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April Dedicated To The Commercialization Of WordPress

April Dedicated To The Commercialization Of WordPress

By Jeffro on March 25, 2010

I’m dedicating the entire month of April to the commercialization of WordPress through themes, plugins and services on WordPress Weekly. Each week will feature a round-table of guests in each field that is either currently in the market or has substantial experience in the market. Joining me to co-host these shows will be Jacob Goldman of C.MurrayConsulting also one of the organizers of WordCamp Boston 2010. During WordCamp Boston, I had the opportunity to host a panel devoted to having a business built in and around WordPress with one plugin author, one theme author, and two members to represent services. In that panel, I realized that I needed more time and each section needed to have it’s own dedicated time slot to really cover the finer details. WordPress Weekly is the perfect way to do this.

Here is what the outline looks like so far with only one guest pending.

April 3rd – Themes
Brian Gardner – StudioPress.com
Jason Schuller – Press75 and ThemeGarden
Cory Miller – iThemes.com

April 10th – Plugins
Carl Hancock – GravityForms
Ronald Huereca – Ajax Edit Comments
Jonathan Davis – Shopp E-Commerce (Pending)

April 17th – Services
Joshua Strebel – Page.ly
Daniel Bachhuber – CoPress
Raanan Bar-Cohen – Automattic

As of right now, April 24th will be a wrap-up show where we can talk about what we’ve learned during the course of the month.

To submit questions for the themes panel, visit this forum thread.
To submit questions for the plugins panel, visit this forum thread.
To submit questions for the services panel, visit this forum thread.

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Big Congratulations To Ian Stewart

Big Congratulations To Ian Stewart

By Jeffro on March 4, 2010

For those that follow Ian Stewart on Twitter, you know that he recently quit his job. He continuously hinted to something bigger happening in his life. Today, we learn what that something is. Ian Stewart has become the newest member of the Automattic team.

Today marks the first day of my employment as a Theme Wrangler with Automattic and it feels great. I’m more than excited to finally let you know what I’ve been up to for the last little bit.

According to Ian, ThemeShaper.com will be the new location for the theme team being put together at Automattic. Also, all of the child themes that contained a price tag are now free for all. Considering Ian’s work in the community with his tutorials, his Thematic Framework and his mark that will be left on anyone using the new Twenty Ten theme when it’s released with WordPress 3.0, Ian definitely deserves this position. It’s the dream job for anyone who loves WordPress with a passion. Also, Ian has recently announced on Twitter the arrival of a newborn in the near future so it has to be comforting to know that he’ll have a kick ass job to support his family.

In his announcement, I find it interesting that he mentions a theme team. Could this be a hint that more theme designers will be hired in the near future? Also, will their work be tied strictly to WordPress.com or is this more for WordPress.org? The other question I have is if the position Ian has taken has anything to do with the Theme Czar role that has been published on the Automattic Jobs page for some time. Ian certainly fulfills the requirements.

Again, congrats Ian.

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Two Common Mistakes In Themes

Two Common Mistakes In Themes

By Jeffro on February 25, 2010

Scribu who is the author of the Front-end Editor plugin that I reviewed in April 2009 has published some common mistakes found within themes. For some reason, themes sometimes don’t have the wp_footer template tag declared which is used by analytic plugins such as Woopra and by Front-end editor. The other problem deals with the_title being used in the wrong places. If you’re an aspiring theme developer, keep these mistakes in mind and don’t make them!

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Interview With Brad Potter

Interview With Brad Potter

By Jeffro on February 24, 2010

In what I hope will be a regular occurrence, this is an interview with a featured member of the WPTavern forum. I hope to put the spotlight on at least one forum member per month. The member I choose to interview is random but in order to be in the running, you only have to be a member of the WPTavern forum. All the images in this post are briefs so they are subject to change. Without further adieu, here is the interview I conducted with Brad Potter.

How long have you been using WordPress?
I’ve been using WordPress for 2yrs. The first year was mostly spent experimenting with the software and various themes while I used other well known CMS solutions. I really became serious about using WordPress in the second year.

