WordPress Hacks » Themes

WellBlog: A Premium Blogging Theme

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:33:37 +0000

Last month we wrote a review of the TypeMagz theme from the ColorLabs Project team, an up and coming premium theme website which offers a variety of premium theme designs at below market value prices. This week I received word that their new premium theme design, which was built specifically for those looking for a standard blog design, is now available for purchase.

The premium themes market has had an overwhelming focus on CMS Themes since its inception back in late 2007, but I’ve always felt that there should also be a variety of blog designs available for all of the WordPress users which actually *gasp* want a nice blog design to use with their blogging software. After all, despite being an extremely flexible piece of software, the core function of WordPress is blogging, right?

That leads me to believe that there is a large market of buyers looking for a nice blog design which includes a flexible feature set and is also available at a lower price point than the more advanced CMS themes currently available. The new WellBlog theme by ColorLabs Project is one of those blogging templates which does a pretty good job of achieving the goals I have for a solid premium blog theme.

To start, here is an example of the design and control panel which is included with the WellBlog theme.

WellBlog Theme Homepage

WellBlog Theme Internal Pages

WellBlog Theme Control Panel

If you’d like to test it out, you can check out the live demo of the black version of the WellBlog theme here.

The WellBlog theme also includes a number of features in addition to the 3 built-in skins to choose from. Probably my favorite unique feature is the scrolling “Most Commented” section at the top of the sidebar. Here are a few of the other more notable features:

Supports WordPress Threaded Comments
Built-in Gravatar Support
After-Sales Support and Upgrade
Cross-Browser Compatible
Advertisement Banner Management
Theme Administration Control Panel

If you are interested in learning more about the WellBlog theme, or are interested in purchasing a license for your WordPress blog, it is currently available for $50.00 (single-website license), or $200.00 (developer’s license for unlimited websites). WPHacks.com readers can use coupon code 94F4D as well to get an additional 30% off your purchase!

If WellBlog isn’t for you, you can also view all of the themes available from ColorLabs Project here.

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Theme Junkie: Affordable Premium WordPress Themes

Kyle Eslick — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:52:17 +0000

For those that follow some of the more prominent members of the WordPress community, you have probably noticed that those at the top have become a very close group. I’ve always felt that this is a wonderful thing, but it has the side effect of making it difficult for a newcomer to break into those ranks and earn the respect of their peers.

One of those up and coming designers who is trying to get noticed is Roy Guan. A few months ago Roy entered into the crowded premium themes community with the launching of his website, Theme Junkie. In order to grab a foothold within this very busy space, Roy has managed to find a niche within a niche, offering all of his premium designs for under $30.00. In only about six months time Theme Junkie has already made available a large selection of premium themes as well as two free themes.

Below I wanted to take a moment and feature a few of my favorite designs already available from Theme Junkie:

FreshLife Theme

NewsTube Theme

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TypeMagz: A Premium News WordPress Theme

Kyle Eslick — Sat, 29 May 2010 22:08:21 +0000

Over the years it has been interesting to watch the WordPress themes market both grow and evolve. If you had asked me back in 2007 where I thought WordPress theme were going, I would have guessed that we were headed towards a strong focus on designs. Instead over the last year especially designs have moved more towards efficiency and simplicity with a focus placed on custom widgets and customizable control panels. These simple designs seem to allow bloggers to get all the features they want and then customize the simple designs to meet their individual needs.

One design that recently caught my eye is the new TypeMagz theme by ColorLabs Project. This website has been around for years now thanks to the extremely popular Arthemia theme, but rather than going with a magazine format, this new design instead places a focus on gathering and presenting news on the homepage. Here is a sample of how one configuration of the homepage may look:

TypeMagz Homepage Design

For internal pages the website converts to a blog format which includes many of the standard blogging features you’ve come to expect from WordPress:

TypeMagz Blog Design

Although this theme isn’t for every type of website/blog, if you run a website which manages a ton of content, the TypeMagz theme may be just what you are looking for. Like any good news-styled template, this theme really excels by taking a bunch of information and displaying it in one easy and convenient page where you can point readers to.

