Last week, to help celebrate the one year anniversary of Hack WordPress, we held a premium WordPress theme giveaway.  Included in the giveaway were a bunch of the most popular themes in the premium space, which were generously donated by their authors to our readers.

I have to say participation was great and I wanted to take a moment to thank all of our readers who participated, either by leaving a comment or blogging about the giveaway on their blogs.

Before I announce the winners, here is the list of themes we collected to giveaway:

• 6 Month Developer Subscription – The winner of this prize will receive a 6 month developer subscription to Woo Themes (Courtesy of the Adii and the Woo Themes team)
• 2008 Theme Club Subscription – The winner of this prize will receive a copy of all themes released by iThemes in 2008, valued at over $1400.00  (Courtesy of Cory Miller of iThemes)
• 3 Revolution Single-Use Licenses – All 3 winners will get their choice of which Revolution theme they want their license to be for.  (Courtesy of Brian Gardner of Revolution Themes)
• 5 One Theme Single-Use Licenses – All 5 winners will receive a webmaster (single-use) license of the extremely popular One Theme (Courtesy of Lee Cooper and Karl Forshaw of One Theme).
• 2 Gabfire Single-Use Licenses, 2 Multiple-Use Licenses, and 2 Developer’s Licenses – Winners will have a choice of which of Mehmet’s 3 different themes you would like your license to be for.  (Courtesy of Mehmet of Gabfire Themes)
• 2 TV Elements Single-Use Licenses – Winners will get a single-use copy of the extremely popular TV Elements video theme.  (Courtesy of Jason of Press 75)

Hack WordPress Premium Theme Giveaway Winners

Okay, now on to the part everyone is waiting for!   Here are the premium theme giveaway winners:

• 6 Month Developer Subscription Winner – SE7EN
• 2008 Theme Club Subscription Winner -ICON
• Revolution Single-Use License of Choice Winners -Llama Money, Sharon (Earthformed), Adam Dempsey
• One Theme Single-Use License Winners – Mark Sierra, Yoon Ho Um, K-InTheHouse, Josh (Extendably), PJ (WP-Premiums)
• Gabfire Developer’s License of Choice: David Bradley, Riyanne
• Gabfire Multiple-Use License of Choice: Desmond, TOpen
• Gabfire Single-Use License of Choice: Contest for Bloggers, Alex
• TV Elements Single-Use License Winners -Nihar, Avinash

Congratulations to our winners!   Please check the email address you used with your comment/pingback, as you should receive an email shortly from me with more details on how to collect your prize from the theme authors.

Have you ever wanted to show off your design talents and participate in the making of a premium WordPress theme?   Thanks to the team over at Woo Themes, it looks like that is now a possibility with their new Woo Contest.

Here is the contest information for anyone that wants to participate:

• The design must be created in Photoshop, Fireworks or Illustrator format.
• The website container must have a width of between 940 and 980 pixels, catering for the average 1024 X 768 user.
• Entries must be submitted before midnight on 31st October 2008. That’s Halloween night!
• The entries must be submitted to the WooThemes Flickr pool in jpeg or png format and tagged “Woocontest”.

Your submission on Flickr must include:

• Your name and any URL you would like linked to in case you win.
• Any stock or source images you have used including URLs. Be sure to only use stock images that have Extended Usage licenses that allow for distributing the theme design once coded, otherwise avoid use of stock images.

Other Terms and Conditions:

• The theme concept submitted must be entirely your own work. As mentioned above if stock imagery is used it must have an extended usage license.
• By entering this competition you consent to your theme concept possibly being used by WooThemes and available for purchase on our site. First and second prize will, as already stated, be awarded a cash prize for their work.
• If any other theme concepts are used by Woo Themes the designer will be informed and a once-off fee will be awarded to the designer for the concept. The fee will be agreed upon by both parties. Sales generated off the theme will be kept by the company.
• The winning theme concept and the runner up may be required to mock up an inner page before payment is made, determined by an inspection of the design source file. A clearly noted grid structure is highly recommended.

Why should you participate?

In addition to all of the exposure you’ll get from Woo Themes, you’ll also receive a nice cash prize.  The winner will receive $2000 and a 6 month developer’s license of the completed theme, while the runner up will receive $1000 and a 3 month developer’s license.

Last week I announced a premium WordPress theme giveaway from several of the most popular premium theme authors.  It is hard to believe that it has already been 9 days!

You may remember that I originally announced a deadline of Thursday, October 9th, 2008 to have all entries completed and I planned to announce the winners sometime today. Unfortunately, due to some things that have since come up, I won’t be able to collect entries and do the drawing until tomorrow (Saturday), which gives everyone an extra 24 hours to blog about the giveaway on their site or leave a comment.

