in Independent Publisher News

Independent Publisher Announced on WordPress.com

After over a year and nearly 50,000 downloads on WordPress.org, the Automattic team announced that the Independent Publisher theme is now available to the millions of sites hosted on WordPress.com.

The version available on WordPress.com is not an exact copy of the Independent Publisher theme available on WordPress.org, however the design is essentially the same and the WordPress.com team has gracefully credited me as the theme designer (the project contributors deserve credit too). Many things were stripped down or changed in my original source code to make the theme work better for WordPress.com sites and to simplify the available options.

You can visit the theme page on WordPress.com and see a Live Demo on WordPress.com. If you’re interested in trying out the WordPress.com version on your self-hosted site, you can download it on WordPress.com. Note, however, that the WordPress.com version is not backwards compatible with the version that is still being actively developed on GitHub.

Independent Publisher on WordPress.com

The future of Independent Publisher

While the version of Independent Publisher available on WordPress.com is slightly more polished than the one under active development on GitHub, it contains fewer options and less flexibility than the WordPress.org version. My plan is to continue working on this theme as I have been over the past year and I will continue using the WordPress.org version on my personal sites. The next release of Independent Publisher (on WordPress.org) will be coming very soon and so far includes 4 bug fixes, 4 enhancements, and 6 new translations.

There are currently 23 open Issues on GitHub, mostly enhancement-related. In the coming weeks I will be reviewing the code changes made to the WordPress.com version of the theme to see which features I can port over to include in the WordPress.org version, such as Multi-Level Menu Navigation.

The primary goal with Independent Publisher at this point is to continue refining the theme and improving compatibility, while maintaining backwards compatibility for everyone who is already using the theme. If the comments on the WordPress.com announcement are any indication, this theme design is well-loved by many people and that only makes me more motivated to keep it current and up-to-date. šŸ™‚

Write a Comment

Comment

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

24 Comments

  1. Ciao from Italy,
    I’ve made an italian translation for the theme (with POedit) and wanted to submit to you other than via Github (which I’m planning to learn). Can I send you the file?

    Also I have some other requests, but not knowing Giuthub I’m waiting to list them. Do you mind if I send them via a direct email?
    Thanks

  2. It’s a beautiful Theme. Great work! I’ve been looking for something to switch away from the old Twentyten. The Independent Publisher is the first theme that really suits in all aspects.

  3. Congratulations on getting your theme on wp.com! I hope the added polish will trickle back to the github version. šŸ™‚ I love the theme and has been using i for quite a while on my blog and am looking forward to the next update!

    • Thanks, Johnny! Yes, the polish will slowly trickle back to the GitHub version. I’ve been running (and plan to continue running) the GitHub version on my personal site, so it will continue to be maintained for the foreseeable future. šŸ™‚

    • The version on WordPress.com is not the same as the version on WordPress.org. The WordPress.com version is outside of my control. Automattic (the company behind WordPress) customized the Independent Publisher theme to run on WordPress.com and they removed several options.

      I suggest leaving a comment on this post with feedback for the WordPress.com version.

    • The version on WordPress.com is not the same as the version on WordPress.org. The WordPress.com version is outside of my control. Automattic (the company behind WordPress) customized the Independent Publisher theme to run on WordPress.com and they removed several options.

      I suggest leaving a comment on this post with feedback for the WordPress.com version.

  4. Hi Raam,
    I dont like the look of the page on both wordpress.com and wordpress.org, they look different from what I see here on your page. I’d need it exactly how it is on your page. Can I customize it and still use wordpress as a cms to feed content?

  5. I love the look of Independent Publisher! Thanks for your work on this – it’s clean and neat. A much needed upgrade from my last theme. I am having trouble with the header size, however – I created a header with the recommended size (1440×600) but it’s cutting off a great deal of my custom image on it’s own (I’m not cropping). Any insight or recommendation for other image sizes? Thanks!

  6. Hi, I’m not really familiar with writing and installing websites but 2 weeks ago my nephew taught me how to create a website using WordPress. We chose Independent Publisher as theme. I worked more then a week to create a nice site (check oldenbeuving.wordpress.com). I bought webspace at strato.com using WordPress (which was installed automatically). The Independent Publisher theme is totally different to the other one (check http://www.hypnolutiongroningen.nl). Is there a way I can import or install the one theme to the other WordPress (I guess it’s the com-version into the org-version)?

Webmentions

  • This is a test link..

  • A few weeks ago I was interviewed by John Maeda, Head of Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic, along with Caroline Moore and Kjell Reigstad, two designers at Automattic who helped improve and release a new version of the Independent Publisher theme for WordPress.com: Independent Publisher 2.
    The original Independent Publisher theme was first adopted for WordPress.com back in 2015.

    You can take a look at the new Independent Publisher 2 on WordPress.com and even download it to install on a self-hosted WordPress site (scroll all the way to the bottom).
    The original version of this theme continues to be maintained by myself and the rest of the community and itā€™s important to note that while the themes share the same name and a similar design, the original theme is maintained by the community on GitHub, while the other version is maintained by the folks at Automattic, exclusively for WordPress.com.
    Bug reports and feature requests for the original theme can be filed for the original theme on GitHub and support for the theme should be requested via the WordPress.org Theme Support Forum.
    If you need support for Independent Publisher 2 on WordPress.com, please use WordPress.com Support.
    Coming Soon: Independent Publisher v1.8
    Over the past year Iā€™ve been working on improvements to the original Independent Publisher theme, along with 5 other contributors, and Iā€™ll be putting out a new release within the next few days that includes 7 bug fixes, 9 enhancements, and several other small tweaks.

