We are proud and excited to announce our latest theme, Snap. Snap is a responsive, lightweight, and minimalist theme that makes it easy to feature your projects on your WordPress website. Snap’s clean grid based blog layout and configurable page templates also make it incredibly flexible. We invite you to view our demo site, learn more about the theme, or purchase Snap today.

Feature your latest work on the homepage

Snap’s homepage template highlights your best work and gives your readers a quick snapshot of you or your business. You can show a featured slider or a static image along with a grid of your recent posts or projects.

Curate a portfolio page (or two or three)

Snap gives you the flexibility to showcase your work in a variety of formats and configurations. Create multiple portfolio pages, and mix and match projects. Then, manage it all from a clean and simple drag and drop interface on the edit post screen.

Profile the artisan

In addition to showcasing your work, Snap is ready to showcase you! The profile page template features a section for your portrait image and a short description. You can use the rest of the page to talk about your business and tell your story. The template can even be re-used to feature multiple authors on the same website.

Blog in style

While Snap does emphasize your projects, it certainly hasn’t forgotten about your words. Snap’s grid based blog layout is clean, structured, and easy to browse. Additionally, Snap supports Jetpack’s Infinite Scroll right out of the box.

Under the hood

Snap is isn’t just beautiful on the surface. We believe the parts you don’t see are just as important as the parts you do. We’ve meticulously and carefully coded Snap using the latest WordPress standards and best practices. It’s ready for WordPress 3.4, 3.5, and even the upcoming 3.6 release. We also took special care to make sure Snap was speedy across different browsers and devices. We’ve even included some handy filters to make it easier for seasoned WordPress developers to work with Snap.

A theme that helps

We know setting up a new theme can be a hassle. Snap helps you get it right. If Snap detects content that isn’t optimal, it will let you know about it! For example, if you try to post a featured image that doesn’t meet the optimal width requirement, you’ll see an alert on the page letting you know about it. Your readers will still see the original content and never know the difference.

Get it today

We are very proud to release Snap and hope you love it as much as we do! Head over to the Snap theme page to learn more and purchase your copy today.

Who doesn’t like process?

Process at it’s core is a great thing. Without some processes in place even the very best companies will have trouble staying organized and productive. Process streamlines workflow so a team can be more effective. When clear and defined processes are in place everyone feels better and more confident in their work.

Process taken too far

Too much process can lock you in to bad decisions and kill creativity. Specifically, you start saying things like:

“We already signed off on the wireframes, so we’re not changing that.”

“We already scoped out that feature, so we shouldn’t explore this new idea.”

“I think I have a better way of doing this, but we’re already so far along… I probably shouldn’t bring it up.”

We always want new ideas and creative thinking throughout the entire process at The Theme Foundry. If we’re in the middle of a theme and someone has a brilliant idea involving a complete overhaul of the home page, we do it. The best ideas win, always. Process never rules over spontaneous creativity.

In contrast, this type of spontaneity usually doesn’t exist in agency land. In that environment, volume is important. Therefore, breaking down the process into specific steps makes perfect sense. If you’ve ever done client work, you know some sort of approval process is required to stay sane. In an agency, the process usually starts to form the roles of everyone working at that agency. You have a project manager, a designer, a front-end developer, and sometimes a back-end developer. Each person is a cog in the wheel of the process. Once something has been researched, scoped, and approved by the client, expectations are set. No matter how great the idea, substantial and meaningful change usually won’t happen. The process rules supreme.

A process that encourages creativity

Our design process follows this pattern: sketch and discuss ideas, rough mockups, design and build in the browser. The first two steps only take a week. Designing and building in the browser usually takes about six to eight weeks.

During the building phase the whole team checks in at least once a week and reviews progress and discusses important decisions. These meetings are where we see creativity blossom. Because we don’t have any rigid process in place, nothing is off the table. We may decide to go a completely different direction with the design or explore a new idea. Because we’re building the theme in the browser itself, we don’t have to worry about starting the process over. Everyone on the team is proficient with HTML and CSS. Not only that, we’re able to use Forge to leverage languages like Sass, which allows us to prototype new ideas much more quickly and truly make the browser our canvas.

I feel pretty strongly that putting creativity first gives us the freedom to do our best work and build better themes. It’s important to remember that process has it’s purpose, but it shouldn’t be allowed to stifle spontaneous creativity.

The Photography theme has been a hallmark of The Theme Foundry’s collection since we first released it nearly three years ago. It has stood the test of time and continues to be one of our most popular themes. Today, we are excited to usher in the next generation of Photography with the release of version 2.0.

This is a free update for all existing Photography customers. Please be sure to read the update instructions before you dive in.

What’s New?

We decided to completely rewrite the Photography codebase. WordPress has matured significantly since Photography 1.0 and we wanted to take advantage of the latest and greatest features by building Photography 2.0 from the ground up.

