Andreas idea to promote MODx

Ryan had suggested I talked to Andreas, who has a great idea to promote MODx... we finally had the long overdue chat, and here is Andreas’s (brilliant) idea :

The basic core of the idea is that I will release a WordPress theme based on the default theme of MODx (from my own design), directly when MODx with my design is released, I release a WP-theme version. In the footer of the WP theme, I write: "Theme: Fashion - ported from MODx" where MODx is linked directly to MODxCMS.com. I will also release a regular XHTML/CSS template in the same way. The good thing with this is that my templates reach out to a lot of people. A WP-theme/template release will probably reach 20-30.000 users within the first 2 months. I have asked for a few days of notice before the release so I can prepare the WordPress theme.

Now that’s viral marketing, I just love the concept !

The next question is, when do we go forward with this, here is a sample of my conversation with Andreas :

(...)

11:50:05 David: When would it be planned for release ?Along with 0.9.5 ?
11:52:32 Andreas: I have no idea. When I made the design, it would be implemented within "2-3 weeks"

(...)

11:55:31 Andreas: I have asked for a few days of notice before the release so I can prepare the WordPress theme
11:55:38 David: OK
11:55:46 Andreas: As long as I know about the release before it happens, this will work.
11:56:11 Andreas: If I don’t get any notice, the whole idea will lose much of its strength - but I trust Ryan to keep me updated
11:56:32 David: The thing I’ll do then is raise the issue on the Marketing forum, discuss when the release would be most effective and then I or Ryan will get back to you
11:58:55 Andreas : Good. I don’t follow the forum, so a notice would be great.

(...)

Here I am... since we started talking about the 0.9.5 release, I thought I’d raise this... what do you think ?

Excellent, I love the idea! Great marketing concept.

To get this out in tandem with 0.9.5 would be ideal timing.

I thought so too

great idea!

*BUMP*

What do we do about this ?

Do we set things up so that things are in motion for the release ??

Take a peek at the bugtracker... there’s quite a bit floating out there to address. But I don’t think they’re huge insurmountable obstacles.

We’ll definitely have a test build out this week. I just did a clean install and there is much progress on the initial rendering issues, so I think it’s time to start ripping out some things, or at least adding the new snippets. Of course anyone can now grab the main trunk in SVN since it’s public.

I want this sucker out SOON!

OK I’ll try to do my first tries with svnX then and checkout the last version, my question was more about the Andreas thing : do you want him to be ready for the release ? and if so, he asked for a notice to launch the viral wordpress theme thingy...

I definitely want Andreas ready. In fact I kinda thought he was going to release it already base on another conversation we’ve had.

Ok then, I just wanted to make sure I followed up on what I promessed him when we chatted, e.g that he will get notice in due time.

I was not aware you had another chat about this, nice to know this will go live in time

David, any updates on this ? since Beta is already out and final 0.9.5 will be out soon I guess.