But this is a two way street — I’m assuming you’re the best, the brightest, and the most gifted WordPress peeps out there, and I want good, constructive feedback from you so we can make Prodigy the best theme framework available.

So, here’s what you need to do.

First, you need to download Prodigy. You can do that either by checking it out via SVN, or you can download the ZIP. Either way, do it, then upload it to your server.

Next, get yourself a copy of Legacy, the default child theme for Prodigy. Truth is, Prodigy is just the engine, and it’s pretty useless by itself. Legacy gives it a nice, simple coat of paint, and helps illustrate some good practices for building child themes on top of Prodigy. Upload Legacy to your server too, then log in and activate it.

DO NOT activate Prodigy itself. There’s nothing dangerous about it … it just won’t look very good.

Then, start testing things out. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting some tutorials and other helpful documents that will make things a little easier to understand. In the mean time, take a look at the source code for Prodigy and see if you can follow what’s happening.

Finally, head over to the Developer’s Beta blog and get involved. Ask questions, suggest changes, post critiques, request new features — whatever! I want to make Prodigy a solid application that will stand the test of time, and your feedback is critical. In order to post, you’ll need to have an account. To get an account, email me, and I’ll hook you up.

For now, that’s all I have. I’ll see you at the dev-beta blog!

So, if you’re savvy enough to use SVN, getting updates is as easy as a single command via SSH.

Here’s how to checkout the latest version of Prodigy at any time:

1. Navigate to your wp-content/themes directory
2. Type the following command to checkout:

svn co http://prodigy-theme.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ prodigy

Once you’ve got the initial checkout done, you can do the following to keep it up to date:

1. Navigate to your wp-content/themes/prodigy directory
2. Type the following command to update:

svn up

That’s it! SVN will replace any files that need updating, and you’ll be good to go.

If you would like to browse the source of Prodigy, you can do so by checking it out over at Google code.