At first glance, you’ll notice the subtle visual enhancements that give Photography a needed makeover. From the refined image highlights to the understated background pattern, Photography maintains its core aesthetics, but gently improves some of the rougher edges. Additionally, Photography is now responsive and ready to showcase your photos on all of your favorite devices.

Better gallery management

In addition to visual changes, we’ve made galleries significantly easier to manage. WordPress 3.5 introduced a completely redesigned media manager that complicated Photography’s gallery management. We have overhauled and smoothed out the gallery functionality to work more intuitively with WordPress 3.5.

We also added support for two popular requests — multiple Gallery pages and portrait photos. Feature as many Gallery pages as you want and display the thumbnails in portrait or landscape mode!

Cleaner code

A theme should be just as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. We took the time to bring everything up to the latest WordPress standards and dramatically increase speed and performance. We also re-wrote the Flickr integration to work with the new Flickr API and OAuth 2.0.

Overall, it’s a better theme

We love Photography. It is an important part of our theme collection and we don’t want it to be just good; we want it to be great! We think we did just that with version 2.0 and are really excited to get it in your hands. Go ahead and update now.

What about marketplaces?

Marketplaces seem perfect on the surface for a few reasons:

• Free marketing and awareness for your product.
• Built in tools to sell your product.
• Minimal friction getting to market.

These are good reasons to use a marketplace, but consider some caveats:

• Subject to the whims (and terms) of the marketplace.
• Lock in factor. How can you leave?
• A (usually) hefty fee structure.
• Brand dilution and customer loyalty.

Notice anything about these caveats? They are easy to dismiss when you start, but they become increasingly unwieldy as you grow. Think of it like bringing home a cute cuddly bear cub. He’s great until one day you look up and realize he could tear your head off. These caveats get scary quickly and can start effecting your life, business, and livelihood.

Own your distribution channel (or sell through an authority)

If you’re selling a product you should be the sole distribution channel for that product or you should try to partner with the authority brand for that market. For example, if you’re selling Mac software, you should be selling it on your website and through the Mac App store. If you’re selling WordPress themes you should be selling them through your website or an authority like WordPress.com.

I’ve been approached countless times about selling through different channels. The answer is always no. We’re a small company and we want to use that to our advantage. We want to build a single distribution point for our product, control the experience, and create a community around it. Customers could never connect with us in the same way through a generic third-party marketplace.

How could I possibly build my own channel?

I know what you’re thinking: Easy for you to say as you’ve already built a channel and were lucky enough to be invited to sell themes on WordPress.com.

You also might be thinking:

1. I can’t make money distributing on my own. I’ll never get enough interest.
2. I’ll never be accepted to sell with an authority brand like WordPress.com.

I’d argue you’re suffering from:

• Short term thinking (I just want to make a quick buck).
• Lack of confidence (I could never do that).
• Laziness (sounds like a lot of work).

Let’s address some of these concerns.

Short term thinking isn’t worth it

If you’re serious about selling a product, you should care about that product. You should care about the experience your customers or users have with that product. If you just want to make money quickly, you’re in it for the wrong reason. Stop now. You’re never going to be happy selling a product you don’t care about (even if you do make a few bucks).

Free marketing with WordPress

If you’re building your product around WordPress you already have a free robust ecosystem ready and waiting for you. Here’s just a few things you can do:

• Start teaching through your blog. Talk about the lessons you’re learning while building your product. It will help others and they’ll respect you and your brand.
• Contribute to WordPress. Start taking time out of your schedule to jump in to community activities in your area of expertise. Are you developer? Jump into Trac or IRC and start trying to help. Designer? Head over to the Make WordPress UI blog and offer to lend a hand.
• Engage the community. Start interacting and engaging with the WordPress community. Almost everyone is friendly and willing to chat or exchange an email if you’re genuine. Attend WordCamps or better yet speak at one. Start or join a WordPress meetup in your city.

It’s a simple formula that requires some work: build a great product and start getting involved and contributing to the community around that product. If you follow this formula and you happen to be selling WordPress themes, before you know it these guys and gals might be contacting you.

It’s never been easier to start selling

Five years ago a strong argument against selling on your own website was infrastructure. It would be expensive, time consuming, and potentially scary to try and sell downloads on your own website. Not true today. There are quite a few easy options to help you get up and selling quickly with WordPress.

On that note, we’ve been busy building a robust software service to sell our WordPress themes for the past 18 months. It’s already processed thousands of transactions and we depend on it everyday to run our business.

The service is called Memberful, and last week we opened it up for beta testers. Memberful makes it easy for you to securely sell your downloads (themes, plugins, eBooks, music, etc.) or monetize your content (with monthly or yearly subscription access). This isn’t a marketplace, it’s a tool for selling your creative work.

