It’s been a long time since I had the chance to talk with Nathan Rice face to face. The last opportunity I had was at WordCamp Dallas in 2008 which was my first WordCamp that I attended. Since that time, Nathan has worked for iThemes, ModThemes, and now resides at StudioPress where he ended up having a strong hand in developing the Genesis Theme. In this interview, I ask him how things are going with his employment at StudioPress. I also have him explain the strengths behind the Genesis theme framework. Last but not least, Nathan describes the features he is most excited for regarding WordPress 3.0
Nathan Rice Now Part Of Modthemes.com
Nathan Rice who I first came into contact with through iThemes and at WordCamp Dallas 2008 has moved on to a new venture called Modthemes. Modthemes is a fresh new venture that offers commercial GPL themes for WordPress with Bryan Hauer as CEO. Right now, there is only one theme available with another on the way.
The WordPress community has benefited greatly from his contributions in both themes and plugins. I want to wish the best of luck to Nathan on his new career path.
iThemes Responds To Speculation – All Is Well
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.
Prodigy Framework Needs Beta Testers
Nathan Rice has been working on his own framework for a few months now to help give iThemes a solid base to work from. His framework is called Prodigy and the first public developer beta is out and ready to be tested. As it stands, this theme is not for the faint of heart in that right now, it’s developer centric. However, once the beta period winds down and the bugs are squashed, Nathan plans on publishing a series of tutorials explaining the purpose behind the framework, its capabilities, and how to use it.
Head on over and help him out if you’ve got the time.
BloggingPro And NathanRice Redesigned
Two blogs which regularly feature WordPress content, BloggingPro.com and NathanRice.net have been redesigned. Nathans new design features a green and blue color scheme while using white as the background color for the content. The design strikes me as different than most other WordPress focused sites. I’m not sure if I like it or not but I think it will grow on me.
BloggingPro on the other hand looks 1,000 times better than it did previously. The new design was created by James McDonald, the same guy who created David’s personal site BrandingDavid.com. The new design is slick with a stylish logo and an eye pleasing color scheme.
Head on over and give each a thorough look over and then come back and report what you find.
Default Theme Framework Is Stupid
I suppose if he won’t argue about it, maybe we can? Any thoughts?
I’m only going to say this once, and I’m not going to argue about it: Trying to include a “default theme framework” in WP core is STUPID. @NathanRice