It looks like our regular posting schedule should resume Monday morning!

Wow, has it really been a year already?   We are pleased to announce that today marks the one year anniversary of the date I registered HackWordPress.com.  I remember spending most of that day building this site’s original theme and forming a plan for what this site would become.  The next day I hit the ground running and began posting!

In looking over our archives for the past year I am really proud of how this site has grown.   My original intention was to feature a few hacks a week as well as build out our WordPress theme galleries to make this a valuable resource for the WordPress community.   I quickly learned that when it comes to code and hacks, it is truly is a community project, so I ended up opening this site up to guest authors.   Since then we’ve had a number of authors contribute to the success of Hack WordPress while at the same time showing off their blogging and coding talents.

While contemplating what to do to celebrate our first birthday, I came up with two things.   The first, as mentioned in the title, is a redesign of the theme this blog uses.  Though this site is still built upon the Revolution Media template, I teamed up with my friends over at the Blog Design Studio to do a theme overhaul.   We took readers feedback and this is what we’ve come up with.

If you are looking for a custom design for your theme or an overhaul to an existing theme, I definitely recommend the Blog Design Studio team.   I’ve known Mayank for a long time and got to know the rest of the team while we were redoing this template.  They’ve been great to work with and I’m very happy with the outcome.

The Hack WordPress Anniversary Giveaway

The other thing I have to announce is the Hack WordPress anniversary giveaway!   Before I explain how to enter, here is a list of premium WordPress themes that I’ve collected to give away to our readers:

• 6 Month Developer Subscription – The winner of this prize will receive a 6 month developer subscription to Woo Themes (Courtesy of the Adii and the Woo Themes team)
• 2008 Theme Club Subscription – The winner of this prize will receive a copy of all themes released by iThemes in 2008, valued at over $1400.00  (Courtesy of Cory Miller of iThemes)
• 3 Revolution Single-Use Licenses – All 3 winners will get their choice of which Revolution theme they want their license to be for.  (Courtesy of Brian Gardner of Revolution Themes)
• 5 One Theme Single-Use Licenses – All 5 winners will receive a webmaster (single-use) license of the extremely popular One Theme (Courtesy of Lee Cooper and Karl Forshaw of One Theme).
• 2 Gabfire Single-Use Licenses, 2 Multiple-Use Licenses, and 2 Developer’s Licenses – Winners will have a choice of which of Mehmet’s 3 different themes you would like your license to be for.  (Courtesy of Mehmet of Gabfire Themes)
• 2 TV Elements Single-Use Licenses – Winners will get a single-use copy of the extremely popular TV Elements video theme.  (Courtesy of Jason of Press 75)

How Do I Enter the Hack WordPress Anniversary Giveaway?

This giveaway is fairly simple, with everyone having two different ways to enter.  Here is what you need to do:

1. Blog About This Contest (3 Entries) - Write a post on your blog about this contest and link to this post.   The post needs to include the prize list found above (links in tact) and details on how to enter.  (I will be using trackbacks/pingbacks to track this so make sure it shows up here to receive your entries).  This will earn you 3 entries into the drawing.
2. Leave a Comment (1 Entry) – Leave a comment on this post giving us feedback on the new theme.  What do you like and what could be improved?  This will earn you one entry into the drawing.

Doing both will give you 4 entries into our drawing.   I will collect entries through Thursday, October 9th and plan to announce the winners sometime Friday, October 10th.

We will be drawing names, so the more entries you have, the better chance you have to win!  Obviously we would like to fit people with the best theme for their needs, so if you have a preference or a few favorites that you would prefer to win, you can add that to your comment/post so we know which prize to award you with if you are one of the first names drawn.   First name drawn will get their choice of prizes, then the next drawn name will get their choice of the remaining prizes, etc.

If you have any additional questions, please leave a comment below and we’ll get this post updated with any clarifications needed.  Otherwise, thanks to the theme authors that agreed to participate in this giveaway and to all of our readers who help us celebrate by participating!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!   I just wanted to write a quick post and remind everyone that we are hosting a contest sponsored by Solostream where we are giving away three licenses of either their WP-Magazine or WP-Vybe themes to three lucky winners.

In order to be considered for one of the prizes, you simply need to write a post on your blog about the contest and review either of these themes.    I have decided to extend this contest a little longer through the end of the weekend to allow everyone time to get their review published.

If you’ve already written a review, please check the contest post to confirm that a trackback/pingback is showing for your post (to ensure your post is being considered).   I’ve had to dig a few of them out of my spam folder and want to make sure I didn’t miss any.   Please leave a comment with a link to your review if the trackback/pingback is not showing.