Want to try Memberful?

We’d love to have you as a customer. Leverage our service and start selling today. Send us an email and let us know what you’re selling. You can be up, running, and connected with your WordPress website in 5 minutes. Simple and flat pricing. No gotchas. No lock in.

What are you waiting for?

Whether you use Memberful or something else doesn’t matter. The opportunity to start selling your creative work on the web has never been easier. Start owning your brand, start thinking long term, and start selling your stuff.

Memberful is really easy (like point and click) to set up. It also optionally integrates quickly with WordPress via a plugin. We’ve been using it for a year now here at The Theme Foundry to sell our WordPress themes on this WordPress powered website. If you’re the technical type, we also have an API available for integrating Memberful with any third-party CMS or custom application.

We’re really excited about Memberful, and hope you are too!

Since I will be working with The Theme Foundry customers, I should tell you about myself. I have been involved in web development for the past 9 years and have focused on WordPress development for the past 6 years. Prior to joining The Theme Foundry, I worked as a Senior Web Engineer for 10up, LLC, where I focused on developing high traffic websites and interfaced with clients. Prior to that, I was a freelance web developer in my spare time while I was pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology (which I completed in August 2011). While I have spent most of my web development career building individual websites, I am excited to step out of the world of client services and into the realm of product development.

Zack, Laura, and the Columbia Glacier

Like the rest of the United States based The Theme Foundry team, I reside in the Northwest. More specifically, I currently live in the not-so-sunny Portland, Oregon with my fiancée and dog. I am originally from small town Alaska and have been waiting for a snowy day in Portland. It should also be noted, that I did live in Moscow, Idaho for two years during grad school, and I am somewhat convinced that Drew looks for current or prior Idaho residence in order to be considered for a position at The Theme Foundry (unless you have the pixel pushing precision of Scott, then that requirement is waived). I am excited to be living in a city that has a vibrant tech scene and an especially stellar WordPress community. This helps me to stay motivated with all of the WordPress development that I do.

So that’s a little bit about me! I look forward to learning a little bit about all of our customers around the Help Center!

Watson was inspired by the clean lines and bold strokes of a classical newspaper. From the typography to the uncluttered article view, we focused on bringing that clean and classic look to your website. Watson boasts a neatly organized front page layout, a myriad of in post styles, and the option to set your own custom accent color. It may be our finest magazine-style production yet.

Typographically pleasing

Liven up your content using Watson’s custom editor formatting buttons. 10 hand-crafted styles add polish and charm to your ever-so-important words.

Responsive (as always)

Every new theme from The Theme Foundry looks beautiful on every device; Watson is no different. As your screen narrows, Watson shapes itself to provide a great reading experience.

Attention-getting

Place your posts in Watson’s featured slider or featured thumbnails section and your readers can focus on special articles they may have missed otherwise.

Read more and watch a video tour on the Watson theme page. Or, have a look at Watson on the demo site.

You’ll spend your days here at The Theme Foundry building new themes with the team, fixing and improving existing themes, and working with the terrific folks over at Automattic to launch and support our themes on the WordPress.com platform.

We take pride in how we build our themes. We discuss and debate what features really matter, and more importantly, which features don’t. We’re not held back by the whims of a client or the narrow scope of an internal project. We build for the end user. This gives us the freedom to make the right decisions and the satisfaction of seeing those decisions applied in real life.

You won’t just be implementing basic features. We’re looking for someone who wants to make an impact. We need you to take our themes and service to the next level by delivering big picture solutions that do real jobs for our customers.

How we work

The best ideas win here at The Theme Foundry, and we don’t have any layers of management to fight through. You’ll be directly involved in all the decisions and discussions. You should thrive on responsibility and enjoy earned autonomy. After learning the ropes, you’ll be making lots of important decisions on your own.

We’re a small goal orientated company. We all work remotely and everyone’s individual contribution is essential to the success of the group. You’ll be expected to set your own goals and meet them each and every week. We don’t count hours or tell you when to work, but we do expect you to get your work done.

Requirements

Almost all of our communication is written, so it’s really important you write well and enjoy communicating your ideas through words.

You should be well versed in PHP, JavaScript, and WordPress development. We also use Ruby in a few different places (Forge for example), so any interest or experience with Ruby is a bonus.

You’ll also need to help out with regular system adminstration tasks like deploying with Capistrano, checking logs, tweaking Varnish, and writing scripts. Basic familiarity with *nix systems (we use Debian) is essential, and some experience with system administration is preferred.

Work from anywhere

We are looking for a creative and talented person from anywhere in the world. We’re a distributed team, and we don’t have an office here in Boise, so you’ll be working from home or wherever you prefer to work.

Benefits and tools

This is a full-time position with a competitive salary and benefits. We’ll also pay for any necessary hardware, software, books, and conferences. We don’t have a set vacation policy — take it when you need it.