As you’d expect in today’s market all these features aren’t free, but the template is definitely affordable when compared to the competition. The TypeMagz theme is available for $50.00 for a single-use license, or a developer’s license is also available for $200.00. If TypeMagz isn’t for you, you can view all of the themes available from ColorLabs Project here, including their other new design, the Wellblog theme.

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3 Free Memberships Available to Elegant Themes Club

Kyle Eslick — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:33:25 +0000

Over the past two years the premium themes market has continued to innovate and prices have steadily declined to the point where you can find a nice premium theme for a very affordable price. With that said, there still is not a better premium themes deal available than the Elegant Themes club, which gives you access to all of their premium WordPress themes for only $19.99 a year.

Thanks to a generous offer from Nick Roach, the founder of Elegant Themes, I have been given three free memberships to give away to WordPress Hacks readers. Before I give the details of the giveaway, here are the three most recent premium WordPress themes released by Elegant Themes:

Lumin Theme

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Elegant Themes Announces New Custom ePanel

Kyle Eslick — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:53:45 +0000

Over the past year the premium themes market has continued to grow and expand, causing designers to search for ways to separate themselves from the competition.   Because many buyers choose to customize the design to meet their personal needs, it only makes sense for the focus of designers to instead turn to building custom settings pages that allow for a ton of flexibility.

These settings pages have become very complex in many cases and can offer a variety of features, including selecting where you want your sidebars placed, how many sidebars, which color/design style sheet should be used, or it can also offer simple things like places to enter your custom RSS feed, twitter feed, and Google Analytics code.    As I’ve watched these control panels evolve over this past year, it has been truly amazing just how much can be changed without changing a single line of code!

Nick Roach, the founder of the popular Elegant Themes theme club, has been offering complex settings panels on his themes for as long as I can remember, but earlier this week I was given a peak at the new revamped settings panel named ePanel. This new settings panel is extremely complex and will eventually be added to all of the themes included with an Elegant Themes club membership.   As of today’s date, ePanel is already integrated into the following themes and available for download: eBusiness, eNews, ePhoto, PureType, Bold, and CherryTruffle. Nick promises that the remaining themes will receive the same treatment over the coming month(s) and all themes will include this new ePanel.

So, what exactly is ePanel?   Here is a screen shot of the updated design:

As you can see from the screen shot above, there are a few bonus tabs under the General Settings tab alone, and there are a total of 8 tabs down the left sidebar.   The General Settings has the following 3 tabs: General, Homepage, and Featured Slider.

After loading up the theme to see how the settings panel works, I have to say I am very impressed!   It looks like the General tab (under General Settings) allows you to select the style sheet color you want to use, enable/disable blog formatting on the homepage, Feedburner integration including all your Feedburner settings, and selecting the date format (dates are displayed differently depending on what part of the world you live in).   In the Homepage tab you’ll get access to category display, as well as the ability to exclude certain categories of your choice. Of course the Featured Slider tab allows you to control how the featured slider works.

That is just the beginning though, as on the left there is also a series of tabs which include a large number of other settings.   You’ll find Navigation options, Layout Settings, Ad Management settings, Colorization, and you’ll even be able to control certain SEO settings on the SEO tab (mostly meta information similar to how All-in-One SEO Pack works).

The best part is that all this new functionality is available for all Elegant Themes club members!   Currently a membership to Elegant Themes is only $19.99 for an entire year, and stays at that price in order to renew your yearly membership. You can learn more about the Elegant Themes club here.

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Free WordPress Theme Framework: Biblioteca

Alex Denning — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:48:27 +0000

After redesigning WPShout a couple of months ago, I decided to add some advanced features to the theme, package it up and release it into the wild. The result? Biblioteca. It’s a mix between a magazine theme, a tech blog theme, a bloggy theme and a theme framework – it looks quite nice out the box but has a solid library of advanced features including an advanced theme options page, widgets all over the place, in post SEO options, the lot. The features list is as follows:

A practical theme framework that offers a solid starting point for any WordPress theme.