A year ago, you were just getting into the thick of things regarding WordPress themes. Now, you’re creating them on your own. How did you go from point A to point B?
I think that involves numerous resources really.

One book that helped me early on was “WordPress Theme Design” by Tessa Blakeley Silver.

Themes – I’ve purchased Unlimited or Developer packages from StudioPress, WooThemes, Press75 and Elegant Themes. I’ve also purchased individual themes from ThemeShift, Pro Theme Design and ThemeForest. While that might seem excessive to some, it’s given me the ability to analyze and experiment with a wide variety of themes built by some of the best developers in the commercial WordPress industry.

Websites – Some of my favorite websites for learning about WordPress development are themelab.com, digwp.com, wpengineer.com, wprecipes.com, themeshaper.com, justintadlock.com, wphacks.com, nettuts.com and of course wptavern.com.

Frameworks/Starter Themes – I’ve spent some time studying frameworks like Ian Stewart’s “Thematic“, Justin Tadlock’s “Hybrid” and Ptah Dunbar’s “WP Framework“. There are also some great starter themes that can help point a person in the right direction as well. “Starkers” by Elliot Jay Stocks, “Gravy” by Darren Hoyt, “Starter Theme” by Dan Philibin and the recently released “BLANK Theme” by Chris Coyier are a few.

WordPress Codex – While it’s not the easiest to navigate and search, I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading the Codex.

Considering the large amount of themes you’ve worked with in the past year, what are some of the trends you noticed?
I’ve seen more and more theme developers building in a greater number of sophisticated theme options and widgets making it easier for end users to get setup and running in a shorter amount of time. While a ton of theme options won’t always appeal to the more hard core developers, they certainly help newer users and likely cut down the number of support issues.

I’ve also begun to see more targeted solution based themes appear which I think is definitely a step in the right direction. Real Estate, Job Boards, Classifieds, Restaurant and Travel themes are a few examples.

Better design. I’ve definitely noticed the level of design being stepped up a notch. I think that can be attributed to several things. Theme developers hiring established designers, in-house designers improving their skills and increased competition in the marketplace.

In your opinion, what makes a good theme?
There are a lot of good themes but a “great” theme is one that has well structured code & style sheets, nicely integrated theme options, polished design, detailed documentation and equally important, competent support.

Out of all the theme frameworks available, have you found one that suits your needs?
Lately, I’ve really enjoyed using the Genesis Theme Framework by StudioPress which is available for free to all Pro Plus members. I was active in the beta testing period and hopefully I provided some valuable feedback to Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice. Genesis has great appeal to me for various reasons but I especially appreciate some of the built-in custom widgets like the Featured Page and Featured Posts. The Featured Posts in particular has tremendous flexibility and is very handy for building out the home page of various sites. I also appreciate the six layout options that can be used with either posts or pages. Most of all, you can really tell a lot of thought has gone into what’s under the hood. I would say Genesis definitely meets my criteria for what makes a great theme framework.

I’m also very impressed with “Canvas“, the latest theme offering by WooThemes. While the WooCrew says they are hesitant to label Canvas a “theme framework“, it contains all the goodness of the WooFramework2, is clean with a minimalist design and is much more advanced than your typical theme. Canvas has a huge amount of theme options that allow you to modify just about everything including layout, size, colors, borders, font sizes, font families and more. One other really useful feature is the new integrated WooNav which is being built into the core of WordPress 3.0. Canvas also has a liberal amount of hooks so you can basically transform it into just about any design you may desire. I had the opportunity to do some early beta testing on Canvas with Magnus Jepson and appreciated how he really took the time to listen to everyone’s feedback during the development cycle. Whether you call it a framework or not, Canvas can definitely form the basis of a superb WordPress theme.

What tips can you offer for those aspiring to be theme designers/creators?
While I’m brand new to the game on theme development, I can only share what’s working for me thus far.

Don’t be afraid to spend a few dollars buying a theme even if it’s for learning purposes only.