You’ll also get to take a team trip to WordCamp San Francisco once per year. It’s always a blast to meet everyone and hang out in real life for a few days.

Some of the tools, software and technology we currently use include: Apple computers (Linux works too), Git and Github for managing code, Campfire for group chat, and Basecamp for managing our projects.

How to apply

Send a well written cover letter to info [at] jestro.com and include Developer in the subject line. Tell us why you want to work for The Theme Foundry and why you’d be a great fit for the position. Please include links to code that you’ve written (Github profile works well) and any contributions to open source software. Note: We really want to get to know you and we love it when folks get creative with their applications.

Regardless of the nature of the improvements, we make a commitment to keeping our theme collection up to date by providing bug fixes, new features, and interface updates from time to time, so that users buying themes today get the same quality experience users had yesteryear, when the themes were originally released.

Until recently, we would do theme updates every 2-3 months. Every theme was updated at the same time, which lead to a number of issues:

• The gap between updates was long, meaning lower priority bugs could sit on the queue for months.
• New theme development would halt for a month or two at a time as we waded through update tickets.
• Only bugs would be addressed, and even worse, only bugs that were reported. We never had a chance to review the themes for improvements that customers may not ever mention.

Knowing this, we started discussing ways to improve both our process and our communication with our customers. Here’s what we’ve come up with:

• We’ll no longer be doing “batched” quarterly updates. Instead, we’ll be approaching bug fixes in smaller amounts every week.
• Every so often, we’ll be approaching one of our older themes for a week (or two) of improvements. The focus here won’t be on bug fixes, but instead on updating interfaces and adding features.
• We’ll publish our theme updates more regularly on the blog. Ideally, with every update to the theme we’ll have a post to let you know about the changes. We’ll of course use some discretion here — obscure bug fixes or stylistic tweaks will probably not get their own announcements.

We think these changes will improve the quality of our themes and our communication. The piece we’re most excited about is our focus on improvements instead of only bug fixes. We try to design our themes to be timeless, but web development and WordPress move quickly, so we think it is important to work to keep our themes current and sharp.

Now that we’ve described our new processes, I should probably mention the changes to some of our themes that we’ve released in the last few weeks!

Avid

• Added custom background support so you can choose your background color.
• Image and gallery posts now fall back to the first uploaded image when no featured image set.

Duet

• Standard posts now can show featured image headers.
• Added an option to turn off special archive view.

Anthem

• All images are now large by default to mimic the demo site’s look.

Shelf

• Changed image post functionality to have fallbacks if featured image not set.

Traction

• Removed advertising and sidebox custom code options.
• Note: If you use the advertising options, please be aware that updating Traction to 2.6 will remove ads from your header and sidebar.

Titan

• Removed advertising options.
• Note: If you use the advertising options, please be aware that updating Titan to 2.4.7 will remove ads from your sidebar.

Vigilance

• Removed sidebar imagebox.
• Moved banner image to use WordPress custom header functionality.
• Note: If you use the sidebar imagebox option, please be aware that updating Vigilance to 2.4.7 will remove images from your sidebar.

We’ve made other small changes and fixes to Portfolio, Linen, Photography, and Chalk. You can find more information in the changelog, which is included with your theme zip file. Fixes and changes to React will be coming soon.

We think this new approach is a big step in the right direction, but we’d love any feedback you have on our themes, our process, or our communication. Thanks for your feedback and continued support!

Support is great source of pride at The Theme Foundry. You should be a proficient communicator with excellent writing skills and naturally enjoy helping people solve problems. You should also know WordPress inside and out and have lots of experience using and customizing WordPress themes. You don’t need to be a developer, but you should be capable of writing CSS, HTML, and basic PHP.

What you’ll do

You’ll be providing (and improving!) our special house-blend of amazing customer service on a daily basis. Most of the time you’ll be answering questions via our support forums, email, and Twitter. On top of that, you will also be responsible for writing documentation and producing tutorial videos for our Help Center. You’ll also be routinely posting awesome articles about WordPress to our blog.

Full-time with benefits

This is a full-time position with all the benefits you would expect — competitive salary, health insurance, retirement plan. You’ll also get to take a team trip to WordCamp San Francisco each year!

Work from (pretty much) anywhere

We’re looking for a native English speaker who lives anywhere in North America. Normally, anywhere in the world would be fine, but we need you to be available during daytime hours here in the US. We’re a distributed team, so you’d be working from home or wherever you prefer to work.

How to apply

Send a cover letter to [info at jestro.com] explaining why you want to be a community manager at The Theme Foundry, why you love helping others, and any experiences you have with customer service and support. We love creative applications and we really want to get to know you, so please tell about yourself and why you feel this job is meant for you.