The Official WordPress Commercial Theme Directory is now open. It is linked off the WordPress Extend and is part of the parent theme directory set of links. It is not as much a directory as it is a listing of sites that offer commercial GPL themes. It lists the philosophies, a few words about the business models and the need for the encouragement, a list of screenshots and links to the various theme sites and then a list of criterion for inclusion into this site.
I like the succinct explanation of the purpose and the listing criterion seem simple and straightforward to follow. Send your information to themes at wordpress dot org to get included in the list. From the site, if you want to be included:
- Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.
- Have professional support options, and optionally customization.
- Your site should be complete, well-designed, up to date, and professional looking.
- Include a haiku about yourself to be included.
I am not sure how long this list is going to get, but I am curious to see how this page evolves. I am also glad to see a larger number of GPL based Premium theme vendors on there than I was initially surmising. Cool!
Wow, this is a good news
I seem to agree with you that the list will probably get longer as time goes by, but there are still a lot of themes missing. Lets say it’s got a few basic ones now. I will check at the end of this month, maybe there will be more.
Thanks for sharing this info, I thought it would still be sometime before that happened
lol the number of premium-quality *free* themes is so high I don’t even get the point of people trying to sell their themes
subscribing to comments. Sorry for the double post but i forgot to subscribe before submitting the previous comment
That’s really good news. Although I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it. It seems to have been overshadowed by the announcement about themes having to be GPL. Which is funny, because the major concern people seem to have about GPL’ing their themes is that they can’t make money off them (which is a misunderstanding anyway). So it’s nice to see Automattic providing a way for quality theme developers to get the financial incentives they deserve.
@gimli I find that premium themes in general are more innovative/achieve more than free themes. That is, if you want a very attractive but standard blog theme, you’ll be able to find a heap of amazing ones for free. But if you want a theme that equips your site to act as a blown CMS or to performs a very specific function beyond just being a blog, then paid options are generally superior to the some or none available for free.