We all know of course that there’s one major guy called Matthew Mullenweg behing the whole WordPress.org ecosystem.
But did you know that the 2621 themes of the WP.org theme repository (as of today July, 17th 2014) have all been carrefully reviewed by a very small team of incredibly awesome people ? WordPress experts, they check every single theme submitted to the WordPress.org platform and verify if they are compliant with the guidelines (which is quite a big task to do believe me!). Not only reviewed with the guidelines, but the themes are also tested, commented, improved/corrected if needed.
This is the theme review team.
And those guys are awesome for many reasons : first they make available to the world thousands of free themes, keeping alive the real open-source spirit. They also contribute to help hundreds of thousands of people to publish their content, for free (except for hosting of course) and beautifully.
They work very hard, and they do it for free, as volunteers. But they are all like us : I mean they have a job, maybe a rent to pay and a family to take care of. They work even on the week end! And on top of that, they still find time to answer questions to developers who have subscribed to the very active mailing list.
Today for example, I had a very urgent (and exceptional) update request related to a bug in the Customizr theme. The bug could have potentially impacted many users and it required some php skills to fix it. Less than 30 minutes later, the new version of the theme was reviewed and approved !! And two hours later, the new release was live on WP.org. Check the ticket here.
To me this team is a very powerful example of what can be done with the open source Web in terms of working community. A group of foxes from all over the planet working together for something they simply love and giving back great value to the rest of the world. This is all working because of the trust they have for each other. I really love this concept/idea.
In fact, this is the implementation of the WordPress philosophy in all its glory! Seeing this team in action day by day, I truly believe that open source can still be a possible future for the web.
Below is the list of those who reviewed the Customizr theme and helped me sometimes, with a link to their websites. (I really hope I forgot nobody 🙂 )
So thanks to :
- Josh Pollock
- max2501
- tskk
- Greg Priday
- Chip Bennett
- jcastaneda
- Emil Uzelac
- Nisha
- Rohit Tripathi
- Catchthemes
- Carolina Nymark
This is just an extract of the team, there are more reviewers to thank.
Keep up this good work and again, just thanks!
PS : For developers, I strongly recommend the WP.org themes blog.
8 thoughts on “Who’s behind the wordpress.org free themes ?”
Hi Nicolas, after starting my blog, i was wondering why WordPress providing free themes, but after reading this i got the idea of free themes by WordPress. BTW thanks for getting me knowledge.
Hi Nicolas,
I tried to follow your instructions (on http://www.presscustomizr.com/snippet/adding-google-font-customizr/) to add a google font to the child theme for the new website I’m creating with Customizr. Unfortunately I must have done something wrong in the process because I got locked out of my site and had to go in via cpanel to remove my mistakes! Can you tell me is it the Standard code or the @import code or the Javascript code line that I need to copy & paste into the functions.php file?
Many Thanks,
Jo
Hi Jo,
This Google fonts snippet (http://www.presscustomizr.com/snippet/adding-google-font-customizr/) describes the different steps to add a Google font to your WordPress website.
If you need a safe an easier tool to do it without any line of code, you might want to try this Google Font plugin.
Hope this helps
Nicolas,
First, I want to say thank you! Your theme has been an answer to all my web issue prayers!!! I am in love with it and the feedback I have gotten since installing it last week is WONDERFUL! You make me look good!!!
Secondly, the whole reason I ended up switching my theme and using yours was because I made a fatal error on my old theme and clicked “update theme” when that option was presented to me. I then had broken links and lost all my customizations. I am worried if I update your theme I may have the same errors. Could you help me or send me a link that will walk me through how to properly update the them and not lose all my goodies?
Lastly, I will be supporting your efforts with donations as my business is sure to pick up now thanks to your work! So – when you see it, you will KNOW WHY!!! thank you!!
Hi Heather, I am glad to read this!
About the theme update workflow : the most important thing is to use a child theme to make any modification to the theme.
You might want to read those pages :
http://www.presscustomizr.com/snippet/creating-child-theme-customizr/
http://www.presscustomizr.com/customizr/how-to-customize-customizr-wordpress-theme/
Hope this helps and enjoy the theme.
Good morning, I just created a website using your wonderful templet, customizer… and thank you for all your hard work! I have a issue with my logo, when I go to the website using other computers than my own, the logo is stretch extremely big.. I need help! Where do I start? Thank you for your time.
Hi Gerald, there’s an option to force your logo to the default Customizr size. Check the documentation here.
Hope this will help
Thanks, these themes are amazing. I’m sure that a lot of users would love it!