We’ll also be sharing the tips, hacks, fixes that were posted in the forums over at this blog over the next few weeks, plus stay tuned for announcements about updates to the theme.

Your accounts should be still intact, but since we’re still moving things around, some links may no longer work. But as of today, premium support via the Forums can now resume. Other support services continue, as listed here.

Again, visit the Cutline Forums at Performancing Hive here. Thank you for your continued support!

The community support forum will, like before, let Cutline users exchange ideas, tips, mods, and fixes. Anyone is free to post and respond here (and we do encourage everyone to do so).

The premium support area is basically the paid version of the community support. This will not only include discussions among community mebmers, though. The folks who currently maintain Cutline (meaning Splashpress Media) will also directly respond to inquiries here. We know we’ve been a bit busy with replying elsewhere, but now that the forum is part of our business plan (meaning we get a small return in exchange for our time and effort in responding), we will definitely have a faster turnaround.
Monthly subscription is $3.99 per month, charged annually.

If you have more urgent concerns, we would be happy to help you if you can get in touch with us directly. Simple fixes would, of course, be free (or you can send us beer, tea or espresso), but more complicated ones would have to be charged the usual rate.

The old forum is archived here, as we know there is still a treasure chest of knowledge (and discussion) stored there.

We hope to see you at the new forum!

I’ve moved the old forum to another directory. If you need to refer to information stored on the old forum, please head on to http://cutline.tubetorial.com/forums-archive. We’re keeping the old content archived.

This might take some time, though, but we’ll do our best to come up with the updates before the year ends.

This is one path we’re considering taking.

So in this case, the theme is essentially free for use by anyone who wishes to download it. But if you find yourself facing a brick wall during install or customization, you can pay someone to help you with this. Paying a few bucks sure beats having to endure endless hours of figuring out what has gone wrong and the ensuing headaches thereafter! And paying your own designer to tweak or customize your site might be a bit expensive, unless you have designer friends who would be willing to do the fixes for you over beer or coffee (tea works for me).

While I said earlier that we’re not considering paid support anytime soon, that “anytime soon” turned out to be just a few days. Fact is, we’ve regularly been receiving emails asking for help with various matters. And while the answers to most of these inquiries can be found in the freely-available support forums I guess some users don’t have the time to search or weed through the numerous entries and responses, and would rather get a straight-to-the-point answer.

Some even ask us to directly work on their themes. We’d been glad to oblige, but in many cases, we realize that tweaks and changes would require some time to work on. And being busy folks, we do have to work out our priorities.

I’m thinking of two options here. First, we could run a paid support forum alongside the existing one, which is free. After all, we wouldn’t want to lock down something that has been open to the public for a while now. But a paid, subscriber-only forum should be able to offer quicker answers (from the developers) and possibly other value added information. Think of Hive, where established probloggers share valuable information and insights with a closed group.

The second option would be to offer direct support paid by the hour. This can be in the form of email, chat, and actual manipulation of the sites/blogs in question.

Or, it could be both.

But I would like to get users’ opinion on this first. How much would you pay for membership to a support forum? How much would you pay hourly for theme support? Or would you, at all?

I will continue to develop and support the original Cutline platform, and hope to bring out a newer release before the next version of WordPress in January. As for Cutline 2.0, you can expect to see a 2.1 release hopefully by February, with many new updates. As for continuing to support the first generation of Cutline, that all depends on you and its continued popularity. If you all get sick of it, I will focus my attention on the newer version. But if you all continue to enjoy it, I will continue to work on developing it, fixing it, tweaking it, and making it what you want it to be.

I have many ideas on how I want things to continue, especially in making it easier for you, the users, to easily modify and adapt the theme. I hope you will stick with me, give me a helping hand, and we can really revitalize the Cutline community.

So if you have a major issue, please let me know. I will be working from the blog, and as such your comments. We will be shutting down the forum, and you can always direct any Cutline problems my way via david [at] splashpress.com.

My name is David Peralty, and you might know me as the writer on Blogging Pro, and I used to be the co-host of the WordPress podcast. I have bent WordPress to my will numerous times, created many WordPress themes, and hopefully, I will be able to answer any and all questions you might have. You will notice some changes around here over the coming days, as I orient myself, and start cleaning things up.

I will be jumping in on the forum soon, to answer questions, as well as continuing to develop the Cutline theme.

Thanks again to everyone for their continued support, and I look forward to working with you all.

Head over to the forums with your questions and problems. Let’s show everyone what a great community has been created by Chris and every Cutline user.

Obviously the forums still are empty, but I’m sure that will change fast!