A few weeks ago I received an email from Joe Pemberton at Punchcut, an interface design company based in San Francisco. The email was friendly and non-confrontational, Joe believed we were infringing on his company’s registered trademark of the name “Punchcut”. He was also concerned about the impact our theme name might be having on his long established brand. Joe and I discussed these concerns on the phone and I completely understood where he was coming from. I was happy to change the name of the theme.

Paperpunch

So today I am announcing that our Punchcut WordPress theme is now officially named Paperpunch. As you can see, most of the site has been updated to reflect this new change. Tomorrow I will be releasing a new version of Paperpunch, along with some upgrade instructions. I have done my best to ensure everything is re-directing and working properly, if you run into any broken links please drop me a note in the comments. I will be changing the category name on this blog as well, so be sure to update your RSS reader tomorrow if you are currently subscribed to the Punchcut category feed.

Lessons learned

When researching a name for a new theme I usually perform a quick Google search to ensure nobody else is using the name for an existing WordPress theme. In this case I searched for the term “punchcut wordpress theme” and didn’t see any meaningful results. I quickly assumed everything was good to go, which turned out to be a bit naive on my part. Next time around I will be sure to perform an extensive Google search of the potential theme name along with a basic trademark search.

Today I am excited to announce Yan Sarazin has officially joined The Theme Foundry team as a part-time support specialist and theme developer. He will be providing fast and friendly support in our forums, developing new theme features, improving existing features, and working with me on our theme codebase.

Yan started developing for the web over 13 years ago and is proficient in HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, jQuery, and Ruby on Rails. He founded Statik Pulse in 2005 where he mostly consults for the Canadian government (he isn’t allowed to share any government secrets in the support forums, so don’t ask) and works as a freelance web developer. Yan is the genius behind Podium, an awesome Ruby on Rails web app (still in private beta) that helps you manage every aspect of your sports team. He is also the author of Posterize, a fantastic WordPress plugin that helps integrate WordPress and Posterous.

Yan lives in beautiful (but cold) Ottawa, Canada where you can find him playing or watching hockey (Go Sens!), on a photowalk, tinkering with cars, or drooling over the latest Apple product. You can also catch him on Tumblr, follow him on Twitter, or check out his photos on Flickr.

Welcome to the team Yan!

Learn more about Traction →

I am super excited to announce the release of our newest WordPress theme, Traction! Traction is a dark and clean magazine style theme with a robust options menu and built in support for WordPress post thumbnails. This is the theme I meant to design when I started Punchcut late last year, it just wasn’t ready yet. Traction comes with a boatload of features, including three colors schemes (red, blue, green), built in Twitter support, and much more. I encourage you to browse through all the features and take it for a test drive. Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments.

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We have 2 new page templates hot off the press and available to our PRO members. You now have the option to use a dedicated Archives and Sitemap template on your blog. These are pretty handy if you want to give your readers a quick and easy way to scan over your content. To use your new templates create a new page called “Archives” and select the “Archives” page template from the Attributes menu on the right hand side of the page editor. Publish the page and you are done. You would follow the same steps to create a Sitemap page.

If you have not customized your PRO child theme then simply upload and overwrite your old theme with the new one (make a backup just in case). You can download the new child themes from the member resources page. If you have made customizations please follow the manual upgrade instructions below.

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Today I am proud to announce Themes by Jestro is now officially The Theme Foundry! To be clear, nothing else about our business has changed. We have simply switched our name, moved to a new domain, and re-branded our themes project.

Why the change?

This has been a few months in the making. When I began this journey in late 2008 I had no idea where we would be in 2010. The placement of the site on a sub-domain of our design and development business along with the Jestro Themes / Themes by Jestro name was a logical but short-sighted choice. After a fantastic 2009, and the release of two new themes, the project has now outgrown “subdomain status”. I have big plans for the The Theme Foundry in 2010 and this change lays the groundwork for those plans.

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We are having a New Year’s membership sale to kick off 2010! Use coupon code 9D245 and save $5 off PRO membership. The sale is limited to 50 coupons, so don’t miss out. Sold Out!

Big news today. We just released a brand new theme, Punchcut, and are rockin’ some fresh new digs here at Themes by Jestro. Some of you how might have been following along on Twitter and know the launch was supposed to be yesterday, but mod_rewrite decided to take me 12 rounds as I was running the final checks before launch. Needless to say, I picked up some bruises but eventually came away with a knockout.

This marks an important point in our history for several reasons (which I will get to later). I encourage you to take a look around and please let me know what you think of the new setup. Don’t hesitate to post a note in the comments if you find any bugs while browsing around. Alright, let’s talk about Punchcut.

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We hope all the Vigilance users out there are enjoying a great summer!

Vigilance 1.40

Vigilance has been stable and robust for some time now, running along like a well oiled machine. Believe it or not, we didn’t need to make any changes for WordPress 2.8. It just works. This is great, but it doesn’t mean we are going to sit around and stare at it how good it looks. Vigilance 1.40 is scheduled to drop this summer and it will without a doubt blow you away. In fact, we are jumping version numbers due to all the enhancements! Here is what you can expect:
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We are having a special spring membership sale! If you have been waiting on a PRO membership now is the time to join and start enjoying all of the benefits:

• Full access to the support forums
• Unlimited support for all Jestro themes
• Priority upgrades
• Download special members only “add-ons”
• Comprehensive theme tutorials
• Killer customization tips
• Support open source theme development

Sign-up now using coupon code AFB94 and save $5 off PRO membership!.

Today we are excited to announce the launch of our shiny new affiliate program. We have been piloting the program with our PRO members and are now opening it up to the world. If you are already recommending our WordPress themes to your friends this a great opportunity to get paid for it!

• Earn 30% on every membership sale
• 60 day tracking cookie
• Clean & optimized banners

Why an Affiliate Program?

Why are we launching an affiliate program? We have been toying with the idea for awhile now. PRO membership has been a huge success. We opened the doors 48 days ago and now have over 250 members and nearly 1,000 posts in the support forums. The forums are turning into a truly valuable resource. So many of our users and members are genuinely enthusiastic about the themes and support we are providing. The goal of the affiliate program is to reward users and members for sharing this enthusiasm with their friends, users, and community.