8Bit, the maker of the Standard Theme, is shutting down. The four founders of 8Bit are all significantly involved in various parts of the large WordPress ecosystem. You can follow John, Tom, Jared, and Chris going forward.
The Standard Theme forums will be open another thirty days.
It hasn’t been long since another project of theirs, WP Daily, shut down. But I still found myself super shocked to hear about this.
Fortunately, it seems they are all planning to stay involved in the community and they ended on their own terms. But I just have so many questions, and the wrapup was relatively brief. John did give a little additional insight on his personal blog though.
I have a hard time understanding why they wouldn’t have sold, and I think Leland makes a good point that perhaps this is their way of putting it for sale. The DradCast guys also gave their opinions on the shutdown tonight.
We shall see if anything more comes of this, but I wish each of the now former 8Bit folks the best.
Wow, I didn’t see that coming!
Good luck to the guys! They did some awesome stuff and no doubt we’ll see more from each of them.
Gotta replace the pic with 2 towels, because you folks threw it in twice.
I called him a “serial quitter” in a comment last time. It did not make it through moderation. I guess the guy doesn’t like to hear the truth, I mean geez look at his blog, asskisser festival.
wonder if the theme will be put on github?
I don’t think so. The reason why is Standards Theme was not GPL or under no other compatible license(if i understand it correctly).
Really? I never noticed that. How was it licensed — the Themeforest way?
There should be no barrier to simply re-issuing a new version of with a new license that lets anyone modify and share it, whether it’s GPL or something else.
All the best for the future guys! :’-)
I can’t really disagree with the negative sentiments posted in the comments above. This kind of flighty behavior validates the concerns that serious users and commercial customers of companies like 8bit always have. Enough with the kidult rockstar startup hoohah! Just tell us what you’ve got and how you’re going to support it a long time! Don’t jerk your customers around! It’s bad for the whole market/community. I hope Standard finds a new home.
I don’t have anything against John per se, he seems to be a good guy, creative and fun and a family man and all that. But come on, time after time he just drops whatever he’s working on and walks away. So passionate and dedicated, then one day, out of the blue, “screw this, moving on, I don’t care”. How can you trust someone like that.
Yeah, it’s a business point that needs to be made. It’s not “personal.” John seems like a good guy with fine intentions, but that’s beside the point.
I liked WP Daily too; it had a lot of potential and was far better than this new Torque thing. 8bit seemed impressive. I tried Standard because it looked cool and John and Co. are obviously capable and seemed committed to the product. I was considering adopting Standard for client work, but development did seem slow this year and I wondered what its future was. I sure didn’t think the company and product would be dropped.
As much as I may want to like whatever John does next, I feel like there will be a baseline of distrust now, and I wish for him and me and other potential customers of his that this wasn’t the case. It’s not how a healthy market works. Trust really matters, and lately some major WP brands seem to be blowing away their trust. Why is that? A perception of invincibility? A bottom-line focus coupled with a lack of marketing and communications savvy to mitigate the blowback on hard calls? A kiss-ass WP community that takes everything right up the yazoo out of “politeness?” Genuinely curious about why that attitude seems to prevail…
Maybe he can take over as editor of torquesemondo or whatever it’s called. So far that content is decidedly DULL! Or maybe Automattic should hire him as the host of the NFL Network meets WordPress. The guy has personality even if he veers from Larry King to Pierce Morgan.
This is really a big shock for me. I’ve been watching the Standard theme for a while and I thought it can be the next big name like Genesis. 8bit is a really good team with talent developers. Hope you all the best in the future, guys!
Its a shame, but great that the guys involved have got other things that they are involved with. Good luck in the future.
To what level can I continue using my Standard Theme? I am not an expert (I do not know any programming etc). How fast do you think I must switch to a nother theme, and what would cause it? WP updates?
Thank you
You should be able to use it indefinitely. You’ll probably want to replace it for your own reasons before it runs into browser compatibility issues. If WordPress changes significantly in ways that break backward compatibility with older themes, everyone’s going to be affected. There’s nothing unique about Standard AFAIK that would make it any more or less durable that any other properly coded theme.
great just when i brought it too.. thanks… a lot not