion? In the past two years of being involved in the WordPress community, I’ve seen nothing to indicate this to be true of iThemes.

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  6. Unfortunately I tend to agree with Nathan. iThemes started out well but has really been left behind in the last year in terms or creating quality innovative new themes. Cory can write a nice blog post with words about ithemes being “innovator of WordPress themes” with “great features and standards” etc, but until we actually see some of those things…actually all is not well with iThemes.

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  7. Nathan and Peter, I gotta say … I think in the spirit of transparency you should have left site links and not hide under anonymity with these types of comments if you really believe in your comments and want open and honest replies.

    I’ve never been one to really appreciate controversy within these types of discussions and would rather interact with people one-on-one instead of starting a flame war in the comments section of a blog post.

    So with that, I’ll just let our actions (plans, and products) do the talking for us. And in the future, maybe we can change your minds about iThemes. :)

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  8. As one of the original purchasers of iThemes’ themes almost 19 months ago (and continue to purchase), I can honestly say I’ve never regretted my purchases. One thing to remember, many people seem to compare them to WooThemes or StudioPress or Press75, etc… But one of the things iThemes does well is create quality business oriented themes that push WordPress to more of a CMS visual feel.

    iThemes doesn’t seem to push out magazine themes, video sharing themes, abstract designer blog themes like some of the other mentioned sites. For developers who are cranking out sites for small businesses who just need a simple web presence that is easy to update, there’s no way they would choose the Abstract theme or the Urban Elements theme for example. Small businesses are looking for clean, professional looking themes and iThemes seems to fill a niche that caters to small business sites. Plus, iThemes is one of the few (if not only) developers that integrate video tutorials of using the theme and using WordPress. Many clients love that feature if they are new to wordpress.

    Just wanted to add my comments.

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  10. Business is never perfect and there are times where we succeed and we fail – iThemes is no exception. We have also tried to be transparent as possible and even learn from our champions AND critics! We love what we do and there is no intention to “let things go” at all.

    I am appreciative that people HAVE brought things to our attention and thank you all for your comments both good and bad because it does help us become stronger and better.

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  11. For the record (in case anyone actually suspected), the “Nathan” above is NOT me. While I may no longer be with iThemes, I still have immense respect for the guys involved in producing themes there. You won’t find too many people who are better at what they do.

    As was mentioned above, iThemes does business/CMS style themes almost exclusively, and they do them well. Not sure what’s so bad about that? There are plenty other theme companies out there that only do 1-2 types of themes, so the criticisms above could apply to any one of them.

    Finally, I personally take exception to the “lack true development skills” language. If a theme company doesn’t make the TYPE of theme you like, then fine. But a drive-by comment like that should probably be kept to yourself.

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