Themetry: Mathematical Precision to Details
I created WordPress Theme Shops list and I’m happy to start interviews with Themetry. As a math teacher I really like their slogan. And that’s not only slogan. It’s the fact:
Making WordPress themes with mathematical precision to detail
I’ve been following man behind Themetry (Leland Fiegel) for a while and we are totally on the same page. Pretty much everything he says about WordPress themes (or other things), I’m like, yes, yes, and YES! He has friendly and professional touch.
I can recommend Themetry from the bottom of my heart. Designs are fresh, code is top notch, and Leland knows what he’s doing. Let him tell more about his WordPress Theme Shop.
Who is behind Themetry and what is the history about Themetry?
Themetry has only a single employee, me (Leland Fiegel). I handle all the theme development and support, occasionally write on the blog, and represent the business at events like WordCamps and in interviews like this one. 🙂
While I am the only employee, I frequently collaborate with designer Tung Do, who some old-school WordPressers may remember from his popular website, WP Designer. Although he sold the site and it has since gone defunct, his WordPress design skills are better than ever.
Owari theme designed by Tung Do.
Themetry’s history is a short one, starting in late 2015. This was long after countless theme shops have come and gone, and long after many considered the “theme gold rush” to be over.
Although Themetry is a new company, I am not new to themes. I had my own popular theme website called Theme Lab, which I started back in 2007. It was acquired in 2013, but I found myself not able to shake my passion for theming.
I noticed many of the original theme companies were not really theme companies anymore, largely shifting their business to premium plugins, page builders, and SaaS services. I felt this trend left room for someone like me who wanted to create “just” a theme company, so I did.
After launching a couple successful themes, I decided to leave my job as a WordPress developer at a local agency in January 2016, and have been working on Themetry full-time ever since.
I also run a WordPress community forum, WP Chat, and help organize the WordPress DC meetup.
What kind of themes you build? Is there a target audience for your themes?
The target audience of Themetry are people looking for themes that:
- Have high-quality code.
- Exhibit superb design.
- Are designed with purpose.
- Adhere to WordPress best practices.
Each theme we have is designed with a specific purpose in mind. For example, we have a theme designed for fashion magazines, and another designed for food bloggers.
Of course, customers are welcome to take our themes in different directions, but we would never intentionally design a “multi purpose” or “general” theme.
Showcase 2-3 of your themes that you are most proud of. Why they are cool themes?
Adaline WordPress Theme
Adaline and Owari are probably my two favorites. They manage to bring a professional look without the complication of configuring theme options, page builders, etc.
I like when customers are pleasantly surprised that all they have to do to set up the theme is just use WordPress in a natural way. Simply publish posts, fill in a widget area or two, and the theme shapes the rest.
Where do you get inspiration for design and code?
I can’t speak much about design inspiration since I don’t do any of the design for Themetry themes. Like many other people in the web design industry, I am a fan of Awwwards.
For code, there’s no better place than CodePen. And I’ll usually find myself on CSS Tricks if I need to get up to speed on a new CSS technique.
What is your business and marketing strategy? (Do you have themes on wp.org, wp.com, lite versions, commercial versions, memberships etc.)
All of the above. Also, we have experimented with converting one of our popular themes to a Genesis theme, which we are currently selling on the StudioPress store.
I like to experiment with different business models just to see what works best, then hone in on that. So far, the lion’s share of my revenue comes through WordPress.com sales, but my long-term goal is to sustain Themetry mostly off of theme club memberships.
Right now, a theme club doesn’t make too much sense because our theme collection is quite small, but we’re working on that.
I still need to maintain a careful balance between quality and quantity. 🙂
How is your theme business doing and do you have other business? Any numbers to give?
I’d rather not go into specifics, but let’s just say it’s going about as well as you could expect for such a new theme company.
Thankfully we were able to quickly ship a few themes that generate enough revenue to stay profitable, and we use that profit in order to pay more designers for more themes that align with our theme philosophy. I’m excited about the growth potential. 🙂
Any specific workflow how you build themes? What kind of development tools you use?
First, I like to take an inventory of all the designs, make notes of what components are used in multiple places, and envision how I’ll code it before writing a single line.
Then, I’ll generate an Underscores-based starter theme, set up a local installation with Ampps, load some demo content, and start working. I’ll set up an identical site on my live demo site and periodically sync code through BitBucket so I can show people I’m working with progress.
I mainly just use a vanilla version of SublimeText to write my code on my macOS devices. And phpcs to clean up any WordPress Coding Standards issues.
And of course, Theme Check Plugin. A must-have tool for any WordPress themer (Editors note: Read about do it yourself theme review).
Any other tips and tricks you want to share for users and for other theme developers?
Lots of them! I’d direct people to the Themetry Blog to stay up to date, but just to name a few:
- Avoid inline CSS at all costs
- Remember what it’s like to be a beginner, so don’t insult your theme users if they don’t understand something seemingly basic.
- Make your themes translation friendly, and provide RTL stylesheets. Not everybody wants to publish in left-to-right, or just in English.
- Don’t hide content behind hovers, and otherwise never compromise UX in favor of some trendy effect.
What are your future plans? Do you see themes changing in some direction?
My future plans are to stay the course. Steadily build a collection of high-quality, purpose-built themes with best practices in mind.
People are getting sick of terrible theme user experiences. Every time somebody’s site gets hacked because of a bundled plugin that wasn’t kept up to date, every time somebody loses large chunks of content because it’s trapped in a proprietary page builder after a theme change, every time a site breaks due to a mismanaged theme update…
…I could go on, but every time something like that happens, it’s just going to push more people to theme shops like ours.