Get plugged-in. Follow, study and learn from the leading developers and designers in the industry. Many of them post valuable insights and information on their commercial blogs, private blogs and via twitter.

Participate in WordPress related forums and don’t be afraid to ask questions even if they appear to be dumb.

Read. I’m buying two more books myself, the “WordPress Bible” by Aaron Brazell and “Digging Into WordPress” by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr.

If anyone tries to tell you the market is saturated, don’t listen to them. Chances are you have something unique to add to the marketplace and community. If you fail at first, that’s fine. Many times failure precedes the path to success. One of my favorite quotes is “The greatest risk in life is not taking one”.

Has the WPTavern site/community helped you at all in your quest to be a theme designer?
I joined WPTavern in January 09 right about the time I was becoming serious about using WordPress in client website development. WPTavern.com is definitely one of my “go-to” places on the web in order to stay current with a large variety of WordPress topics, theme development included. I’ve enjoyed interacting with and learning from people in the WPTavern forums and WordPress Weekly is with out a doubt one of my favorite podcasts.

Where can we go to keep an eye on your work?
I’m working on a new site to showcase my themes that are currently in development. In the meantime Twitter would be the best way to follow me as I’ll make any announcements there. http://www.twitter.com/bradleypotter

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How Much Credit Do You Need?

How Much Credit Do You Need?

By Jeffro on February 19, 2010

In the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of discussions centered around author credits in themes and plugins. Part of these discussions center around this particular guideline in the plugin repository:

The plugin must not embed external links on the public site (like a “powered by” link) without explicitly asking the user’s permission.

Themes on the other hand don’t have this as a guideline.

No hidden, paid or sponsored links in the theme. Links back to the author’s site are fine.

This has led me to do a little experiment. Download one theme and plugin from the repositories and see how many times I am told who created the theme or plugin. First up, the Atahualpa theme.

On the theme page for Atahualpa, I’m told that the authors name is bytesforall and the name links to that users profile. The theme page also has links to the authors homepage and the theme homepage.

So right off the bat, I know who has created this theme with links to the authors defined homepage and the theme homepage which are different urls. Now I’ll install it to see who created it.

After installing the theme, I have to browse to the Themes section of the WordPress back-end in order to activate it. On this page, I see the name of the theme, the version and once again, the authors name which links to their forum. While configuring this particular theme, they have taken the options page to the next three levels with over 200 different things to configure. At any rate, I’m once again told where I can get support on their own forum with links to donate to the author. On the front-end of the website, within the footer, I see the following text: Powered by WordPress & the Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll. Discuss on our WP Forum the theme name links back to the theme homepage and BytesForAll links back to the authors website with an additional link to the forum. Of course, this all shows up in the source code as well.

For this particular theme, there are four different places that tell me who created the theme.

Now let’s take a look at one of my favorite plugins, Exclude Pages. The plugin page tells me the authors name of the plugin which also links to the users profile. There is also a link to the authors homepage and a link to the plugin homepage.

While browsing the plugin management section of the WordPress back-end I get to see the name of the plugin while also seeing the authors name which links to his own website. This plugin is pretty conservative compared to other plugins dealing with credit links. In fact, Exclude Pages is an excellent example as to how all plugins should behave when it comes to credits. The information I need to know is in the two spots that should have that information. Not in my source code, not in my footer or some other place.

Conclusion:

Obviously, each plugin and theme is going to produce different results but as I’ve shown, there are plenty of areas that show who created the plugin or theme without placing links on the front-end of my site. I think the theme is deserving of having a credit link in the footer of the site although Atahualpa is a bit extreme with three different links. What I don’t like are plugins which need to tell me in every place within the back and front-end of WordPress Hey, You’re Using So And So By Bla Bla with a link to the authors site. There are two distinct places where this information is meant to be. The actual page for the theme or plugin on the repository and the theme/plugin management pages in the back-end of WordPress. There is no reason to have links on the front-end of the site in the footer, sidebar or wherever. If a plugin does its job and does it well, I’m most likely going to tell others about it, write a review about it, put a link to it on twitter, etc. I’m pretty sure all of these measures of advertising and press are much more effective than just a dumb link in the footer of my website. Let the plugin speak for itself.

