After months of inconsistent collaboration, DevPress is left with one remaining co-founder, me — Tung Do. Justin Tadlock, Patrick Daly, and Ptah Dunbar are going to pursue personal projects.
To some, this isn’t surprising. DevPress managed to release high quality products and tease the community of buzz-worthy ideas, but what we needed most was consistency. If success is 80% just simply showing up well then we failed. I was gone for a month during my wedding and vacation in July. Ptah was in an accident in August. (Luckily, he’s back to smiling and coding with one pirate eye.) Patrick recently took a sabbatical due to personal reasons. Justin Tadlock was the only one to take breaks without any noticeable time off.
Bootstrapping a business is hard enough. Try doing it with an all-star team of equal share and no one personally responsible for anything then you might end up just like us. Although we continue to provide support at the forums, development and product release wise, DevPress has been inactive for a month. Experiencing roadblock after roadblock without any consistency for DevPress to establish itself, I think it’s safe to say the entire team is just burned out at this point.
I’m sure we’ll have time to reflect on what went wrong. But instead of dwelling on so much wasted potential, I’ve asked the guys to trust DevPress in my hands and they’ve agreed.
Moving Forward
Before you freak out, DevPress will continue. The club is still there, but will be focused on themes until further notice; my specialties are themes and tutorials, not plugins. Surely, I cannot replace Justin, Patrick, and Ptah by myself, but I’m not looking for new team members.
I’m just going to do the best I can as a one man team. When it makes sense to get help, I’ll get help. From this experience, I’m reminded having all-star team doesn’t always equal a win.
Instead of empty promises of bringing the awesome back to DevPress. I will move DevPress forward step-by-step. Any activity is better than inactivity. And you don’t have to wait for long. I’ll release a new theme before the end of next week. I like to stay fairly active and that’s good news for DevPress theme users (free and paid).
From now on, everyday, you can assume a theme is being worked on and it’s inching its way out the door to be released on DevPress.com. The quality will be on par if not better than what you see in the free and commercial themes market.
My First Act
If you haven’t noticed, my first act as owner of DevPress already happened. I redesigned and optimized DevPress for mobile users. You can now use the site, download themes, and get support while you’re on the go unlike before when DevPress was strictly built for desktops and large laptops. There are always a few kinks here and there with websites involving multiple management systems like what DevPress utilize so I’m sure the redesign transition will take another week to complete.
A Peak Into DevPress’s Future
Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel and I’ll be brief to let your imagination take over. All future DevPress themes with e-commerce capabilities will be mobile friendly and Jigoshop is my chosen platform/plugin to build e-commerce themes on. I’ve also been exploring bbPress and BuddyPress among other established plugins. My goal is create responsive, powerful themes with portable content, deep integration for popular plugins, and close-to-zero theme settings; I hate theme settings.
Taking over DevPress as a one man team is NOT another one of my self-challenges, in which I’d fail publicly and miserably. DevPress is a business with paying customers and my goal is to make DevPress customers/users very happy starting next week. For now, thank you for supporting me and I’m as bummed as you are to lose three DevPress co-founders.
Hi,
It’s a pity but these things happen. I have a question that is probably on a few people’s minds. Will you be using Hybrid to develop your themes? A lot of people probably joined because of Justin and ThemeHybrid so just wondering.
Either way, good luck with the solo effort and I love the new design.
Alan
Definitely. I prefer Hybrid Core over many other frameworks. Although Justin will be gone for the most part, I will hire him to review code for DevPress on a theme-by-theme basis. This is something he’s mentioned at ThemeHybrid forums.
Awesome. I think the first thing you should develop is a good photo blog theme as Justin doesn’t have one yet.
Are you reading my mind? That’s exactly what I’m going to release next week!
Awesome. Looking forward to it.
Sorry to hear about the DevPress team break up, but also excited to see what you come up with in the eCommerce space.
As a shameless plug I’d encourage you to take a quick look at WooCommerce as a potential eCommerce plugin of choice. Since launching a couple of months ago we’ve already amassed 45 extensions and a bunch of positive comments.
If you have any questions about the plugin / theming with it just let me know.
Either way, good luck with DevPress in the future!
Thanks Jay. I already have several themes planned for Jigoshop, will be sending some friendly competition your way to even out the playing field.
No worries, competition is good for everyone :-)
While it looks pretty good, Jay, you are missing a fundemental piece: it’s a paid plugin. This doesn’t match theme development models for communities because customers are not only needing to pay for a theme, but the plugin.
I don’t see Tung Do building a theme for the community for $5 and then adding, in fine print plus $78 per site or more
So I would have to agree with you – that is a shameless plug.
What? Did you even look? WooCommerce is totally free and open source.
And it looks great.
Hi, hybrid-core is a plugin that I appreciate too. Would be nice seeing it in your themes.
“Taking over DevPress as a one man team is NOT another one of my self-challenges, in which I’d fail publicly and miserably.”
