Announcing Ashford Release v0.1

I am happy to announce the the release of a new WordPress theme called Ashford. I am also happy because I hope this also marks my return to regular blogging.

While this post marks the end of about 40 hours of development this week, I have been working on this initiative for many months. Until I started writing the copy for this web site (all you proof readers are welcome to comment here about my grammar or nonsensical statements), I did not realize the scope of this undertaking.

The code

The theme code is just one aspect of this project. The goal of this project is to initiate a trend to build simple church web sites. Most ministries, churches and parachurch organizations need nothing more.

Ashford allows people to build simple 2-5 page sites or more larger sites that include a blog. I am eating my own dog food on this by building this web site using Ashford. So there is nothing done here that you can not do out of the box (no required plug-ins or crazy mods).

The POV

There are several aspects to this project that make it unique. The first is what I’m calling Inplace Administration. The idea is to put documentation on about how to maintain the web site in the actual place where it actually goes.

For example, administrators get Inplace hints at the top of the page on how to activate the Infobar. So the challenge is twofold: design a great church web site AND share knowledge with admins to build a simple web site.

The design and features included in Ashford are based on my experience with church web sites. It emerges from my distinct point of view of how to churches ought to engage people on the Internet.

The ecosystem

The second thing that makes Ashford unique is that I am designing it to be a theme platform. Like CSS Zen Garden, the markup is abstracted from the presentation making it possible to deliver many designs using ONE theme.

This made possible because Ashford is built using Nathan Smith’s 960 Grid System and jQuery.

Currently, I am working on the default theme, called Sandfire. In upcoming releases, Ashford will also offer subthemes. This opens the door for other designers to submit designs for the collection. There will be contests for open submissions and commissioned subthemes.

My dream is to create an ecosystem around Ashford.

The knowledge

These are the technological and creative aspects of this project. In third and final aspect of this project is that Ashford will maintain a knowledgebase of best practices, design patterns and case studiesfor building simple church web sites.

What next?

Basically, I posted v0.1 just to get it out the door. I have a list of defects that I have found while building out this web site. Like I’m not using a minified version of jQuery or finding display issues with Safari.

Your feedback is welcome. What do you think of this initiative? Do you know of any churches or ministries that need a web site. I would be willing to host the site for at least 2 years and intall WordPress in exchange for their feedback. Not a bad deal…

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About Tim Bednar

Ashford WordPress Theme is developed by Tim Bednar founder of Turtle Interactive. You can follow him on Twitter.