Some interesting news today as Felix Krusch over at RichWP has sunset his RichWP framework completely as well as completely giving away the 12 child themes that he’s worked so hard on developing.
Or has he?
He’s retiring the framework in favor of a much more “lean, fast, and responsive” standalone theme(s) that are going to be coming out soon:
Therefore, I have decided to make the 2012 RichWP FrameWork, as well as its 12 Child-Themes, available for FREE. That is right: get all of the RichWP FrameWork/Child-Theme packages for FREE. No strings attached. This promo will be available for a short time only.
Interesting marketing strategy if you ask me (and the “string attached” might be having to sign up to get them… jury is out on that right now though).
Oh wait, he comes out and says it letting us know that this is, somewhat, of a marketing “stunt” (I see what you did there Felix!).
So why pull this off and give away all that hard work if you’re not shutting down things completely?
The WordPress theme world is changing fast. It’s all performance over flexibility now. Lean, fast, and responsive stand-alone themes are preferred over theme FrameWorks with large option pages. Therefore, the RichWP FrameWork and its Child Themes, with their large design option pages, have been depreciated.
If you prefer leaner, faster, and more responsive stand-alone themes, then the new RichWP are exactly what you should be looking at. The new themes scale nicely from big screens all the way down to smart phones. Their HTML5 architecture is superior to the older FrameWork based themes and since the code is leaner, the new themes have a big SEO advantage.
Making his own shop more simple, his product more focused (and perhaps much more simple) is what Felix is banking on long-term and perhaps it might work.
I’m not sure how long the opportunity will last to download everything for free but if you want a chance at getting some themes on the super-cheap and then perhaps diving in later to see if you have a use for them, head over to his announce post and get your free theme on.
Thanks Felix for giving some value back to the community!
2 Comments