Checking out the WPTavern Twitter stream early this morning, I noticed this tweet from Matt: This could be interesting for WP themes: http://wpgorilla.org/ They should add finished product to theme directory. Taking a look into the Gorilla Project, looks like they will be producing open-source ‘Premium‘ WordPress themes.
The Gorilla Project is an opensource project created by Jeremie and Chris to overcome common issues encountered by a single WordPress theme designer.
I’ve never heard of Chris before but Jeremie should be a somewhat familiar name to most of you since he is the creator of the slick looking OneRoom WordPress theme. I’m intrigued by why these two developers are going down this road essentially doing the same thing every other theme author is doing but for a price.
I mean, everything on paper regarding this project looks great from an end users perspective, I just can’t believe there is no mention of revenue or money. I would be very, very surprised if this really was a project centered around benefiting the WordPress community as a whole, only because I’ve never seen something like this. Matt even suggested that once they have a finished product available, they should put it on the Theme Repository. If OneRoom and Jeremie’s latest project PigNews is the type of design work we can expect to come out of this project to be freely accessible to anyone in the WordPress community, that will be a huge plus not only for the repository, but for the community as a whole.
I’m going to try and get a hold of one or both of these guys to figure out what the ultimate motive is behind the project either in an interview on WPWeekly or a text based interview.
They are currently looking to build their team so if you’re interested and are a theme designer, a plugin developer, a PHP Ninja or only a graphic designer email them at joinus {a-t} wpgorilla {d-o-t} org. they also ask that you please attach a link to your portfolio if you have one.
Over the past few days, I’ve been reporting on the fact that the WPGorilla project were in the midst of a name change. The change took place not only because of a premium theme author with a business centered around a gorilla, but also for SEO, and other reasons. After they initiated their poll for domain choices, I sent them an idea for a domain to use called WPSynergy. Don’t ask me how I came up with the name, but I thought that Synergy sounds like a cool word and since it has a meaning similar to what the project is trying to accomplish, is should be a nice fit. 