My most popular theme by far is Verbage. And at the time of its creation, it was even by my own standards my best theme. I attributed this to being disciplined. This theme was going to be for writers! Anything that ddin’t help the writer would be secondary.
With that objective in mind, I thought about the problem at the time with writing focused blogs and concluded the biggest problem with those themes was asking for feedback immediately.. I contemplated having no like or reblog button on the first page but acquiesced before submitting to the theme garden. However I stood firm with having notes only on the permalink page. The reasoning: the content, the text, should be front and center.
The theme exploded ass soon as the theme got featured in the Theme Garden and Unwrapping. I wasn’t expecting it. I had a few themes up by then but none of them got nearly the same hype.
And then it happened.
“how do I put notes on the front page?” Over and over again. It was frustrating! I created a quick tutorial and would link those who asked to that tutorial...but begrudgingly.
I spent forever on this theme! Long hours were devoted to thinking about the notes before deciding “nope, not on the front page”. How could these users so quickly demand I put notes on the index page? That’s not how the theme was supposed to be used!_ Maybe , Mr. I want notes, this theme isn’t for you._
#nochill
This was my first popular theme and so I think until then, I didn’t really know what it meant to be a creator. Death of the Author usually refers to an author’s agency over their work but it applies to anything that’s distributed to consumers. As soon as I push that commit, that theme is no longer solely mine. And at the end of the day that is a good thing