One thing I’m fine with is plugins inserting a little plug (pun intended) to themselves within the source of the site. I’d prefer the plugs to be the title of the plugin with the author name instead of website URLs of the authors website. In fact, I’ve discovered some cool plugins running on sites this way. This is also acceptable for Guideline 4 of the plugin repository.

So I go back to my original question, as a plugin or theme author, how much credit do you really need?

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Thesis Creator On WP Community Podcast

Thesis Creator On WP Community Podcast

By Jeffro on February 15, 2010

Thesis creator Chris Pearson was the special guest on last weeks episode of the WordPress Community Podcast with Joost de Valk and Frederick Townes. There is at least one sticking point in the conversation that I can readily agree with Chris Pearson on and that’s the lack of synergy between the front-end and back-end of WordPress. Just about everything requires you to log into the back-end of WordPress to do anything, whether it be editing a post, a comment, a text widget, etc. One of the coolest things that SquareSpace offers over WordPress is the ability to manage most of the site from the front-end. Not only is this a major time saver, but it just makes sense to have certain tasks be accomplished without having to go through an administrative interface.

I know there is a plugin that bridges the gap right now called Front-end Editor by Scribu and I think some themes can accomplish this goal but at some point in the future, this synergy between the front and back-end of WordPress will happen and it will be a big shift in efficiently managing a WordPress site. Going through an administrative interface to accomplish anything is the OLD way of doing things. I’m ready for the NEW way!

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Should Themes Have Plugin Functionality Built-In?

Should Themes Have Plugin Functionality Built-In?

By Jeffro on February 9, 2010

While monitoring twitter today, I noticed a few prolific theme designers agree with a point that Chris Pearson made today.

Now that I’ve built the platform, I see why Thesis can do plugins’ jobs more efficiently than the plugins themselves. There’s no comparison. – pearsonified

I think I understand the reasoning behind the statement. Instead of using a plugin that may have more functionality than is needed, ONLY the functionality that is needed can be built into the theme making more efficient use. However, I’ve always been a fan of the idea that themes should be about good design alongside flexibility while leaving anything that can be handled by a plugin, to a plugin. Sure, a theme that provides all sorts of plugin functionality built-in provides a ton of convenience, but the distinct difference between a plugin and a theme is that when the theme disappears, the plugin and it’s options are still there. The same can not be said for a theme. What’s the difference between putting a wall around me, and building in a bunch of functionality that is typically left to plugins? I don’t see much of a difference. If the theme is built in a way that semi-locks in the user, that theme is doing it wrong. But, I’m not the one with a theme business so perhaps I’m wrong.

At the end of the day, the user has to decide on whether they want convenience, or flexibility.

Should Themes Contain Plugin Functionality Built-In?

  • Some (39%, 32 Votes)
  • No (37%, 30 Votes)
  • Yes (24%, 20 Votes)

Total Voters: 82

Loading ... Loading ...

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Genesis Under The Scope

Genesis Under The Scope

By Jeffro on February 4, 2010

At A Glance:

The Genesis Theme Framework is built on a simple vanilla blog-type parent theme, and can be extended with the use of child themes. Each child theme comes with its own home file, that makes extending the parent theme very easy.

License:

Genesis like all the other themes StudioPress.com offers is licensed under the GPL.

Installation:

Installation was as easy as any other WordPress theme. However, things become slightly more complicated when you want to use a child theme. The Genesis theme will need to be installed but deactivated for child themes to work properly since the child theme relies on the Genesis theme to function.

Configuration And Use:

This is the nuts and bolts of any theme and Genesis doesn’t skimp on options. There are options to configure post content, whether or not to display a post author box on a single post, primary as well as secondary navigation, where to display breadcrumbs, header and footer scripts, disabling comments on posts or pages, and how the blog page will be displayed. It’s important to note that the settings not only control the Genesis theme by itself, but also child themes. For example, if you install a child theme that looks better with post excerpts instead of the full post, you can configure that from the Genesis options panel. This makes changing a themes behaviour convenient.

