Congratulations goes out to Luke McDonald as one of the themes produced by Press75.com has been selected to be part of the WordPress.com commercial theme store. The theme is priced at $50.00 and is called Debut. It’s mobile ready right out of the box along with having post format support. Speaking of post formats, Debut is especially interesting because when users select the Audio post format, it expands into a multi-track playlist. You can see the theme in action via the WordPress.com theme showcase.
Press75 Joins The WordPress.com Commercial Theme Family
How Commercial Plugin Developers Are Monetizing Through The Plugin Respository
In-depth article by Siobahn McKeown that breaks down how commercial plugin developers are monetizing their efforts through the WordPress.org plugin respository. The article covers the guidelines that plugin authors should follow, examples of successful plugins as well as plugins that didn’t meet the guidelines, and various ideas plugin authors can try. One of the things I learned through that article is the existence of a detailed plugin guidelines page which didn’t exist before. It’s about time something like this was created as it answers questions up-front instead of leaving a ton of uncertainty up to the plugin author. ∞
Links To Commercial Solutions On The Codex
In a recent discussion amongst those on the WordPress Documentation mailing list, Scribu brought up the question on whether or not links to commercial solutions were allowed within the Codex. Lorelle VanFossen summed things up pretty nicely in the following quote:
A fantastic article that helps spell out the details of the Codex article on a site that isn’t selling “commercial content” other than hosting advertising and such (normal stuff) more than producing free, “open source,” shared content is allowed as it is considered external reference material. These are set usually in the “More Resources” section not within the Codex article.
Seems like a good compromise to me as it should prevent commercial entities from being able to use the Codex for link juice. Although that should be a lot more difficult considering new user registration for the Codex was disabled a few months ago to try and thwart spam attacks.
Review – The WP101 Plugin
The WP 101 Tutorial Plugin is a combined effort by Shawn Hesketh and Mark Jaquith. The premise of the plugin is simple, to showcase video tutorials of WordPress from within the back-end of WordPress. After using the plugin and watching a few videos, I think it delivers on all levels.
A view of the player within the back-end of WordPress
From what I could tell, the video player is powered by Vimeo but don’t go to Vimeo.com looking for a way to view these videos for free, I already tried that. The player supports watching videos at full screen or in HD which is a nice touch. The audio within the videos is easy to understand and follows the flow of the animation. As far as the settings go, there is only one to worry about, your API key. Once you pay for your monthly subscription, you’ll be given an API key that gives you access to the videos.
I believe there are two groups of customers that will really benefit from these videos. The first are consultants. I’m sure many WordPress consultants dread the time they spend having to teach someone where to click and what does what in WordPress when they could be spending their time doing something else. The second group are those looking for educational materials at a low cost. There are 17 videos in all covering everything from the Dashboard to the media library, to changing the theme. Basically, just about everything a novice WordPress user should know before they decide to tinker with the inner workings of WordPress on their own. So, for $48.00 for one month, you can cram in all 17 videos and then cancel your subscription. In this instance, I think $48.00 for one month of viewing is a great value for this content considering the production quality. However, $48.00 per month for 12 months is $576.00 per year which is a hefty price to pay as a user who just wants to learn about WordPress. This is why I think the majority of customers for WP101 will most likely be consultants who are the ones with recurring revenue through jobs that can afford subscriptions lasting three months or more.
Overall, the plugin is simple to install, simple to use, and definitely delivers when it comes to professional quality training videos for WordPress. You can watch a sample video that’s part of the package here.
*Update*
As mentioned in the comments, this video package is different than the one offered on WP101.com where individuals can access the same video content by paying a $19 one time fee for a lifetime membership which is extremely more affordable for individuals than this package. They are the same videos but clearly, the Plugin reviewed in this post is aimed at consultants, not at individuals.
WooThemes To Go Back To Their Roots
In a interesting business move by WooThemes, the commercial theme company has announced that they will be re-focusing their efforts to be a WordPress centric theme company, again. Another example as to how time flies, it wasn’t too long ago when WooThemes began releasing themes for Expression Engine, Tumblr, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento. This was a move to diversify their business and expand into different markets but after a year into the experiment, it turns out that there is more to it than cranking out themes.
- We have no knowledge of these platforms, which meant we had to partner with collaborative developers to help us expand onto these other CMS’s. We luckily found brilliant partners passionate and committed to their niche CMS strengths. Collaborations have their own little intricacies and our experience with these platforms & development processes was just never the same, as it was with WP.
- We realized that we had no knowledge of these communities, which meant that it was hard for ourselves to get a firm foothold there. Our roots are firmly in the WP community and as a result we always tried to replicate our WP ideas in these other communities, but we eventually realized that we had to tailor our approaches accordingly. The decision to focus our attention on WP instead is simply due to team capacity, budgets & priorities.
