If you follow my blog you’ll notice that a few days ago I accidentally overwrote some theme files while messing around with an upcoming theme design. By nature, I am a very fast paced person and do things without thinking – a chronic issue that has gotten me in trouble before.
Well, I temporarily placed my Core Blog theme on my site here, and knew that I had to put out a new theme pretty quickly. So you are now seeing the result of that, which is a pretty minimalistic theme that I’ll use for now. It’s currently a “blog” theme, and my hope is to incorporate a customized “home” page to go over the top. For now this will do.
The Meaning of Intellectual Reboot
I also want to explain what the title of this post means – I’m guessing it’s pretty self-explanatory, but I have realized that over the past few months, my blog has been really sparse. In other words, no content, not much commenting, and for the sake of cutting to the chase – lame.
Here’s my definition, how I see it:
Intellectual Reboot
v. To turn (an intellect or a blog) off and then on again; restart.
I have spent the better part of the past two years on my blog writing about WordPress, specifically theme announcements, etc with Revolution and StudioPress. As much as I enjoy making those announcements here, I also have been missing something that I have loved to do every since I was young.
Writing.
Not theme releases, but actually writing about the things that a blog is supposed to include – which is usually involves things that you are passionate about. This by all means doesn’t mean I won’t write about WordPress, because you all know I have a dear passion for that.
It just means that I want to deliberately warn you not everything I write moving forward will revolve around WordPress and StudioPress. After all, there’s a StudioPress blog for that.
The Growth and the Effects
As Revolution (RIP) grew into more than one theme, I quickly began to realize that folks around the WordPress world associated the theme (support, updates, tutorials, emails) with me, personally as Brian Gardner. In other worlds, the main Revolution site could have easily been known as BrianGardnersThemeStore.com.
For a while that was great, and I enjoyed being known as the “Revolution guy”.
However, as my business grew, and rebranded to StudioPress, I purposely tried to shift some of the spotlight from my name to the themes themselves. Fortunately for me, most of the current success that we’ve had is really a matter of how well our community is thriving, and not so much how well I personally am running it.
The Joys of Letting Go
Well it’s taken some time for me to relinquish some control, and have really chosen to treat StudioPress as more of a business. I’ve hired two unbelievably fantastic people, and have delegated some of the duties that I’ve clung to for so long to them. For me, this was a huge sign of personal growth, as well as the key to continuing the success of and growth for StudioPress.
That being said, I write this post.
To let you all know that I plan to spend more of my time here on this blog writing about things I personally care about or believe in. My new site design isn’t fancy, nor will it win any web design awards.
But I’m happy with it, and it should provide me the inspiration to move forward with a new chapter of my blog, and take things in a bit of a different direction.
And to put those of you at ease, we’re doing a lot of things behind the scenes at StudioPress – I’m about to release an updated version of the Corporate theme, and we have a number of themes (such as the News theme) that are in development and should be out soon.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any comments that you may have.
I love it when you reboot. It makes me feel better about the time I did it.
Glad to see you back up, and I love this theme – it suits you and your personality.
Thanks Jesse – appreciate the kind words. I’ve need to do this “intellectual reboot” for some time, and now just seems like the perfect chance.
Ah…that News Theme I keep talking about on Twitter!
Jesse got in before me, but I like this new theme, and like he said it suits you! – Slightly different, which makes it all the better!
Thanks Mark – now that the Corporate theme is updated, my plan to to release the News theme next. I’m pretty excited about that one, hope folks will like it too!
B,
Any chance for a sneak-peek at the News theme. You know that I’m all over this one. Hopefully we’ll be your first daily online newspaper using the theme.
The news theme is already available!
Life gets crazy. It is hard to just make time for what makes us who we are, not what we do. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Danny, good to know that I’m not the only one who goes through stuff like this!
Just like my blog motto says Brian, life is sweet, but sometimes life gets sticky! I am happy to hear about the changes and you have some hired hands to help you out now, and now you can use this blog for writing what you love or feel at the moment. We have no expectations (or at least I don’t). I am glad that I stumbled upon your site once upon a time when you had the java theme (I believe it was the java theme) that I wrote to ask permission to redesign and will always remember the kind words you said about it! (talk about total eye candy) (see I remember).
I first stumbled across you because of your old theme “Downtown Java” which I’m currently using in some shape or form on at least 3 of the sites I manage. In spite of using wordpress for multiple sites, I’m not actually all that interested in it, except on a “need to know” basis. But when I visited your site, looking for a 3-column version of Downtown Java (which I eventually found), I was intrigued by what you said about your own interests, so I subscribed to your RSS, and kind of forgot about it. For some reason today, I saw your post pop up in my igoogle window, and thought, hey, wonder what’s going on with that guy? So I clicked. I’m glad to see that things are going well for you, well enough to allow you to pursue more of your interests, and that you’re wise enough to let go of things you might otherwise be trying to control. Good luck on the reboot, I’ll be interested to see what pops up in my reader in the future…
This only makes sense. I am doing the same thing. Yourname.com just makes sense to be about all things “you” not just wordpress.
New site looks solid. I look forward to reading more on your blog as you have time. Always enjoyed it before.
An interesting interim theme, headerless and all. As for the intellectual reboot, it was probably long overdue. Of course, the biggest intellectual reboot (mine was more of a complete overhaul) will come for you in about 20 years.
Thanks Ed – this isn’t the interim one, but one I’ll be using for a while – I like to go against the grain sometimes, and do different things… thus, the disclaimer that my design won’t win any awards.
We’ll as you know, this theme of yours is really awesome. Everything in our life will change a little bit, especially when it comes to blogging. I like your theme and its simple but creative. I also looking forward to your news theme soon.
Good job Brian!
Thanks for such excellent post Brian. Really informative blog. Keep the good work here and i wish you all the best and success.
It’s nice to have options, Brian. Enjoy the fruit of your entrepreneurship as it is your pirate ship to navigate.
May the winds be at your back.
kp
Thanks so much Kevin – appreciate that!
Brian, since you bring up Revolution, I know many still use it, and they have the link in the footer. You may want to consider setting up a redirect form the old pages those themes link to (news.revolutiontheme.com).
Thanks Bob, I missed that when I changed over servers – it’s something I had in place before, but now it’s redirecting again.
Brian,
I think the move to branding StudioPress is a great idea. Revolution was a great name for a theme and will live on for quite a while, but StudioPress is also a great name and I think the branding is taking hold pretty quickly.
Good luck on finding more time to write.