Premium WordPress Theme: The Personal Project
Careful! This post is looking a little old and could be inaccurate in many, many ways
Recently I posted about my intention to create a personal project, but I was undecided in what form this would take. After some thought I decided to create a WordPress theme. Of course this is nothing original; there are thousands of themes available with almost as many designers creating them.
Usually I would hope to undertake work where I felt I could add value, but releasing yet another WordPress theme to a saturated market would add little value to the mass population. Instead the projects main value comes in me learning more about how to design and implement themes that provide more flexibility to a range of users than the themes I build for a single client at Bronco.
The Project
Usually when working on a project I will tend to keep everything under wraps until the project is finished or at a stage that requires more input. This is a system that most web designers employ for one reason or another. But for this project I wanted to try and communicate as much of the process as I could hoping to benefit from the following:
- Feedback
- A written record of the project
- Time to reflect on decisions made in the process
- Increased anticipation for the launch of the theme
There are also disadvantages to releasing elements of work before it is completed:
- Stealing
- Loss of impact at launch
There is also the aspect that by publically announcing a personal project you are more heavily tied into its completion. This could be seen as an advantage or disadvantage if you never complete the project.
How Long?
Truthfully I have no idea. So far I have not created a project plan, or even know exactly what features I wish to integrate into the theme. Between interruptions, research, working and sleeping I know the project may take some time to complete. Hopefully however due to the size of the project as opposed to others I considered this should be completed in a small timeframe.
The Future
I’m hoping that once the WordPress theme is completed that it may be easier to create more themes in the future. This would be a good way of utilising design ideas which may not suit my own website and that can be more inventive than I could use for client based work. All this will help showcase my own design work external to the client/developer relationship.