StartBox finds a new home with WebDevStudios

I am very excited to announce that WebDevStudios has officially acquired the StartBox WordPress theme framework! StartBox is a very powerful theme framework developed by Brian Richards, who has been a developer at WDS since July. The first version was released back in August of 2010 and has grown tremendously over the past few years.

Why StartBox?

It actually makes perfect sense for us. We wanted to work on a framework that we could help shape the future of. Not only is StartBox an amazing theme framework, but it’s also an established name in the community. Brian has built a great product and we only want to help make it even better.

StartBox is also our first major push into the commercial WordPress space. We’ve been trying for years to build and release commercial products, but it’s a huge challenge when there is no revenue being generated. Our primary focus has always been on our client work, which made it very hard to dedicate time and resources to a commercial offering. StartBox is a turnkey product and already has 9 premium child themes on the market.

What’s Changing?

The biggest change you’ll see is more active development around StartBox. We now have an entire team dedicated to contributing to StartBox core and creating custom child themes and plugins designed specifically for StartBox.

Brian Richards will remain the project lead and help us shape the roadmap for the future of StartBox. The framework will also remain 100% freely available on Github and of course StartBox will always be 100% GPL.

If you want to get involved you can contribute to StartBox on Github, follow StartBox on Twitter @wpstartbox, and subscribe to the StartBox blog for updates and news announcements.

This is a really exciting time for WDS! Stay tuned, because we have even MORE exciting announcements coming this month.