Plug and play – works out of the box, with an extensive options page.

Awesome SEO. Everyone talks about their theme having ‘awesome SEO’, but Biblioteca doesn’t just let you believe it, it has options for setting the post title and description.

Featured content gallery – Biblioteca uses Chris Coyier’s jQuery slider.

Extensive options page – pictured below, the options page lets you change a ton of options, from the width of the sidebar to the contents of the footer to the ads in the sidebar to your Analytics tracking code.

Magazine look – you want a fancy featured content gallery? Biblioteca has one. Enable/disable it from the opions page.

Tech blog look – you want a couple of posts featured below the main featured content gallery? Biblioteca has got one of them; it’s widgetised too.

Bloggy look – you just want a blog? Biblioteca can do that as well. Just set the options in the options panel.

Drop down navigation – Biblioteca has some rather nice drop down navigation.

A ton of widgets – Biblioteca has an ever expanding number of widget ready areas in all sorts of places that allow you to easily pop text just about anywhere.

Fancy footer – the three column footer here on WPShout is often complimented and you too can have one – Biblioteca has one which you can enable/disable from the options page.

Auto image resizing – set an image to display on the homepage and it’ll automatically resize itself.

Multiple layouts – through the options panel you can change the layout, having a thin main content area, a slightly larger main content area or an even bigger main content area.

The list goes on – just download it and see for yourself!

When creating Biblioteca I wanted to make something that would allow me to rapidly develop future themes, something I’ve done. Whether that makes it a ‘framework’ or not I don’t know. What I do know is that if you’re a designer looking to create an awesome WordPress theme but you don’t want to start from scratch, you could do worse than base your theme on Biblioteca. If you’re not a developer, then by no means are you alienated from using Biblioteca; the advanced theme options and in-post SEO options make it a great choice for any blog – take a look at WPShout and you’ll see; pretty much all I’ve done is change the background on the theme.

As in accordance with WordPress itself, the theme is GPL, although offered ‘as is’ with no free support. You can see the theme live here and grab the download it here. Enjoy!

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CustomTheme.com Officially Launches

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:43:28 +0000

Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Leland through his excellent WordPress resource, Theme Lab. While most designers have turned their attention to building premium WordPress themes, Leland is one of the few who has continued to release quite a few completely free WordPress themes which are of a comparable quality. Through his work with the WordPress community, he has been able to build a nice reputation as a coder and also build a loyal following.

About a month ago, Leland made me aware of a new project he was working on, building a business around the outstanding domain name CustomTheme.com. As you’d expect, this new project is a service building custom WordPress themes. While speaking with Leland, I was given the opportunity to be among the first to give the CustomTheme.com service a try (before it officially launched). I jumped at the opportunity and ended up having him build a custom design for a new website I’m working on, Blog Tutorials.   Blog Tuts is similar to WPHacks.com, but will be expanded to cover SEO techniques, blogging tips, etc.

As far as the new design goes, here is a screen shot of the new custom design which was built specifically for Blog Tuts:

Last night I got the new design loaded on Blog Tuts and today I received word that Custom Theme was finally ready for the official launch, so I wanted to take a moment and let our readers know about this new service.   According to the services page, Custom Theme is able to accommodate just about any type of WordPress design you may need, including blog themes, magazine themes, gallery themes, and even CMS themes.

As of the publishing of this article, right now the beginning rate for purchasing your own custom design is as low as $299.00, which you’ll find is very competitive within the custom theme market.

Want to learn more about this new service? Check out CustomTheme.com!

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WordPress Theme Frameworks

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:08:47 +0000

Over a year ago, I was among those that speculated on custom widgets and their role in the future of WordPress themes.   One thing that wasn’t speculated on, however, was the rise of WordPress theme frameworks. Now, just over a year later, many of the leaders in the premium themes market are building their own internal frameworks which are used as the backbone to design their premium WordPress themes. For example, Woo Themes now has their own Woo Framework.   Brian Gardner of StudioPress also recently informed me that he is also developing a framework for his StudioPress themes.

