A few days ago, Alex King announced a new WordPress product called Carrington Build. It is described as a “better way to manage WordPress content” and allows users to create custom page layouts without any programming knowledge.

For a better visual of how it works, check out this 1:21 intro video.

Read on to see my review, along with a screencast, information on pricing, and some other thoughts.

Screencast

You probably got a good idea of how Carrington Build works from the video above, but here’s a screencast from me.

How To Get It

I should clarify now that Carrington Build is not free. The pricing structure is a bit complicated so Alex King dedicated an entire post on the topic.

Here are the pricing options:

• Carrington Business Theme – A theme which showcases Carrington Build. This is designed for end users and is priced at $149.
• Carrington Build Developer Edition – This option is designed for developers working on paid client projects, and is used on a single site and is priced at $499.
• Carrington Build Royalty Edition – This option allows commercial WordPress theme or plugin developers to include Carrington Build in their products. It is priced at $15 or 10% of each sale.

Carrington Build isn’t a typical WordPress plugin or theme, and the pricing obviously reflects that being much more expensive than pretty much any other commercial WordPress product I’ve seen.

Commercial Themers?

I have to admit, the most interesting option on the pricing structure would be the “Carrington Build Royalty Edition” which allows other commercial developers to integrate Build into their themes or plugins.

I wonder when we’ll start seeing “Carrington Build-friendly” themes being sold? Most popular commercial themes already do include different page layouts, however nothing close to the flexibility of something like Carrington Build.

Integrating Carrington Build into already great themes would add instant value and allow users to customize their sites with nearly unprecedented flexibility.

Maybe even popular and established theme frameworks like Genesis by StudioPress could get in the game by developing something like a “sample child theme” which integrates Carrington Build into it.

This way, users who wanted the added Build functionality could purchase the child theme as an addon, more sales for the commercial theme company, times $15 back to Crowd Favorite. Everyone wins.

I’d imagine the new child theme route would be the best for already established commercial theme frameworks as it might be kind of tricky to offer a new version of the original framework with Build considering a lot of commercial theme companies offer free upgrades, and you’d probably need to pay Crowd Favorite a ton of money upfront for something not every user might want or need.

iThemes Builder

When I first heard of Carrington Build, the first thing I thought of was the undeniable similarity with another popular WordPress product, iThemes’ Builder theme.

I’m not sure if these two products would play nice together. My first thought was both of them combined would be a bit redundant as they both seem to have a similar “building block” stacking style.

Benjamin Bradley tweeted some differing thoughts on an iThemes Builder + Carrington Build combination.

For more information, check out my Builder theme review (there’s a screencast too).

Conclusion

First of all I want to note that I was not asked or solicited in any way to do a review on Carrington Build. I realize it’s a paid product and it may not be for everyone but I genuinely thought it was a really cool WordPress innovation and wanted to share it with my readers.

• Will it revolutionize WordPress theme development?
• Do you think it will be integrated in other commercial WordPress products sooner or later?
• Would you use something like this for your clients and would they find value in this?
• Would you use Carrington Build on your own personal sites or is pricing too much of a deterrent?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts on Carrington Build in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Builder Theme by iThemes – WordPress Theme Review
2. Commercial WordPress Theme Directory Launches
3. Commercial Themes and the GPL

Yesterday I went to the WordCamp Houston 2010 and got an opportunity to see some of the WordPress Enthusiasts from this part of the world.
As a WordPress Theme developer, I keep an eye on whats going on around WordPress, but somehow till last week, I did not know about this event at all. When I went online to get the tickets, they were already sold out.
I still went there and talked with a couple of different people and finally bought a ticket on the spot so I could get in.
My thoughts on this, presented in a random order.

• Houston is the hometown for Matt. He says “You are my people” to the crowd, on his keynote. See his complete keynote.
• Houston has so many WordPress enthusiasts, I could see more than 200 people with all kinds of different backgrounds.
• The event is very well organized.
• People loving WordPress also loves iPhones and iPads. This camp is the second place where I see so many iDevices, the first one is the Apple Store
• Had an opportunity to listen to the sessions of Bill Erickson and Aaron Brazell and learnt a few tricks and tips.
• The word “Thesis” brings a lot of laughter in the crowd just similar to someone mentioned “Apple” in Google’s Camp. While Aaron hates the Thesis theme, Thesis is used by a lot of people for building WordPress sites quickly and professionally.
• I met Stephanie Leary who wrote a book on WordPress 3 and she seems so knowledgeable.
• I met Cullen Wilson who is running a company called WPEngine, providing hosted WordPress solutions.
• Finally I met Matt, the founder of WordPress and we had a short conversation.
• Matt recognized me by face, he said he has seen my picture on this website.
• Matt said MistyLook is one of his favorite themes and he has personally worked on getting it for use in wordpress.com. It is one of the most popular themes among the users of wordpress.com.
• I am happy and proud to be associated with WordPress in some way through my contributions.

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