- In our hearts, and without trying to step on anyone’s feet, we could never get as excited about a new Drupal or EE theme in the same way we do before every WP release. Passion is always important.
It’s great to see that WooThemes is taking measures to ensure that their non WordPress platform customers will be taken care of by the end of April. So is it a risky move by WooThemes to reorganize into a one platform theme company again? Of course, but it’s not like WordPress is going any where and it doesn’t seem to be crumbling down anytime soon. How long WordPress continues to be king of the hill remains to be seen but I’d venture to guess it will be at least a couple more years. Hopefully longer.
So Many Commercial Themes – So Many Theme Sorters
I’m not sure if you noticed as much as I have but there seems to be a commercial theme sorter popping up on every corner. At least, that’s the impression I get as I’ve routinely been receiving emails lately from people letting me know about the launch of their theme sorter. The newest one to launch which has over 500 themes from 19 sellers listed with a goal to reach over 1,000 by this summer is called ThemeSorter. ThemeSorter provides different ways to browse through their listing such as color, specific niche, ratings, styles, etc.
Talk about an easy business model. There are so many commercial themes being developed by established companies with brand new commercial theme businesses opening shop every week that it makes sense to create a directory of sorts to try and make sense of everything. The directory has to be easy to browse, contain affiliate links to their respective theme authors and hope people go through you to purchase the theme. Special deals from those sellers wouldn’t hurt either.
The question I have about all these different theme sorters is which one will gain critical mass? That is, which one will end up having a community of people or users that rate and review themes similar to customers reviewing items that have purchased from Amazon? Which one will be the go-to place that has the largest and most legit listing? I’ve heard many people request that there be a place similar to the WordPress.org theme repository but for commercial themes and these theme sorters seem to fit the bill although they don’t contain any files to download. They are informative only.
If nothing else, these commercial theme aggregation sites make for a good place to get inspiration or find out what the latest designs are from the commercial theme ecosystem surrounding WordPress. How many of you have actually used one of these sites to purchase a commercial theme?
Review Of Headway – Where SquareSpace Meets WordPress
At A Glance:
Headway is a WordPress theme framework that makes it easy for both end-users and developers alike to create killer websites. Headway is no ordinary framework however as you’ll soon find out. The theme is split GPL licensed where as the PHP code is licensed under the GPL v2. If not otherwise stated, all images, cascading style sheets, and included JavaScript are NOT GPL, and are released under the Headway Themes Proprietary Use License v1.0 unless specifically authorized by Headway Themes. Elements of the themes released under this proprietary license may not be redistributed or repackaged for use other than those allowed by the Terms of Service. The Headway personal option costs $87.00 while the developer option costs $164.00.
At the time of this review, the purchase page for Headway themes has two options, Personal and Developer. Further down on the page is a section on what you can and can’t do. The what Can’t You Do section screams anti-GPL but I’ve followed up with Grant Griffiths who has notified me that that particular page will be be updated to reflect the licensing changes that have occurred recently.
The theme version which I’ve reviewed is 1.7 Beta. The current as of August 19th stable version of Headway is 1.6.6.
Configuration And Use:
I’m really happy to see that Headway Themes is at least split licensed GPL now because this theme needs more exposure. Configuration of Headway was a breeze and contained the usual selection of options such as the Feed URL, favicon location, etc. Headway also has a comprehensive search engine optimization configuration panel where if you were to use something like AIO SEO with Headway, it might be over kill.
Headway Configuration Panel
What do you notice missing from the following screenshot? Most themes have options in the back-end that allow you to configure the number of sidebars, which side of the site those sidebars will appear on, header uploader, etc. That’s all missing from the Configuration page of Headway because this particular framework contains a Visual Editor. The visual editor has taken the place of the visual display options normally configured from the back-end of WordPress allowing the configuration page to be strictly tied to the behaviour of the theme. This is a great way to solve the dilemma of hundreds of options to configure for the theme.
By far, the visual editor is the bread and butter of Headway. The only thing I’ve seen that I can compare the visual editor to is SquareSpace and the editor they provide for creating designs.
For at least the past two years, I’ve talked about the idea of being able to visually design a WordPress theme with something like a WYSIWYG type of editor. Drag a content box here, drag a sidebar there, etc. I’m really excited to see this idea see the light of day thanks to Headway. After going through the editor wizard which allows me to select a default layout e.g. sidebar right content left or sidebar left content right, color scheme of the major elements of the site, the ability to upload a header image, I’m then ready to start editing the various elements that comprise the site. I could go on and on about how awesome the visual editor is and what it entails you to do but the following video illustrates it much better than 1,000 words can.
If that type of versatility is not enough, welcome to Leafs. Leafs are sort of like widgets but more powerful and flexible. For example, Headway ships with a Text/HTML/PHP leaf that is like a WordPress Text Widget on steroids. Leafs are content boxes that exist between the header and the footer. For example, in the following screenshot, I’ve created a new Content leaf.