Premium theme designers are not the only ones using frameworks these days, however, and a few can actually be used by anyone in the development of their own personal themes!    As with traditional WordPress themes, WordPress theme frameworks have free options, as well as paid alternatives.    In the post below, I’ve collected the five major theme frameworks, and I intend to update this post as I learn of more WordPress theme frameworks.

Note: If these theme frameworks look a little plain, that is intentional. Frameworks are designed for someone to use as a building point, so they lack a lot of images and design elements.   Once downloaded (or purchased), you can then build upon the framework to make your design.   Many of these frameworks also include child themes, which allow you to quickly convert your framework into a ready to use design.

Thematic WordPress Theme (FREE)

Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.

Thematic Framework | Live Demo

WP Framework (FREE)

WP Framework is a blank WordPress theme framework by Ptah Dunbar, which aims to cut down on your theme development time. It gives you a solid theme foundation to build your project on top of so you can focus on project-specific features right from the git-go.

WP Framework | Live Demo

WP Unlimited Framework (Single-Use $59.00 | Developer’s Pack $150.00)

The WP Unlimited theme has a fairly simple design but a very complex control panel, allowing the user to set up their blog without touching any code.    Once the functionality is in place, then you can easily customize the design to meet your personal needs. Here is a screen shot of the control panel:

WP Unlimited | Live Demo

Thesis Theme Framework (Single-Use $87.00 | Developer’s Pack $164.00)

The Thesis theme framework is the most popular theme framework which has a cost associated with it and has built a loyal cult following.   Among those followers are some very high profile WordPress sites built upon the Thesis framework, then customized for their personal needs. You can look through a list of these clients on their homepage.

Among the reasons people love Thesis is their attention to SEO techniques and the complex control panel:

Thesis Theme | Live Demo

One Theme Framework + One Panel (Single-Use $60.00 | Multiple-Use $110.00+)

By default, One Theme offers a variety of styles/looks to choose from and a complex control panel to get your site setup without having to hard code anything.    The One Theme also features several child themes to give the user more customization options.

In addition to the design, you get their comprehensive control panel which they call One Panel:

One Panel Control Panel

One Theme Framework | Live Demo

Know of a WordPress theme framework we are missing? Please leave a comment or let us know about it!

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WordPress Now Launches with Fresh New Designs

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:35:32 +0000

The premium WordPress themes market has continued to grow and evolve over the past two years, so much so that we’ve started seeing a few complaints that all of the premium themes seem to generally look the same. It seems a few designers are setting the trends while the rest of the designers just follow and release similar themes, causing many of them to just look like variations of the others.

One of the theme designers that recently caught my eye is a team of WordPress theme developers who launched a new website called WordPress Now. Since the website has launched, they’ve already got three themes released, and the have two more which are in their final development stages.

Here are the three designs that WordPress Now currently has for sale:

Bloom Theme

Triumph Theme

Elements Theme

To see the true flexibility of these themes, you can view the live demos of each theme here.

As an added bonus, I spoke to the developers at WP Now and was able to land a couple sneak previews of upcoming premium themes that haven’t been released yet.

Vintmint Blog Theme (Not Yet Released)

Simplista Lifestream Theme (Not Yet Released)

So, what all is included with the purchase of a WordPress Now theme? Your purchase includes a number of features (features differ with each individual theme), a large FAQ for answering questions, tutorials for getting started, and of course theme support!

WordPress Now also offers some impressive price options, offering their themes for as low as $49.00 to start, as well as offering a few WordPress developer options for designers.   Their two unreleased themes (shown above) will be available at even lower prices ($29.00 and $39.00 respectively).

If you’d like to learn more about WordPress Now, you can read more about the features and support information here.

