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.

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.

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.

1. 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).
2. 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).
3. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

For a couple years now, the premium themes market has been growing steadily and the competition has been elevated.   Designers are pushing each other to be more innovative trying to earn your dollar, which is great for potential buyers like us, but can sometimes be difficult to for a new theme designer to jump in and hold their own.

One guy that has successfully done this, in my opinion, is Pavel Ciorici of WP Zoom.    Earlier this year he released his first premium WordPress theme, the Yamidoo theme.   The title of the theme is interesting enough that it grabs your attention, then when when you look at the theme, it is hard not be impressed!

Now, Pavel has released his second premium theme, the Zenko theme, which I wanted to mention here.  With this new magazine theme, the homepage design is a traditional magazine theme layout, but is designed in a way to feature the most important content in areas where readers will see it.   Here is a default sample of how the homepage features your top content:

Zenko Magazine Theme Homepage

The homepage is also very image intensive, which is an important part of a magazine-style homepage to draw the readers attention.   For the internal pages, the Zenko theme switches to a more traditional blog page layout with the sidebar on the right side:

Zenko Magazine Theme Post Page

A full live demo of the Zenko theme can be viewed here.

The Zenko theme also includes a number of great features.   Some of my favorite parts are the featured content and popular posts on the top of the homepage, the built-in navigation designed to function like the WP-PageNavi plugin, and of course the footer area, which was designed to provide a place for you to put your less important content (footer is a great place to put categories, archives, etc. so they are available for readers that want to find it, but is also out of the way for people not looking for it).

Other features included with the Zenko theme:

• Built in support for Google Analytics and Feedburner
• Integrated Banner Management System
• Custom templates for categories, archives
• Auto-resizing and cropping for images
• Threaded Comments for WordPress 2.7+
• Built-in widgets
• Support for WordPress 2.7.1
• Cross-Browser Compatible – tested on IE (6,7), Opera, Firefox, Safari, Chrome.
• Flickr widget
• Theme Documentation
• Integrated Theme Options
• Tabbed Widgets
• Widgetized Sidebars
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
• Drop-Down Menus
• Integrated social bookmarking in posts
• Photoshop Files (.psd) included

I also had the privilege of digging through the backend of this theme and was glad to see the code structure is very SEO friendly and well setup for someone who prefers to manually hack their code.  Another thing that I really liked was the fact that this theme doesn’t require any WordPress plugins or custom fields to function properly.   I always try to find at least one thing missing, and the one feature that I couldn’t find was the option of a traditional blog template for the homepage, which has become a pretty common addition with most premium themes.

Pavel also has a very competitive pricing structure, which allows just about any WordPress user to be able to acquire one of his themes.   Currently, the Zenko theme can be purchased for $69.00 (single-use license), $119.00 (for 5 site license), or $149.00 (developer’s license).

Have questions?  Want to learn more about this theme?  Check out the official Zenko theme page by WP Zoom.

Over the past week we’ve had a good response from the affiliate marketing topics we’ve covered, so I wanted to draw your attention to what I’m now using to build my affiliate marketing landing pages with WordPress.

In the past I’ve gotten to work with Unique Blog Designs and have always enjoyed their work, so I have to admit I was excited when I saw that they have released some new affiliate landing pages for WordPress.   This new theme package, known as the Affiliate Theme, is an affiliate marketers dream!

With the purchase of this premium WordPress theme you get 6 different landing pages, 30 different header graphics built into the affiliate landing pages, and lifetime theme support.

Here are the features listed by the creators of the Affiliate Theme:

• Choose From 6 Layouts to Improve Conversion – If you are an experienced affiliate marketer, you are probably familiar with manually updating multiple layouts in order to split test your affiliate landing pages. With WordPress, it is easy for you to input all of your affiliate offers and tracking URL’s and then easily change the layout for the purpose of split testing. We have built six (6) effective multi-post layouts. Say goodbye to the days of wasting time re-creating variations of the same landing page, review site, or blog. Save time (and money).  This theme would also work brilliantly with the LP Jumper plugin.
• Optimized for your PPC and SEO Campaigns – Once you have set up Affiliate Theme, driving targeted traffic is, of course, the next step. That is why we coded Affiliate Theme to improve the SEO (search engine optimization) over the standard WordPress theme. You write the headlines and page copy, Affiliate Theme takes care of the rest! Proper use of header, alt, title and META tags can go a long way in improving your search engine ranking and quality score. Also, save time by integrating tracking scripts from the Theme Options panel.
• Built-in Color Picker (Perfect for every niche) – Our advanced “Photoshop-like” color picker makes it easy for you to change Affiliate Theme to any color scheme you want! Red for dating? Blue for web hosting? You will be amazed at how effortlessly you can rebrand your Affiliate Theme. You can change the color of everything from post headlines to button rollovers and site background.
• Lifetime Access to Resource Center and Support – Need help using Affiliate Theme? Excellent! Watch over a dozen video tutorials, browse and search through our extensive knowledge base, and even post your questions to the Affiliate Theme support forum. Watch tutorials and read articles on everything from how to use Affiliate Theme to creating specific types of affiliate websites.
• Need to test more? Change everything you need – Want to try a larger call-to-action button? How about changing the size of the product image? Button color? Font-size? Keywords in the title? Don’t worry about going back to Photoshop or hacking code to change any of that – Affiliate Theme allows you to change all of this and more! We wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to build dynamic sites that require no skill to modify.
• Hate coding? No problem. Love it? Great – Coding newbies, rejoice! You will be able to take full advantage of the powerful Affiliate Theme Options Panel, allowing you to change the layout, logo, colors, fonts, background, header graphic, even rollover button color – all without touching a single line of code. If you are a code-head, you will Dig the clean XHTML + CSS + PHP, fully commented source code. We even have put together an advanced customization guide for people who want to get extra friendly with Affiliate Theme.

Pretty much everything is done for you, allowing you to avoid touching code and giving you the ability to create an affiliate landing page using WordPress in under 5 minutes!    Here is the control panel so you can see what I’m talking about:

And here are a few of the templates which are included with the Affiliate Theme:

Affiliate Theme (Dating Version)

Affiliate Theme (Ringtone Version)

Affiliate Theme (Make Money Version)

Affiliate Theme (Acai Berry Version)

You can view the live demos of each of these landing page themes here.

My favorite part when I learned of this new affiliate theme was the price.   You have the following three purchase options: Single-Use ($97.00), Multiple-Use ($147.00), or the Developer’s Pack ($197.00).

If you’d like to learn more about the Affiliate theme, or are interested in purchasing a copy for your affiliate landing pages, you can get additional information here.