Hello,
I will try to answer some of the direct questions above:
"Since I recall shape 5 has released a theme every month consistantly so what you are saying is that Joomla being on the decline is a reason for the 6-8 period time for a theme. If this is the case then how will you explain your Wordpress club themes? If WP is on the rise then will you release a WP theme monthly and Joomla every 6-8 weeks? Is this fair?"
----Joomla is our primary source of business and what most of this company thrives on. This is an unfortunate side effect, but as we stated yesterday we make no guarantee to how many new releases there will be so there is still no issue here. There is also not much to suggest that WordPress is on an increase either, if you look striclty at Google trends they are showing a decline as well, not near to the extent of Joomla though:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=joomla,wordpress"I think Mikek is somewhat wrong when it comes to updating the old themes. For example Salon Spa, Sports Nation, Hexicon and Cali Rush are amazing themes and they should have been part of the update."
----We are talking about possibly putting together a tutorial for those who want to try to convert them, but we rarely get requests for any of this, maybe a year or two ago we did, but not anymore. The majority of our customers want more modern aesthetics and these designs no longer fit that mold. Design trends change and customers want designs that fit today's standards.
"It may also serve to maybe come up with a new price where you can have Joomla and WP themes for one price. This way if you feel Joomla is in decline you can get the newer themes in WP."
----We will be looking at many options, but we can't guarantee any changes. The WordPress market is nearly impossible to get into because of how established all the competitors are and the volume of them; other clubs that have tried getting into WordPress have said similar things.
"If Joomla is in decline or not should not be the issue here, most members signed up to this community as a solid Joomla community. Reviews and third party articles on the web also recommend Shape5 a solid Joomla Community. "
----Some may have, but that's certainly not the majority of our customer base. Most customers see one particular product that they want and they signup for that one product and the benefits of a membership and community go right over their heads. So yes, the decline of Joomla is a major issue and part of this discussion, because our business model is tied so closely to those who want only one product (not developers) and as that market dwindles so does everything else.
"True, there are over 100 designs. Only how many are responsive ? So the remaining (not responsive) ones are kind of useless to me."
----I just did a rough count and we have 51 that are responsive, that's a very good variety of responsive designs.
"I want to know is that what I/we can expect in the feature, because right now I don't know what to think of this besides that I am a bit disappointed... Please don't bring up "violation of our agreement". Then we are going into the wrong direction. We all love this community and want nothing more then a solid continuation of both sides."
----I am sorry that you are disappointed, and so are we, but we have to do what makes business sense as well. It is going to remain on a 6 to 8 week cycle of releases, most likely closer to the 8 weeks. That doesn't mean that things can't change in the future, but that's where it is right now. No one is mentioning a violation of terms, we brought up the agreement earlier in this thread because there were comments about being promised one template per month, and that's not the case so it needed clarification.
All of this discussion, as Jonah pointed out, revolves around whether or not Joomla can rebuild their community and popularity again. But much of that remains to be seen and we won't know until Joomla 4 is around. I'm hopeful that they do.
Keep in mind that we are not the only company that is making these kinds of decisions. Competitors much larger than us have made similar changes much earlier than us, some appear like a "ghost town" now as mentioned above. Shape5 is a smaller business, and we are used to working with limited staff, where many of these other companies cannot continue because of the resources it takes to run their companies. All that say we are in a better situation to keep producing products into the future because we can work on lower margins, and unless something absolutely dramatic happens we plan to continue to do that.