Excuse-me, but that was not a fail. It was an opportunity to learn something new as an entrepreneur. It was very exciting seeing your progress that days, really.
Maybe, would be very nice if you create easier challenges publicly. A public road map would be a good way to keep you motivated and know where exactly where you want to go.
Congratulations and good luck!
Thanks Thiago. I’m working on adding an interactive roadmap for DevPress =).
The ebb and flow of life and as long as you all keep moving forward and “rolling with it”, everyone involved will be fine and continue to find success.
I wish you all the best and will be following along…as usual;)
Hey man, thanks for sending me good vibes. Much appreciated and needed right now.
I’m sorry to see you break up as a group, but I’m wishing all of you luck in future endeavors.
Hi Tuan,
These things happens in life and we should keep moving forward. I wish you all the best for the new endeavors.
I feel pretty much to same way as commenters before. It’s kind of sad news, but I know DevPress (meaning Tung from now on) is going to make great themes. And it’s good to know you’re using Hybrid Core. I’m looking forward next releases.
By the way, what happened to Stanley?
Hey Sami. It’s been hectic for me. I haven’t had time to thank you for your help at the forums. Thank you!
As for Stanley, it was a group effort developing it half-way. I’m not sure what to do with it really. It’s kind of wrong to benefit from it now that the rest of the team are gone.
Hey Tung, good luck in the future, I will be sure to come back and support your new endeavor.
Thanks Craig. Like Sami Keijonen, you’ve supported DevPress from the beginning. I noticed! After DevPress gets back on track, I’m going to look for ways to make DevPress core supporters very happy.
I to feel pretty much as the commenters before.
When one door closes another one will open, and I’m looking forward to see what Devpress and you Tung Do, have to offer in the future.
I will stay tuned and onboard.
Good Luck
Good luck on your [new] beginnings, hope to see more good stuff from DevPress.
Any change is a good change (usually).
[...] described our problem best in his official update on the DevPress blog: DevPress managed to release high quality products and tease the community of [...]
Unfortunate to see such a super time break up like this. There was huge potential, but I guess it just didn’t work out in the end.
[...] a team of highly skilled WordPress developers has announced that Tung Do has become to the sole owner of the business. The quote being published all over the [...]
[...] s1); })(); TweetDevPress, a team of highly skilled WordPress developers has announced that Tung Do has become to the sole owner of the business. The quote being published all over the [...]
Glad you’re continuing with it. Your tutorials at WPDesigner were some of the first tutorials I worked through on WordPress – they really were great!
You should start some design themes for Vietnam. Joomlart.org is doing well here and one WordPress’s guys lives in Hanoi now. Great market for you. I will keep an eye out on your themes now.
Best of luck.
Honestly, I kinda saw this coming. The only person alive on the website was you. You are more then welcome to take the tutorials from my own website, make them better, and intorduce them to the community. I only use my website, really, as my public repoistory for myself…and share it in the happenstance someone can use the information too.
When you do create tutorials you can fill a gap that Jigoshop just doesn’t fill – effectively building a theme from scratch using the plugin. Sure, they touch upon it, but it’s just not very clear.
I’ll continue checking in to dev press and show my support where I can. Just gotta dig up my account infor and participate in the forums more, maybe.
[...] support for Jigoshop. This is the first theme designed and coded by me after the recent DevPress change of ownership. I wanted to release Dotos a week ago, but due to taking time off (my birthday) and a sidebar bug I [...]
[...] View the live demo. This is the first theme designed and coded by me after the recent DevPress change of ownership. I wanted to release Dotos a week ago, but due to taking time off (my birthday) and a sidebar bug I [...]
[...] View the live demo. This is the first theme designed and coded by me after the recent DevPress change of ownership. I wanted to release Dotos a week ago, but due to taking time off (my birthday) and a sidebar bug I [...]
[...] Voisin tuttuun tyyliin luetella kymmenen “parasta” teemaa, mutta sen sijaan kerron miksi käytän Hybrid tai DevPress -teemoja. Molemmat pohjautuvat Hybridin ytimeen (Hybrid Core, Hybrid Framework), joka toimii koodikirjastona ja moottorina teemoille. Hybridin perustaja on Justin Tadlock ja DevPressin voima piilee yhteistyössä. Justinin lisäksi DevPressin taustalla häärii Tung Do, Patrick Daly ja Path Dunbar. Lisäinfoa löytyy heidän sivultaan DevPress julkaisi, että Tung Do alkaa luotsata yksin DevPressiä eteenpäin. [...]
[...] DevPress left with one owner » [...]
Hi Tung
I REALLY liked your work at WPDesigner and well its a shame that the other guys could not keep it up, but yea boot strapping a business is WORK and I can’t fault anyone for taking care of business. (I’m bootstrapping MY business now so I know how it goes.)
Getting back into coding and freelancing myself now that the holidays are over and as always I look forward to seeing more of your stuff.