I wanted a new Wordpress theme for a site that I help with, and I found a handful of so-called “premium” themes that I really liked. I was about to purchase one of them until I read the restrictive license. Then I changed my mind. (I’m not going to buy a theme that I don’t have complete license to modify on my own site.)
I’ve had a hand in certain aspects of web development for over a dozen years. Although it is far from something I ever want to call a job or serious hobby, there are still parts of it that really interest me. I’m a geek at heart, and toying with Wordpress has become a bit of a minor hobby over the past year. So why couldn’t I try to put something together myself?
So here you have it. Festivus is two things:
- A free alternative that resembles other ostensibly “premium” themes.
- Far from complete.
Hopefully #2 will improve. Because I fully intend to keep using it.
I’ll be looking for beta-testers in the immediate future, but as you can see it is not ready quite yet. If you have particular requests or suggestions, I’d be glad to entertain them. Leave a comment if you’d like me to contact you and share the early code.
For the record, I whole-heartedly support capitalism and authors’ rights to charge for their work. But I expect their ability to charge will diminish quickly as other themes come up to speed. They inspired this theme, and hopefully their future innovation will keep them ahead of the game as the game tries to catch up to them.
Update: Here is the page that will be updated for the Festivus theme.