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New eBusiness Premium Theme by Elegant Themes

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:02:06 +0000

As much of the WordPress themes market continues to move towards the premium (paid) model, it can sometimes be a chore for the consumer trying to find the best value for your dollar.   There are certainly a few overpriced themes out there, but with a little effort you can also find a few premium themes you can find which are often undervalued.

When it comes to value, I usually recommend people start by looking at the various theme clubs available. Of the theme clubs out there, there is no doubt the best overall value is with the Elegant Themes club. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, lets take a look at their latest release, the new eBusiness theme:

eBusiness WordPress Theme

You can view the live demo of the eBusiness theme here.

The eBusiness theme also includes a very impressive control panel, of which the author lists the following features:

Design Layout – The layout tab houses some of the major overlying options that effect the structure and appearance of your website.

Color Schemes – eBusiness comes with three skins, and each skin comes in three colors. You can switch between these 9 different variations at any time from the drop-down menu.

Website Structure – The essence of eBusiness is to act as a CMS, creating a page-based layout. I have, however, included the option to bypass the page-based homepage in favor of a normal blog layout. You can switch between Page Structure and Blog Structure at any time.

Footer Options – You will notice that each page has a widgetized footer on the bottom.

Homepage Options – The homepage tab allows you to manage your homepage. If you are using blog style then most of these options do not apply, but if you are using the Page-based system then you will have to use this area to set up your homepage.

Slider Control – You will notice that the demo features 3 sliding elements on the top of the homepage. These are managed via the Homepage tab. Here you can customize the content text, the title of the tab, the text used in the button, the thumbnail image (which is automatically re-sized) and an optional read more link, which can be pointed anywhere. You can also choose how many sliding elements to display (up to 3).

Pages Control - The content on the homepage is made up of WordPress pages. You will create a page in wp-admin and then define the page to be used in the Homepage options tab. Simply input the page id of the pages you want to use and they will appear. You can also choose how many pages you want to use (up to4).

Blog Scroller – Even if you are using the page-based system you can still have a blog area on your site. For this reason I have included a blogroll on the homepage with a link to your most recent posts. This can be turned off if you don’t plan to have a blog section. You can choose how many recent posts to display. You can also customize the RSS link if you want to point it towards your feedburner account.

Blog Setup – If you are using the Blog Structure, or if you plan to include a blog within your Page-based website, you can customize your blog here.

Post Format - You can choose between “Blog Style” mode or “Default” mode. The Blog Style mode displays your posts in full on index pages, while Default mode automatically truncates the post to create a short preview with a “read more” link.

Categories Bar – The categories bar, with links to your various blog categories, only appears on blog pages. However, if you are using the blog as simply a recent news section, and don’t plan to have several categories, you can turn off this categories bar.

Further Post Preview Control – In addition to editing the length of the post previews you can also adjust the size of the thumbnail, as well as enable/disable the “read more” link and post info bar. All thumbnails are automatically re-sized, cropped, and cached, via TimThumb which means you can change the size of your thumbnails instantly at the click of a button.

Navigation Options – The navigation options allow you to customize the navigation bar. You can use this to exclude pages from the navigation, adjust the order of the links, add a link to your Blog section (if you are using one) and so on. Both the categories and pages navigation bars can be edited here.

Advertising Management – As with the rest of my themes I have included a banner management system. You can add 125×125 and 468×60 banners and choose how many 125×125 banners you want to display (up to 8). You can also choose where you want banners to be display. You can add them to your pages sidebar, blog sidebar or both. You also have the option to disable them completely.

How To Get a License for the eBusiness Theme

If you’d like to give the eBusiness theme a try, it isn’t free, but it almost is. Currently this theme, along with ALL of the themes released by Elegant Themes (close to 20 available currently), is available for only $19.99! Nick, the web designer behind Elegant Themes, has also upheld a pretty impressive release schedule, offering up a new theme just about every month (which should give you close to 12 new themes each calendar year), many of which can be viewed in their theme gallery.

Learn More About the Elegant Themes Club | Sign Up for Membership

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