I’m proud to announce that, as of today, Mayer is officially for sale on WordPress.com.

This particular release has been a long time coming, so much so that I’ve discussed it a number of times on the blog already:

Of course, after several rounds of beta, code reviews, feature changes, and so on, things are bound to change over the course of development.

But today, Mayer is officially at `1.0` and is ready for purchase.

Mayer For WordPress

Though you can read the full details about the theme on the product landing page, as well as follow along with updates on the theme’s blog, I thought I’d share a bit of information about the theme now that it’s finally available.

Mayer Landing Page

In short, Mayer was built from the ground up to be a theme that I wanted to use as well as an opinionated theme for single-author blogs.

For Authors

Simply put, Mayer’s mission is to be:

A WordPress Theme for the long-form writer, established blogger, and inspired author.

By this, I mean that it’s a theme that targets people who want to a blog specifically designed around the act of writing content (versus, say, the occasional image, video, quote, and so on).

There are no post formats, there are no featured images, there are no settings. The goal of Mayer, from the initial point of purchase, is to Activate and Write.

To that end, I’ve attempted to build the theme with as few options as possible and with as many key features built right into the core of the project.

Opinionated Development

Out of the box, Mayer offers the following feature set:

  • One Layout. That is, a main content area and a sidebar.
  • Responsive. The theme will translate across all devices without messing with the presentation of your content.
  • Editor Styles. The stylesheet provided for the post editor is designed to give you the closest 1:1 experience so that you can trust that the draft you’re seeing is what your readers will see.
  • No Options. There are no settings pages or options. The only configuration that can is offered are the social icons which are built into the Theme Customizer.
  • Designed For Single Authors. Not everyone who blogs is looking to do so corporately, and that’s fine. To that end, Mayer was built specifically for single authors.

Above all else, Mayer is designed both for those who have been blogging and those who want to begin blogging with a little as friction as possible.

My Amazing Beta Testers

Of course, this theme was not built and tested behind closed doors. I had a terrific team of beta testers all of whom deserve props for helping me shake out as many bugs as possible prior to release.

  • Carrie Dils
  • Pippin Williamson
  • Jason Bradley
  • Tunbosun Ayinla
  • Nikhil V.
  • Sarah Gooding
  • Michael Novotny
  • Jenny Beumont
  • Devin Vinson
  • John Saddington
  • Jason Resnick
  • Paul Beigang
  • Jeremy DuVall
  • Adam Shields
  • Chris Wilson
  • Ulrich Pogson

Thanks to everyone of ’em :).

What About Self-Hosted Blogs?

If you’re interested in seeing Mayer available for self-hosted blogs (in other words, for WordPress.org), then feel free to contact me privately.

If the demand is there, then I am more than prepared to roll out the theme, and even have a few ideas as to how specific functionality can be built around a self-hosted version of Mayer.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

Interested? Check It Out.

So with that said, go ahead and check out Mayer in the WordPress Theme Showcase. View the demo, the documentation, and let me know if you have any questions or comments about the theme.

Now, on to the next theme.