We recently started work on a brand new tumblog style theme with the wonderful and talented Ryan Essmaker. The design is still very much in the rough planning stages, but we know the theme will be responsive (automatically adjusts to the width of your browser or device) and geared towards artists, creatives, and photographers. It will also utilize WordPress Post Formats (of course!).

Ryan was awesome enough to share this early concept sketch with us. We’ll be sure to post links to any additional screenshots or teasers on Twitter and Facebook, so be sure to follow us there.

I had the opportunity to chat with Lance Willett, Brian Gardner, and David Cowgill on the business of selling WordPress themes at WordCamp San Francisco. A few of the topics we touched on include the GPL, marketing your business, customer support, and mistakes we’ve made.

If you’re having trouble watching the video check out the original on WordPress.tv.

Say hello to React! React is a simple and elegant WordPress theme for business featuring a fluid and responsive grid that allows for easy viewing from an iPhone, iPad, or other mobile device. The theme is packed with some other great features: custom typography, custom background (hides automatically on small screens), support for projects, and more.

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Hey there! My name is Andy Adams, and I’m the newest employee of The Theme Foundry. Yes, I’m the one that has been causing all the delays – sorry about that!

Drew wanted me to tell you a little bit about myself. You’ll probably start seeing me more often in the months to come – working on theme updates, the support forums, the blog, and more.

I have a beautiful wife (Natalie) and daughter (Marie), who are my pride and joy.

I’ve been a professional web developer for a little over 2 years. I started my career at Experts-Exchange doing Java development, and spent a year at Chief Architect in Coeur d’Alene, ID doing PHP work before starting with The Theme Foundry. I’m relatively new to WordPress development, but I have used WordPress off and on for the last several years.

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Early last week I ordered a copy of the much anticipated Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte. While reading through the book over the weekend I was pleasantly surprised and proud to see Shelf featured on page 105 as an example of a fluid layout with fixed-width elements.

The book itself is an excellent primer on implementing fluid grids and media queries into your web projects. In fact, I plan on using some of the techniques in our upcoming business theme. If you’re a web designer or developer it would certainly make a great addition to your library.

Earlier this year we decided the time was right to hire at least one full-time employee to help take the Foundry (and our parent company Jestro) to the next level. We underestimated the enormous amount of time this whole process takes, hence why their hasn’t been much excitement around here over the past couple months.

We are a small bootstrapped company and it is very important we carefully and diligently navigate through the entire process. Building the right team now will help us grow and continue to deliver a high level of service and support for our products over the long haul.

Excitement on the way

The good news is once we complete this process everything will start to pick up again, and at a much faster pace. Here’s what you can look forward to this summer:

• New business theme released in June July (instead of May).
• Announcement of a new theme project with Veerle Pieters.
• Introduction to our first full-time employee.
• An overhaul of our theme documentation and members area.
• Increased development on our existing theme collection.
• More premium themes available for purchase on WordPress.com.
• More news about our upcoming Memberful product.

Last week I started sketching out a some ideas for a new business theme. It’s still early in the design process, but I plan on ramping up development over the next few weeks. If all goes according to plan, it should be available for purchase sometime in May June July. The theme doesn’t have a name just yet, but that usually happens near the end of the process—after it’s personality has started to unfold.

We are looking for a smart, talented, and self-managed designer who writes and communicates effectively. We don’t have any specific experience requirements, but you should have a demonstrated understanding of typography, color, and proportion. You must be proficient with HTML / CSS and enjoy writing well-structured markup. Basic PHP and JavaScript skills are a bonus, but not required.

The bulk of your work will revolve around building and refining our WordPress theme collection. Your theme designs will be used by thousands of customers on websites around the world. You’ll also spend time improving and rethinking the design of our other products and product websites.

View the full listing and apply on our jobs page →

Today we released some exciting new updates for all of our themes. Some notable improvements include:

• A faster and lighter logo uploader for all themes.
• Shelf 2.0: A revamped codebase and support for Post Formats.
• IE9 Beta compatibility fixes for Photography and Paperpunch.
• Updated slider for Traction and Linen.

Head over to the downloads page to grab the new theme packages. WordPress 3.1 is required, so please be sure you are running WordPress 3.1 before you try to update your theme(s). Also, be sure to read the upgrade instructions and the important notes on the new logo uploader, Shelf 2.0, and Traction Updates.

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We are looking for a smart, talented, and self-managed developer who writes and communicates effectively. We don’t have any specific experience requirements, but you must be a programmer at heart. You are familiar with or more than capable of quickly learning how to use: PHP (WordPress / Kohana), Ruby (Rails), JavaScript (jQuery / Ajax), Git, SVN, ORM, OOP, Apache, MySQL, Linux (Debian), Bash, HTML, CSS.

Our current team is made up of two founders and a handful of contractors. This means you will be one of our first full-time employee and have a huge hand in helping shape our young company. It also means you won’t be bored. Much of your time will be spent coding, but you will also be: helping out in our support forums, writing and editing documentation, posting to our blog, and answering customer service emails.

View the full listing and apply on our jobs page →