Returning to Our Community Roots

It has almost been two months. First, allow me to apologize for not providing any updates during this time. As the captain of the ship here, it is my responsibility to let everyone know what course we are traveling. I have neglected that duty a bit.

If you are not up to speed, I shut down the commercial side of things in September and have now taken a full-time job at WP Tavern as a writer. Some of you are also aware that I am still on contract for another project that is taking up much of my extra time for the remainder of 2019. As is often the case in life, the timing of events is rarely ideal.

Because Theme Hybrid will no longer be a commercial theme and plugin shop, I needed to find a direction for the site. Shuttering the doors completely was not an option. We have a large community here. At the same time, there is simply no way that I can dedicate the amount of time I have devoted to this site in the past decade.

That means getting back to our roots of building and maintaining a community around free WordPress themes and resources. But, I can’t do it alone.

The great thing about this community is that we have many awesome developers involved. We have a strong, tight-knit group of folks who have already been contributing in some way for years. Even better, most of them are on board with moving this community forward.

As the captain, I need to learn to let others take the wheel. It is going to take some time. There will be an adjustment period as we figure all of this out.

I hope that you all continue this journey with us.

What does this mean in practice?

Primarily, Theme Hybrid will become a free portal for theme authors to share and collaborate. This means building and maintaining tools like the Hybrid Core framework and the Mythic starter theme as community projects. It also means having a way for developers to chat and bounce ideas around with others, particularly in our Slack group.

For end users, it means that I am opening the doors for others to share their themes here. This would not be for any theme author. The group will be limited to trusted members of the community. One of the things we have always taken pride in here is sharing projects that follow good coding standards, and that will never change. I want you all to feel confident that you’re getting quality themes.

After I wrap up the “secret” project I am on contract for and regain my free time once again, I plan to continue working on the Exhale theme. That will be my personal WordPress project where I can explore all the ideas I have.

Aside from a few passion projects or those related to themes, I will likely be finding new permanent homes for the majority of my plugins. I will release more details on plugin changes as they happen.

Eventually, we will reopen site registration (free to all). There is still a lot of under-the-hood work I need to do, so this is not going to happen overnight.

The biggest thing to know is that the site, the community, is not going anywhere. My role will be greatly reduced, particularly on a day-to-day basis. In reality, I will probably be checking in on the weekends to make sure things are running.

There is still much to figure out. As always, I am open to feedback on what you want to get out of this site and how we can help you solve problems going forward.