About four years ago, I had the pleasure of working with a team to help deliver the first iteration of Live Theme for WordPress; however, as the team leaned out, changed directions, and paired down our product focus, we sold the product to someone else for continued development and maintenance.
To make a somewhat long (perhaps even boring) story short, I’m currently working on the third version of Live Theme for WordPress.
Live Theme For WordPress
The short of it is that Eric Dye is the guy currently responsible for managing the product, selling it, supporting it, and all of that jazz. He’s a great person to know, and I happen to have kept up with him over the past few years even after he purchased Live Theme.
But as anyone who has worked in software knows, platforms, code, and products tend to rot (for lack of a better term) over time, especially with all of the new technologies, APIs, and features of WordPress that are released over time.
And this is neither good nor bad – it’s just the nature of the business.
So when Eric approached me about coming on board to work on the next iteration of Live Theme, I was willing, excited, and glad to be a part of the project that I had not worked on in so long.
What is Live Theme?
Live Theme is an extremely niche theme that’s designed for streaming videos, live events, and more. It’s a got a number of features built into it that it makes it easy for anyone to get up and running with Flickr integration, Twitter integration, video advertisements, a countdown, and so on.
But a lot can change in four years — and a lot has changed in four years. As such, it’s time for the product to mature.
What Are You Doing with Live Theme?
TL;DR: I’m completely rewriting it.
The longer version of the story of completely rewriting it means that I’m taking the time to leverage some of the newer front-end technologies that are available (such as Foundation), and that I’m taking advantage of some of the newer WordPress APIs such as the Theme Customizer and the Heartbeat API.
The entire codebase is being re-written from the ground up which means that I literally started with a clean slate prior to working on this theme.
As we get closer to launch, I’ll be sure to talk more about it on the site; however, it’s important to note that this is not a Pressware product (like Mayer). Instead, it’s a partnership between Eric and Pressware such that he’s manning everything else while I’m working on the core product.
When and Where Will It Be Available?
Obviously, I’m passionate about the theme and I want it to serve its purpose well; however, this theme is not one that will be made available in WordPress.com. Instead, it’s available for all self-hosted WordPress installations.
We have no direct timeline other than wanting to release it at some point this year (ideally by the end of Q3), but there’s a lot of really neat features being put into this particular theme and it takes a bit of time not only to implement, but to thoroughly test it, as well.
That said, you can follow along with updates on the Live Theme blog, and leave comments specifically about the theme on the related blog post.