Your Questions Answered

ProteusThemes will soon turn 4 years old. HairPress -our very first theme- was released in January 2013. Both Jaka (my business partner) and I were students at the time. It has been a hell of a ride to get to where we are today, and it could not have happened without the 25,000 clients that chose to build their WordPress site with our theme.

It has also been exactly 1 year since we began thinking about opening our own WordPress theme shop. Two weeks ago this idea finally became a reality, and now you can see our offerings here.

Since we opened the shop, many of you have reached out to me, asking what all this will mean for you? What will change? And, what will stay the same? I have decided to answer the most common questions, and address these queries and concerns in this blog post.

Why did you decided to open your own shop at all?

ThemeForest is undoubtedly a great platform, and of course we could not be where we are without them. But the changes they have introduced in the last 4 years make us feel that they are heading in an opposite direction to that which we desire. We could stay there and hope that things will change for the better, or we could take action.

We know that some theme authors have completely left ThemeForest only to return shortly after, realising that they could not make it alone. The scale of that challenge, we recognise, is beyond our reach. So, in a way, with the route we have decided upon, we have somewhat spread our bets. We are not planning on leaving ThemeForest completely, but rather the shop is a way of diversifying our revenue streams.

Why do you offer only 5 themes on your shop and not all of them?

Deciding which themes to keep on ThemeForest and which ones to migrate was a tough decision to make. If we had removed all of the themes, it would mean that all those clients would lose access to their support and update downloads from ThemeForest.

Our most popular themes have been used over 6000 times from people all around the world. The logistics behind arranging a migration that large are just too complicated. And ultimately, the idea was far too risky for us to entertain. After some serious deliberation we decided to move only LegalPress, Bolts and Readable. These will be joined in our shop by all of the brand-new themes we will be releasing, like Adrenaline.

When can I expect new themes?

We’re already working on our next theme. At one point the queue for releasing on Themeforest was two months long. Now that we have our own shop, we can release themes as soon as they’re finished. We are pushing ourselves hard on this and we expect that we’ll be able to release a new theme every 6-8 weeks. We intend to make the Theme Club more and more valuable in as short a time as possible.

In fact, here is a sneak peek of our newest theme for consulting / finance businesses:

We don’t want to lure you into our theme club and offer only 5 themes. Within a year we aim to release at least 8 new themes, which will cover most small businesses like:

Medical
Fitness / healthcare
Cafe / Restaurant
Tech / Digital

We are very open to hear ideas for the themes that you would like to see. It is not a simple process to decide which themes to make. Your insights and input are incredibly valuable to us. If there is something you would like to see, be sure to let us know.

Your recent themes have a similar layout …

We are aware that some of our recent themes have been based on a similar formula. These themes have sold well and we got a lot of positive feedback about it, so there was obviously something to it. But we also understand the desire for new and exciting design.

We are in the process of taking our designs into some completely new and fresh directions. You can expect some unique and exciting layouts in the very near future. Of course, with this in mind, we will never compromise on our customizability and ease of use.

Our promise is that we will never compromise quality for extra quantity. We’ve set ourselves to this mission, and we will be thrilled to see you join us. You can expect us to be even better at things that you’ve always loved about ProteusThemes.