A few days ago, WebDevStudios announced that they acquired the Startbox theme framework. I’ve known WebDevStudios to primarily be a client development oriented business so I thought it was interesting that they have decided to move in the direction of a commercial theme shop. I managed to get Brad to answer a few questions I had regarding the acquisition and this is what he had to say:
With the acquisition of StartBox, does this officially make WebDevStudios a commercial theme shop?
Technically yes, however I don’t feel we are out there to compete with the many successfully established theme shops in the community. There are a ton of great themes and frameworks out there, so it really comes down to what is the best fit for the person or project. StartBox is our first major push into the commercial WordPress space. Our goal is to focus on making the StartBox theme framework as amazing as possible. Everything else is just gravy.
Will you be sticking with the Theme Club idea already established by StartBox?
For now yes, but that could change in the future. Currently you can access all child themes for $100/year or purchase any single child theme for $47. We currently have 9 child themes available, but plan on rapidly expanding that in 2013. The StartBox core framework is also 100% freely available via Github: https://github.com/WebDevStudios/StartBox
At WebDevStudios, we pride ourselves on having a strong focus on development. Because of that we plan on making some really amazing child themes and utilize those strong development skills to include features that go above and beyond what users might see in other themes out there. These themes and features will also carry over into our client work so it’s really a win win for us.
Will all previous plugins created by WebDevStudios be moved under the StartBox club umbrella?
We don’t have any plans to move our existing plugins to the theme club. We are working on a few pro versions of our plugins, but the base plugins will always remain free and available on WordPress.org. We do have plans to build plugins specifically for StartBox. If a StartBox plugin would be useful in other themes, and not just a feature specific to StartBox, we plan on coding and releasing it for everyone to use.
When I think of WebDevStudios, the thing that pops into my mind first is the Genesis Theme Framework. Will Genesis no longer be the framework of choice for future client work?
We love Genesis and that doesn’t change because of StartBox. Going forward we do plan on using StartBox for most client work, but ultimately will use whatever theme is a good fit for the project. A good amount of our contacts come to us wanting Genesis, so we will certainly give them what they want.
The beauty of StartBox is it allows us to not only shape the future of the theme framework, but also build and sell really amazing child themes for StartBox. We’ve given a lot of consideration to building and selling stand-alone themes and custom child themes for other frameworks, but at the end of the day we decided to focus on a framework that we have full control over.