  • On Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church – Transformed by Love May 22, 2016

    April 15, 2017. Eve of the Feast of the Resurrection of Jesus.
    In preparation for this yearā€™s celebration of the greatest of days, I read Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (2008), by N.T. Wright, whose The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is I read for Resurrection Sunday 2015.
    The book can be viewed as having two main points.
    First: The historical and bodily resurrection of Jesus points not only toward life after death in heaven but, more importantly, toward the ā€œlife after life after deathā€ (148) in the ā€œfinal coming together of [the new] heaven and [new] earth, [which] is Godā€™s supreme act of new creationā€ (208).
    Second: We who are created in the image of God, and who have beenĀ redeemed from death through the atoning death of Jesus, are led and empowered by the Spirit to reflect (94) the Resurrected Lord to all of Godā€™s creation here and now, on this earth, as well as in the new one. ā€œThe intermediate stage between the resurrection of Jesus and the renewal of the whole world is the renewal of human beings ā€“ you and me! ā€“ in our own lives of obedience here and now.ā€ (249)
    Before, between, and after his painstaking expositionĀ of the above points, WrightĀ does his best to expose the errors in the popular worldviews of materialism and Gnosticism and their modern/postmodern variants, and in popular beliefs about death, life after death, the second coming, and the role of Christians in this present world.
    Now to quote some of Tomā€™s sentences that either caused me to pause, to smile, or to weep:
    On salvation:

    ā€œThe work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.ā€ (200)

    On life after death:

    ā€œLife after death, it seems, can be a serious distraction not only from the ultimate life after life after death, but also from life before death.ā€ (198)

    On reflecting God:

    ā€œOne of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; whatā€™s more, you reļ¬‚ect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around.ā€Ā (182)

    On kingdom work:

    ā€œ[B]uild for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine thatā€™s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting thatā€™s shortly going to be thrown on the ļ¬re. You are not planting roses in a garden thatā€™s about to be dug up for a building site. You areā€” strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resĀ­urrection itselfā€”accomplishing something that will become in due course part of Godā€™s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for oneā€™s fellow human beings and for that matter oneā€™s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the worldā€”all of this will ļ¬nd its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.ā€ (208)

    Still on kingdom work:

    ā€œWe must therefore avoid the arrogance or triumphalism of the ļ¬rst view, imagining that we can build the kingdom by our own efforts without the need for a further great divine act of new creation. But we must agree with the ļ¬rst view that doing justice in the world is part of the Christian task, and we must therefore reject the defeatism of the second view, which says thereā€™s no point in even trying.ā€Ā (216)

    And still on kingdom work:

    ā€œAs far as I can see, the major task that faces us in our generation, corresponding to the issue of slavery two centuries ago, is that of the massive economic imbalance of the world, whose major symptom is the ridiculous and unpayable Third World debtā€¦ Sex matters enormously, but global justice matters far, far more. The present system of global debt is the real immoral scandal, the dirty little secret ā€“ or rather the dirty enormous secret ā€“ of glitzy, glossy Western capitalism.ā€ (216)

    And finally, on Easter:

    ā€œIf Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to ļ¬‚ourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, ļ¬lling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving.ā€ (257)

    Now, what new, wholesome, fruitful, outgoing and self-giving task or venture shall you and I take up in the next forty days?
    Happy Feast of the Resurrection!
    (P.S. Thanks to Raam DevĀ for the cool Independent Publisher theme, and also to the Automatticians for Twenty Ten, which I have used since, you guessed right, 2010.)

    Share this:

    Facebook

    Like this:

    Like Loading…

    <em>Related</em>

  • Back to Independet Publisher – /home/kOoLiNuS May 22, 2016

    After some weeks of experiments Iā€™ve switched back to Independent Publisher as the main theme/template for this weblog.
    Even if the WordPress.com version is quite a bit different from the Authorā€™s version I still find it as one of the best ā€“ free ā€“ plain and honest blogginā€™ theme here on the platform. So Iā€™ve switched back to it and customized a little theĀ  sidebar. Probably Iā€™ll change the colors/fonts combinations a little more but, if nothing else comes in the way, Iā€™ll stick with it for a while.
    Also I do have to make amend for the poor curation of many of the links proposed here without a comment or a word on why Iā€™ve found them worth mentioning them here. This is one area of improvement goals Iā€™ve set myself for the upcoming eleventh year of this blogā€¦
    As usual Iā€™m eager to read your comments and ideas, so please share them with me in case!
    Rate this:Share on:TwitterGoogleFacebookEmailLinkedInPocketMorePrintTumblrRedditPinterestLike this:Like Loading…

    <em>Related</em>

  • Indipendent Publisher | /home/kOoLiNuS May 22, 2016

    […] I’ve even adopted it on my self-hosted blog, customizing it a little, translating it and planning to suggest a couple of enhancement to its author. Read Raam’s annouce: Independent Publisher Announced on WordPress.com ā†’ […]