For the SEO junkies out there, you’ll love the flexibility Genesis offers out of the box as there are a wealth of SEO specific options to configure. You can configure Doctitle settings, search engine indexing, link no follow, homepage, and canonical tag settings. I have no idea what half of these settings do so I’ll put my faith in that the default selections will work best. The option panels each have a note that provides more detail with what the group of settings does, but I found myself scratching my head as I’m not knowledgeable in SEO.

If that were not enough, there are even more SEO options when creating a post or page. I have a feeling that with all this SEO stuff built into Genesis, that having All In One SEO installed would be overkill.

When it comes to flexibility, Genesis offers six different layouts to choose from.

  • Content/Sidebar
  • Sidebar/Content
  • Content/Sidebar/Sidebar
  • Sidebar/Sidebar/Content
  • Sidebar/Content/Sidebar
  • Full Width Content

This should be enough for most use cases but one thing you’ll notice is that there is no way to configure widgets in the footer. Whether or not widgets can go into the footer has been delegated to child themes. If you like widgets in the footer, make sure you use a child theme that has them built-in. Genesis also gives users the chance to give posts or pages a layout that is different from the main site. The same six layout options are available when creating or editing a post or page.

Speaking of widgets, Genesis comes with a few custom-built ones.

  • My Tweets – displays an unordered list of your latest Tweets
  • User Profile – displays the Gravatar of a user, as well as their biography and a link to an about page
  • eNews & Updates – displays an opt-in box for users to sign up for delivery of your posts by email
  • Featured Posts – displays post excerpts and a thumbnail to be used in a homepage featured section
  • Featured Page – displays page excerpts and a thumbnail to be used in a homepage featured section

However, I think the one widget that will get exceptional use based on its large amount of configuration options is Featured Posts. Users can place this widget into a sidebar and configure it to show an author gravatar next to the post, a post image, which category to display, and finally, the order in which the posts can be shown. This also includes the random parameter so you can place it on your front page and upon reload, it will display random posts which is pretty neat.

Genesis does not come with any child themes but there are currently two available to choose from, Mocha and Executive. Mocha is a fantastic looking child theme that combined with the flexibility options in Genesis should please quite a few customers. Executive provides more of the business look as the name implies. The most important part of child themes is that they give Genesis a completely new look and it’s almost all CSS/Image based while still retaining the configuration options in Genesis. If you’re wondering about what will happen when it comes time to upgrade, Brian states that:

While the current StudioPress “classic” themes have required folks to load updated versions from scratch, and meant that customizations had to be redone – the Genesis Theme Framework should end that. We have spent an enormous amount of time and energy on the parent theme, and the emphasis we made on semantics and careful naming of CSS elements should mean that most (if not all) theme updates will not affect your customizations.

On the same topic of child themes, the other part of the story around Genesis is the launch of the child theme marketplace. The marketplace idea is a win-win situation for both designers and customers. Designers can send PSD designs to StudioPress who will then code them to work with Genesis or developers can provide full child themes that are then reviewed for code compatibility, efficiency, etc. Since developers don’t need to worry about writing PHP code to handle the layout aspects of the design, it enables designers to concentrate on creating beautiful designs.

One of the slickest things I discovered within the Genesis theme is the Purchase Themes area. This is where users can preview child themes before they make their purchase. The purchasing of a child theme can be completed without leaving the back-end of the site since the shopping cart pops up in lightbox fashion. This will be really convenient for users once more child themes become available.

Support:

StudioPress stands behind their products 100% and offers excellent support. Customers get access to the StudioPress forum which is filled with knowledge not only from the SP Team, but from the very active community around their products. In fact, the Genesis Theme Framework support section already has 184 threads with over 1,000 posts.

