Anyway, no one could really think it odd that SplashPress would want to buy some of the sites they have. It’s more odd that the original owners were willing to sell!

Nice site ia. I haven’t been here before.

In the last (current) WP design I was offered 2 pizzas. ;) I’ll email you the answer to the second question.

Re: blogs “with personality” being sold, I get you. Not an easy or a comfortable process. I would like to draw a comparison with the Blog Herald here. It used to be a sole author blog with Duncan Riley and was all about Duncan’s character, and is now a multi-authored blog. Is it any for the worse? It took time to evolve with teething problems, sure. But realistically, could Duncan have continued slogging away every day? Similarly could Chris have carried on supporting Cutline with no end in site? I think that you as a designer and a blogger would realize that at some point you have to take a breather and cash in, and this process is leading towards a different type of blogosphere, but not necessarily a worse one. Just look at a Sitepoint sale in the last couple of days-: blogging fingers selling for its BIN at $6k within 2 hours. A highly personal blog. A year ago this would have been $2k max. and been hard to sell.

I think that the confusion on your part lies in what you say here-:

“But I don’t really care much for WordPress.com since it’s the moneymaking counterpart….”

& here-:

“But I might give it a go just for the heck of it, especially since WordPress itself will be marketing these themes….”

In other words, on the one hand you give Automattic the benefit of the doubt based on its non-commercial nature (the .org side) and then you continue as if awed by their potential commercial pull on the .com side.

The naivety here is that you do not see this as a cynical aim to monopolize the marketplace completely and a move that would do precisely what you fear in this post, in spirit- that is to make the designer purely some factory hand that would soon be forgotten down the road. This is the inherent problem with business as you get big- even with the best intentions in the world, you get pushed into a pressure bubble where you must continue to out-do your competitors at all cost to your original vision. This has without a doubt happened to both Google and Automattic and we have every reason to be wary.

Can I assure you that Splashpress is not this. I am the sole equity holder and I am not selling, nor do I have any grand ambitions to dominate the world!

Thanks for your time and a thought provoking post. How much do you charge for a basic WP design, btw? And why did you stop writing for us?

It’s understandable that one might get irked by having someone criticize his actions but please, let’s keep this objective.

As many of you are aware, Splashpress Media has acquired a number of blog properties recently, one of which is the Cutline Theme for WordPress.

Source: Cutline.Tubetorial

Also, Chris Pearson does deserve to be rewarded for his work—I doubt that the popularity of Cutline wasn’t taken into consideration when you made the sale. And Brian has no fault in this. But who’s to say during the next wave of acquisitions, some other company with lesser morals removes those names or does something just as unethical? I’m sure not one of you would allow that to happen but who knows?

It is all weird because never before have I seen a theme considered viable enough to be acquired by a company, more so for one that has a different manager now. It is the same weirdness I feel about Wisdump and similar personal blogs that have changed.

I totally understand people’s beef with the way things are going down at Automattic. It’s similar to the general fear about Google. But isn’t it all just business, as you said? Care to explain my confusion and naivety further? :)

If sponsored themes aren’t punished by Google, it’s Google that would have the answers. :P

Lastly, I wasn’t concealing anything because I’ve already mentioned that fact in a past post. It was also in the footnote of a previous version of this post but I neglected to keep it there. It’s back.

As you must know, designers need to be rewarded for their work and that includes post-release support, for which Chris worked very hard at & deserved to be compensated. Is he (or us) then just to trash the theme post-sale?

We have kept Chris’ name on the site as author and even on all new versions, e.g: Brian’s 3 column ones. So again, more wrongful insinuations on your part.

I find your stance on WordPress’ positions to be confused and naive.

Re: PR- if sponsored themes were being punished by Google, why did our own WordPress Themes site get a PR6 out of the box?

Lastly, you should in the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, have revealed that you yourself have worked for Splashpress in the past.

It ws also used to promote the Tubetorial site, which was also sold as part of the same deal.

It is a great example of why sponsored themes should be allowed in the theme directory, because there are always back doors which eventually result in the same situation, someone with money ends up with lots of links.