Instead of the default mode of a Page or single post, I’ve selected the option to use a Custom Query. This allows me to use filters and configure additional options that take the default content leaf to new leaps and bounds. This also illustrates that the developer types can have fun with the visual editor as well. Speaking of developers, Headway contains something called Easy hooks. Headway Easy Hooks provides you a simple way to add content to your site that would otherwise be impossible (without hacking, of course).
Easy Hooks For Developers
Headway has done a great job of modularizing aspects of the design such that things are broken up to the point where you can export configuration settings for specific sections and import them into another site using Headway. Among the various items that can be exported are the Headway Configuration options, SEO Settings, Visual Editor: Header, Footer, Navigation, and Site Dimensions, Visual Editor: Style, Visual Editor: Leaf Templates, and a full export/backup of the configuration of the theme which does not include leafs, layouts for any pages and widgets. This is great, especially for those that purchase a Headway developers license as they have made it incredibly easy not to repeat development work such as a cool Leaf.
Support:
Support for Headway is handled by free documentation available to anyone who wants to read/watch it located here. Highly recommended before playing around with the theme. There is also a support forum available to members only. Also note that in order to receive automatic updates of Headway, you’ll need to have a valid registration which includes a Headway Username and Password.
Conclusion:
I was head over heels when Builder by iThemes was released because it brought me closer to the concept of the WYSIWYG apporach to building a WordPress theme. However, Headway has made my vision a reality. In fact, Headway makes it FUN to design a WordPress theme/skin. Instead of editing CSS, dealing with FTP to over write files, etc, the visual editor approach that Headway provides is something I would love to see WordPress in the future get a grasp of for a default theme instead of the same old approach. I’d also love to see the Headway visual editor or something like it to end up on WordPress.com.
I don’t think I’ve said a bad thing about Headway because there was very little to find wrong with the theme. The headway team should be very proud of themselves for creating such a kick ass product.
The Back Story Of The Theme Foundry
Drew Strojny who operates The Theme Foundry and is the author behind the Traction Pro theme which I reviewed here, has published the back story of how he came to be involved with WordPress theme designing as well as how he founded his commercial theme company. From football player to working day and night to put food on the table, Drew’s story is one of inspiration to anyone else thinking about jumping into the warm pool water that is the WordPress commercial theme market. Congrats Drew on your recent and hopefully, continued success.
Jason Schuller And The ThemeGarden Marketplace
Leland of ThemeLab.com has a great interview with Jason Schuller of ThemeGarden.com which talks about his upcoming theme marketplace. Of course, the licensing question cropped up again but I was happy to see Jason’s response as the following:
Leland: Part of the seller requirements state that themes must be licensed under the GPL. Will child themes (or skins) of notable non-GPL theme frameworks like Thesis and Headway be allowed to be sold on the ThemeGarden marketplace?
JS: This is a hard call for me, and I am on the fence with this requirement because my own themes on Press75.com are split-GPL licensed. That is my choice, and Press75.com will never be supported by WordPress.org because of that decision.
However, in order to provide the most exposure for a community of sellers, I believe that ThemeGarden.com needs to be 100% GPL. This will ensure that ThemeGarden.com and the community surrounding it is in line with and supported by WordPress. I would love to hear some feedback on this by potential sellers as well.
But to answer the question, as long as the child theme is GPL licensed, I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be allowed on ThemeGarden.com even if the parent framework isn’t 100% GPL licensed.
With a marketplace already in action for StudioPress, Mojo Themes, Themeforest and now ThemeGarden.com, it’s beginning to look like the people are creating smaller commercial theme repositories versus hoping that one day, WordPress.org will allow commercial themes to be hosted their. The beauty of these marketplace ideas is not only a larger selection to choose from, but the people running them are awesome WordPress community members that have earned the trust of many due to their great reputation. Another side benefit towards these marketplaces beginning to spring up is how much easier it will be for up and coming theme developers to get their work to the masses. Instead of doing it all on their own, commercial theme authors can utilize the resources that Jason or Brian provides leaving more time for quality support. It’s also nice to see more choices instead of less which will generate healthy competition. It will be interesting a year from now to see how each marketplace has developed in terms of quality, support, and number of themes.
Good luck Jason. We’ll be keeping an eye on you!
WP Ajax Edit Comments To Be Free Again
By Jeffro on December 19, 2011
This is yet another twist for this particular plugin. Over the past few years, it’s gone from a small, free plugin to having a site built specifically for it with paying customers, managed by Ronald Huereca. Soon after, Ajay D’ Souza stepped in as co-developer of the plugin. Then, Ronald joined the team at iThemes which placed Ajax Edit Comments behind their pay wall. Coming back full circle, it will be available again for free.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, commercial, free, plugin | 3 Responses