Success with Adam

Lingerie Brands

Premium Theme Winner #1

The winner of my first Premium WordPress Theme contest, sponsored by WordPress Themes Market, is Raven of Quote the Raven.

In his entry post he stated his preference for the Art Culture/Magazine News Theme; I’m looking forward to seeing how great his blog will look with Brad’s great theme.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my generous sponsor, Brad Mahaffey of WordPress Themes Market.

Subscribe to the WP-Premiums feed, to ensure that you’ll be the first to know about future WP-Premiums contests.

WP-Premiums News: Edition 4

New Releases

R. Bhavesh, the creator of the WPRemix theme, has announced the release of his Remix Editor, a plugin for WPRemix users which will facilitate:

• Editing Custom Page Templates
• Using Custom Page Templates Multiple Times
• Inserting XHTML codes and retaining their format during subsequent edits
• Inserting and Executing PHP codes from the WP-Editor

News

Small Potato offers 20,000 free memberships for his Theme Club. As long as your site has at least 1000 visitors a month you’ll be eligible to apply for a number of memberships to pass on to your readers as you see fit. (I’ve applied for some memberships, and I’ll let you know the details of my own giveaway soon.)

Ben Cope, creator of the WordPress Dream Theme, has restructured the purchase options for the theme to include a option to customise the theme yourself for $97, and for $167 you’ll be entitled to a custom header image and some support, though not as much as for the full $247. The choice is yours.

Discussions

• What do we expect from a good free theme vs a premium theme? Blogtipz discusses this issue in detail.
• Adii a) asks his readers to support him in his stand against those who are ripping off premium themes for their own profit and
  b) provides the slides from his presentation tonight about the business model for these themes.
• Bryan Clark at One Man’s Goal reports the unclear position of the WordPress GPL licensing on the copyright and distribution of premium themes.

The University Kid

Mothers Fighting for Others

2StrokeBuzz

Basic Elements of Graphic Design

If you’re considering buying a premium theme, you must already be aware of the importance of a good design in attracting vistors to your site. Of course it’s true that content is always the most important factor in the success of a website, but an attractive site design will encourage a visitor to stay, explore, and hopefully return.

A premium theme (or indeed a high quality free theme) will give you an excellent starting point for your site design. The theme designer will have already provided you with a well-proportioned layout, but what about those finishing touches, those personalised features to help your site to stand out from the rest?

It’s not necessary to become a graphic designer to enhance your site design, but it is helpful to know some basic elements of graphic design to keep in mind when customising your theme.

Lines

Lines can be long or short, thick or thin, straight or curved, and may travel in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction. In CSS, a border may be solid, dashed, dotted or doubled.

Lines may be used as borders to divide areas of the site layout, or to lead the eye in a particular direction.

Shapes

You may wish to use a shape as part of your site logo, or as an element in a content header. Don’t limit yourself to only thinking of two-dimensional circles, squares or triangles; stars, spheres, and polygons can also be excellent motifs in a site design.

Texture

Many websites use a solid coloured background, but a textured image which evokes a particular feeling can create added visual interest when used well.

Colour

Colour can be used to attract attention, to convey information (e.g. traffic lights) and to evoke an emotional response.

When selecting colours for your site design, you could choose:

• Harmonizing/Adjacent Colours, which are very close in shade, but can lose impact when placed next to each other in a design
• Complementary/Contrasting Colours, which have a few shades between them, and can work well if not used directly next to each other
• Clashing Colours, which are opposites on the Colour Wheel, but can work well together if used in moderation

Each colour used will affect our perception of all the other colours in the theme. A lighter colour will look even lighter if placed next to a darker colour, and vice versa.

Further Reading:

• Introduction to the Elements of Design
• Perception of Colour
• Graphic Design 101
• Colour Scheme Generator

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As well as being the first in a series on Pimping your Premium Theme, this post is part of a Graphic Design Group Writing Project organised by Just Creative Design.

The project is currently offering a great selection of prizes, including an Electric Guitar from Mohdrafie.co.uk (WP-Premiums is providing 55 iStockPhoto credits for the Second Prize Winner). Other prize sponsors include Graphic Designer David Airey, Daily Blog Tips and InspirationBit.

Online Betting Exposed

WordPress University

DotSauce Magazine

WP-Premiums News: Edition 3

New Releases

The iThemes guys have released a Blank Theme based on their Essence Theme Series for anyone who wishes to customise the layout more easily.

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Brian Gardner has released a free phpBB3 template based on his Revolution Pro theme.

Contests

Apart from my own fabulous contest which still has a week to run, here are a few more that I’ve come across in case you’d love a premium theme but haven’t a premium budget:

• I am Jack’s Design is giving away a copy of Adii’s Original Premium News to encourage signups to his new newsletter.
• Follow Chris Garrett on Twitter for a chance to win one of Adii’s Premium News Themes.

Discussions

• Small Potato:
  a) provides a preview of his tenth WPDesigner theme, to give an idea of what to expect for his future club themes
  b) berates careless paid theme designers who fail to check whether any external code they’re using in their themes is licensed for commercial use
  c) discusses the merits of simple vs complex designs
• Adii shows off the customisation options page for his Premium Themes.
• Ptah Dunbar continues the debate on setting standards for premium themes

Other News

The Shifter Theme Affiliate Scheme is being transferred to e-junkie, so all current affiliates should make the switch now. If you’re not already a Shifter affiliate, why not sign up?

I’m Writing Sports

EZ Money Online

One Man’s Goal

Posting Schedule

I’ve decided to post one new site per day Mon-Sat to give each site a full day of maximum attention. On Sundays I’ll feature a site from the archives, with the help of the WP-Sticky plugin.

So this Sunday I’ve sent my first ever WP-Premium, The Art of Manliness, back to the top of the queue.

Rumor Mill

Outlaw Design Blog

Tatumba

WP-Premiums News: Edition 2

New Releases

Brian Gardner’s Revolution Pro Media has been officially released, and offers a theme options page to facilitate user customisations, plus the following features:

• Featured homepage tabber area
• Featured photos from Flickr
• Featured YouTube video
• Other featured areas using custom fields
• Google AdSense integration in between posts and comments
• Section, Archive, Blog page templates

As a special launch offer, Brian is offering the Revolution All-Inclusive theme package for $299.95 until midnight (CST) Thursday February 14th.

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Adii’s Premium News camp has released two new themes:

In addition, there’s also an exclusive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin available for Premium News customers ($34.95).

(via)

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Heart Stopper, a new skin for the Shifter Theme has been released in time for Valentine’s Day and is available in a light or dark version.

(via)

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Kerry Webster has designed a Custom Admin Login Panel for Quommunication News users.

Discussions

• Small Potato discusses his personal standards for paid WordPress themes.
• Andrew Rickmann of Fun with WordPress responds with a rigorous list of standards for free themes (coining a new name for these fremium themes).
• Ptah Dunbar asks about the meaning of the word premium in premium themes and analyses the format of news websites as part of the planning for his own premium news theme.
• Adii compares the traffic statistics of his main competitors in the Premium Theme market.