Final Thoughts:

The Genesis theme is a solid product. It works well out of the box and has just enough options and flexibility to fit the needs of most publishers. I’m interested in how the child theme market place will shake out. I’m in love with the Mocha child theme which I feel has set the bar. But considering the amount of designer talent that uses StudioPress themes for their clients, I think that bar won’t have a problem being raised. The best part about reviewing Genesis is that I didn’t have to touch any code.

Last but not least, Brian Gardner has announced that prices for the All Theme Pro Plus membership price will rise on Monday, February 8th from $199.95 to $249.95. This membership gives you access to all current and future themes that StudioPress releases as long as your membership is active. This also includes all the child themes that will soon be available for Genesis.

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WPWeekly Episode 87 – The LOST Episode

WPWeekly Episode 87 – The LOST Episode

By Jeffro on February 3, 2010

wordpressweekly1 I was unaware that the U.S. with the exception of a few people were in front of their TV’s to watch the season premiere of LOST. Thankfully, I had Kim Parsell and Ryan Duff call in to make sure I wasn’t lonely on the show. We actually had a great conversation centered around the future of themes, theme frameworks, HTML5, the default theme, etc. It was a theme show for sure but when you get me on the topic of theme frameworks, rant mode kicks in and it’s hard for me to let go. I’d be interested in your thoughts after you hear the rants.

Ad Copy:

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Stories Discussed:

WPTavern mentioned in .Net Magazine
WPVote.com Launches
Group Interview With Commercial Theme Designers
WordPress for Android Released
Default Theme Is HTML 5 Compliant
Future Of WordPress Themes For 2010

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Tuesday, February 9th 8P.M. EST

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe

Length Of Episode: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode87.mp3

Listen To Episode #87:

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Clone Themes Are Bad Mmmkay

Clone Themes Are Bad Mmmkay

By Jeffro on February 1, 2010

Twitter, Facebook, WordPress.org. What do all these sites have in common? They are all successful and have pretty decent designs to boot. It’s no wonder that they are used as inspiration but what happens when inspiration goes to far and you can’t tell the difference between the inspired theme, and the original design? Confusion, that’s what. Not only that, but a bunch of people ridiculing you for ripping something off. The line between something being inspirational and a total ripoff is subjective. In fact, a lengthy discussion about this very topic occurred in the WPTavern forum just before Christmas in 2009 regarding mimicking a copyrighted design. Just about all the members who participated in the conversation said it was bad form, not to mention the possible legalities involved.

Legal issues are also part of the equation. I think if you are using a cloned theme for your website design, you’re putting yourself at risk. There is no telling what might happen in the future which is why it’s best to not go down that road. Sadly, based on the conversation in the forum, enforcing the copyright is more than half the battle.

WPLover.com has also published an article on this topic with a great quote that brings up the GPL.

Please stop this. The freedom in GPL does not mean the freedom to steal copyrighted design. Stop making clones of popular websites and turning them into WordPress themes. It doesn’t matter if you release it only for personal use, or under GPL, if you code the CSS yourself, if you painstakingly recreate the graphic elements in Photoshop. It’s still, as Ryan Hellyer puts it, “illegal, immoral, and unethical.”

Since we are on the topic of cloned themes, I thought I’d share a little bit on how I do things. I’m not a graphic designer nor a CSS coder. I use extensions like Web Developer in FireFox to copy CSS from other websites and adapt it to my needs. I also view hundreds of designs in WordPress and showcase websites to look for things that I want to use on my site. This may include icons, graphical elements, color schemes, etc. I’m not going to create a wooden texture in Photoshop if one is already created to use as my Widget header. I will however play around with the image until it suits my needs. I’m not sure if that makes me a thief or not but I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. Typically, I’ll view websites with color schemes I’m aiming to achieve and either use those or shades of them. I’ve never turned a theme or site into a direct copy of anything anyone else had.

Am I a thief if I take a small part of a graphical element found within the header of a design and use it to create a new graphical element in my header? What are the boundaries I should adhere to when it comes to using images and CSS that are readily available thanks to Firefox extensions and right click save image as?

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