This entry originally appeared on my disability blog, I hate stairs.

If you were an unfortunate fan of my previous entry, you will be disappointed by this one. Am I going to get around to making a premium WordPress Theme? Short answer: Probably not.

Long answer: What I found out while getting up to speed on premium WordPress themes is that it is going to be a headache making premium WordPress themes. For starters, I found out very quickly that my technical skills will have to be broadened before I can produce premium themes effectively. I will have to learn quite a bit more about building child themes on the Thematic framework. And don’t get me wrong, I plan to. But it won’t be on the two week plan that I originally laid out.

Another thing that bugs me when it comes to designing themes is that my ability to design around content is very limited. My theme might be used by a restaurant, a printing shop, a personal journal. Who knows? I feel like the result would be generic and lack the “this was meant for this site” feeling.

That being said, I still want to learn to develop child themes on the Thematic theme framework. If I do release a theme publicly, there’s a good chance I’ll just license the whole thing under the GPL and also make it free of charge, likely making it available in the WordPress themes directory.

The reason that I still want to learn about advanced theming is because there is a possible redesign of Stop SMA coming up and I want to power the new site with WordPress. Designing a child theme on Thematic seems like a perfect option.

If you happen to know of any good resources specific to Thematic, please send them my way via comment or email.