😮 One of the best (and first) Premium WP themes just went open source. OK, its not officially changing for another month but trust me, this is BIG news. Really.
What is the Revolution Theme? Well, here is a quote from their site:
The Revolution themes are widget-ready, customizable themes that provide ideal solutions for online magazines, online newspapers, and other websites that wish to use WordPress as a content management system.
Basically, a its kick arse, function heavy beast of a theme and now its finally been freed! 🙂
Why this is important
To purchase the Revolution would have cost a developer like me around $400. With this licence I could have dug into the code, seen how it works and hopefully learned a few things which would have helped to progress my WP knowledge and hopefully make future web developments using WP a more intriguing task.
Something like this is great for me. I’m no hardcore PHP developer and when I see what some people can do with WP themes and plugins my eyes water. Its pretty safe to say that it would take me a couple of years to at least try to learn the skills required to become an advanced theme developer. Don’t get me wrong, I get along just fine, but I know my limits.
Freedomville
The new business model being touted by the Revolution Theme team will mean a new community and support network will be created around how the theme does its stuff. For the first time users will be able to ask the developers questions, chop up the code, query it, hack it and mod it till their fingers bleed. In theory it will create a totally new area in theme design. Perhaps bringing some of the advanced features which are currently only available in premium/paid themes to the massive free themes network.
From the Revolution blog:
So what does this mean? It means that as of Saturday November 1st, a completely new Revolution site will launch – call it the second coming, or what you will. There will be a new set of themes on that website, which like I said will be made available under the GPL license.
