Tuesday’s Thank You - Chris Pearson
It is not often that others recognize the individuals that have helped to inspire them. Many times we take all of the credit without acknowledging those that helped us along the way. While your idea may be “original” someone or some product has usually had an influence in some way to help shape that idea. That doesn’t mean you did not work hard to get to where you are, but along your journey there was a spark that helped ignite the flame.
The spark that helped ignite the Reptile framework was Chris Pearson and today I would like to say “Thank You!”.
A little over a year ago a friend asked me to create a website for his wife’s business and after extensive research I ended up choosing the Thesis WordPress theme. Creating the site was fairly easy and this was using Thesis v1.0.2 in which only two hooks were available - thesis_hook_header and thesis_hook_footer.
Shortly after the site launched I decided to create my own site, WP Bandit, focusing exclusively on Thesis skins. After releasing the first skin, Cotton Candy, Alex (the other 1/2 of WP Bandit) and I began to receive a small number of requests for custom Thesis skins. A few months later after the release of our Typogrid skin the number of requests exploded tremendously.
There was no way for us to keep up with the demand no matter how hard we tried. For the past several years I had been a network administrator and now I was a network administrator and a web developer. Alex was still a web designer but with a lot more exposure.
As the requests for Thesis skins (in addition to Alex’s designs) grew more complex so did my frustration. There were things I wanted Thesis to do that it could not do “easily” and after some coaxing the Reptile framework was born in September of 2009.
Over the last year I have learned a ginormous amount about web design, typography, and WordPress and I can truly say that none of this might have happened if it was not for Thesis. Thank You Chris for creating such a great product and inspiring myself and others like me around the world!