The LOOONG wait is over. The day you have all been waiting for is finally here. It is with a tremendous amount of pride and excitement that I am pleased to announce that the version 1.0 of Backbone Theme Framework is now available. A major milestone for us, having spent the past 2 months creating this framework and getting to know the awesome WordPress community that surrounds us.

If you purchased Backbone during the pre-order, the download link is now available on your member area. If you haven’t and wondering why you should, then read on.

A Powerful WordPress Theme Framework

Before theme framework, web design meant one of two things: Heavily modifying the code of existing free themes to accommodate a design OR creating a new theme from scratch—including every line of HTML—to go with a fancy, new design. By using a theme framework, you are giving yourself the ability to create a one-of-a-kind website with ease.

As a theme framework, Backbone is loaded up with unprecedented level of control and flexibility. Backbone is packed with vast array of customization possibilities, features, functionality and SEO integration. Backbone gives so much flexibility and ease in building each type of website, speeding up the process of designing and developing a theme without sacrificing the quality of the end-result.

Our aim for Backbone is to give all kind of WordPress user, the new and veteran, a solid base (Backbone) they could build on top when creating a new WordPress theme, a toolkit that allows anyone, from individuals to businesses, to achieve anything on a WordPress-powered website. In short, we want you to actually able to do whatever you like. That’s why we gave each detail extra care and attention.

Here are a few notable features of Backbone V1:

• A user-friendly theme panel interface with drag-and-drop feature.
• 14 customization options to just about anything you might want to customize on your website.
• Portfolio, photoblog, business and magazine page template, whichever you need is just one click away.
• With responsive layout that will auto-adjust itself whenever you change your layout setting or just resize the browser.

View the Backbone page to see all the powerful features packed into the theme framework.  Oh, and be sure to take a peek of Backbone theme panel.

Backbone Child Themes

Child theme is the recommended way to making modifications to a theme framework. If you haven’t heard the concept of parent and child theme before then it’s best for your to read the detail description on the WordPress Codex.

A theme framework wouldn’t be complete without child themes, so we prepared two Backbone child themes for you: Kirei, a beautiful and simple theme to give your business an instant online presence, and Vidio, a theme created with video blogger’s needs in mind. Both child themes are designed specifically for Backbone launch. We are a big fans of freebies, we are giving out both Vidio and Kirei for FREE when you purchase Backbone.

The framework function of Backbone lets you change your site’s theme with simply installing a new child theme of your choice. Once you install the Backbone theme framework (it’s the same process as installing any theme), then all you need to do is install and activate the child theme of your choice and your site is ready to go.

Credit Rolls

The ColorLabs team would like express our sincere gratitude to everybody who participated in the Backbone Private Beta. Thanks those guys, we have been able to find and resolve many issues which would be impossible to discover in a normal test environment. The feedback from the testers has also allowed us to fine-tune Backbone to bring a polished, compelling and awesome experience to its users.

Also, to say “thank you” for your valuable time, effort and feedback. We provide our beta testers with a free, fully functional copy of Backbone, including Vidio and Kirei.

Henrik Blomgren, Arun Pattnaik and Christopher Rice, once again thank you for helping us reach this point. Enjoy! :D

The Challenge Starts from Now

This is just the beginning for ColorLabs & Company. Building Backbone is not a one-time job and continuous development is needed to make it more and more powerful. More experimenting, innovating and child theming are in the future plan. We are brimming with ideas to improve, grow and evolve it over the coming months.

But most importantly we want to build a community around Backbone where people can talk about it, share their views and even make suggestions to help improving it. We need your findings and feedback. We want you to help us to make Backbone into a kick-ass theme framework. You can say anything; suggest improvement, functionality, features, even pointing out flaws. Write them all down and we’ll go through them word by word.