For all you CrackBerry Addicts who like to hunt down Free Themes for your BlackBerry vs. going the Premium Theme route, we're going to try and make the task a little bit easier. We'll soon be "officially" launching the CrackBerry.com Developer-Contributed FREE BlackBerry Theme Gallery.

You can get to the "beta" gallery by visiting crackberry.com/free-themes or the even easier www.crackberrythemes.com. Only the various versions of CrackBerry.com User & Abuser themes are available right now (thanks again GadgetBean!), but with the help of the BlackBerry Theme Developer community that should soon change! We're currently building a few more user functions into the gallery and with this Blog post are putting out the call to all theme developers to send us the themes you'd like to share! Details After the Jump...

CrackBerry.com's Developer Contributed Free Theme Gallery

Publisher/Theme Requirements

• You can only submit a theme if you are the developer. You must have ownership rights / working knowledge of the theme you are submitting.
• The theme gallery supports both OTA and Desktop Installation methods. As much as possible we would like themes to be available for download via both options (need the .jad and the .alx and associated files). We will host the themes on CrackBerry.com's servers.
• As much as possible, we'd like themes to be available for as many devices as possible. The gallery supports the 87xx/88xx/81xx/83xx model devices.
• All themes submitted should be fully-tested and in good working order.
• Once a theme is added to the gallery, we would prefer not to remove it, so please only submit themes you are comfortable sharing here for the long haul
• Support: Support for themes will be provided by the CrackBerry.com Forum Community. For each new style of wallpaper added to the gallery, a new "official" Forum Thread will be Created in the Wallpapers and Themes forum. While the forum community should be able to straighten out most support issues, we do ask for all developers who's themes appear in the gallery to have a CrackBerry.com member account and to monitor the support thread from time to time and post on the thread as required.
• Example: Here's an example of the support thread created for the CrackBerry User & Abuser themes currently in the gallery.

To Submit Themes

• Email kevin at crackberry.com with theme files attached.
• Please make the subject of the email THEME GALLERY: "Title of Theme" for "Device Model(s)"
• Please cleary separate and label folders/zips when emailing so its easy for me to know what I'm looking at
• Please indicate Minimum OS Requirements in the email (critical for 8100, 8700, and 8800 themes)
• On each theme page in the theme gallery there is a field for the Publisher with a URL back to the Publisher. Please let me know the "Publisher" name you would like to be listed under as well as where you would like the clickable link to point (it could be to your theme site if you also sell premium themes, to your member name in the forums or to an email address)

Modifying Themes/Making Changes

• Right now, all themes will be uploaded to the gallery/maintained by me. So if you come out with an updated version of a theme, want to make changes to the description on your theme page, add a theme for another device model, etc. etc., you will have to notify me via email (kevin at crackberry.com) and I will make the changes. Again, please put THEME GALLERY: "make changes to theme name" in the subject line

The Call For Free Themes is ongoing, but we would like to launch in two weeks with a decent selection of free developer-contributed themes. So if you have your creations ready to rock, send them on down!