There was some excitement, a few months ago, about forthcoming (commercial) themes from the iThemes folks. Today, there's nothing on the front page of their website (http://ithemes.com/) about MT, and their MT site (http://ithemes.com/movable-type/) only lists the free Business Blogger theme. Which is nice, and all, but perhaps a little unremarkable.
However, if you click through to the demo of Business Blogger, a link at the foot of the page will guide you here: http://mtthemes.com/. This is how the site used to look, and it features two themes including the rather spiffing-looking Essence. ...which is still listed as 'coming soon.' The links at the head of the page return one to the ithemes site.
Does anyone know what's going on here? Is the experiment over even before it's begun?
I wondered the same thing myself about that site. I've been a MT user for a long time, and really would prefer to stay with MT for newly created projects. However, the almost complete lack of themes available is a major sticking point for me.
Wordpress has a friggin TON of good, free themes. It's hard for me to not choose that, because I can choose from tons of them.
I'm about to embark on a new project, and I was looking this morning for MT themes, and I see the situation has not changed. Nobody's doing good custom theme work for MT, not without charting a few hundred bucks for it or something. If I can't come up with something, I'll have to go WP merely because I have access to a ton of skins, and next to zero with MT.
Wordpress is absolutely kicking MT in the head on this bit, sadly. If there's any archive of MT themes for current versions out there, post some links, because I can't find them. That's for sure.
This has come up a few times and is probably the most major failing in MT. Although the template system is great for making your blog completely unique, some people want to jump in, use a simple theme and get going right away. Sadly, this just isn't possible with MT at present.
What it really needs is a themes section on here and a GUI tool built into MT to export a template set. There is a paid for version, but that's not going to encourage people to develop free themes, and there is a command line version that is free, but if you don't have command line access to your server, it's no help.
When I get time I was hoping to do a template set based on YUI grids, but I am finding less time to spend on "for free" MT work and need to concentrate on bringing in the bucks.
I suggested before that the template system be refactored such that MT can manage template sets in its database. When you install Sandbox, it should be installed into the MT database, and then there should be a drop down menu for selecting Sandbox over Classic Blog or Professional Web Site. That way, you can just change the template set you are using with a few clicks and not lose anything.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is much momentum at 6A and on the developer list for fixing template system and style-related issues.
You can currently switch template sets in a blog very easily, with just a couple of clicks and not lose anything, using the "Refresh Blog Templates" option.
What I was proposing was a way of actually making those template sets in the first place that is free and easy.
I'm aware of that feature. When you use it to change template sets, it just installs the new template set next to the old one or deletes the old ones if you specify that option. In that latter case, it very much does cause you to lose your templates unless you save them yourself somewhere.
What I am talking about is an explicit template switcher that merely switches a flag in the database saying "use this template set" as well as actually storing all template sets in the database as a set of objects, rather than relying on the current plugin system. If I want to create a new template set, it should be a menu option, and switching between template sets should be as easy as switching in WordPress.