CSSHOT

Lo-Fi Saint Louis

Arras.Theme – Gaming Edition

Arras.Theme is a gorgeous and feature-packed premium theme designed primarily for gaming websites, but could easily be used as a review site or niche blog in any field of interest.

Arras has all of the features that you’d expect from a premium theme, but also boasts less common attributes, such as an optional scorecard box in review posts, jQuery comment validation and a structure which resembles other gaming sites.

Features:

• 10 Color Schemes
• Tabbed Sidebar with Customizable Features (latest posts, featured posts, latest comments and tag cloud, etc)
• Review Scoreboard for Reviews
• Social Bookmarking (also pre-styled for the Sociable plugin)
• Javascript-Powered Form Validation
• Built-In Admin Panel
• Cross-browser Compatibility (Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Opera 9.5, Safari 3.0, Google Chrome Beta)
• Auto Image Thumbnail Resizing
• Built-In Basic Ad Management
• Feedburner Support
• Google Analytics Support
• Author Information Box
• Gravatar Support
• Widget Ready (Right Sidebar, Bottom Content, Footer)
• SEO Friendly, compliant code
• Documentation & Support

Demo | Purchase | Single-Site: $50 | Multi-Site: $110

Chip Chick (Redesign)

Remarkable Communication

Me and My Drum

Magmug Magazine

I really like their logo. Which font is that, I wonder.

Best of September 2008

Here are my 5 favourite site designs (in alphabetic order) featured here during September, all of which have also received a public rating of at least 4 out of 5.

Made in Mundo | Elite Theme

Syke | Revolution Pro Media

CG Video & Animation | On Demand Theme

Salmon Crazy | Fresh News Theme

Miami Angel Properties | Revolution Real Estate

Open Air

Open Air by WooThemes is a quality contribution from Liam McKay of Function. The theme is a stylish grid-based design which provides the option of using it in a typical magazine format, or a personal blog view. An exciting new feature is the video gallery which provides thumbnails of published videos linked to a popup lightbox viewer.

Features:

• Magazine or Personal Blog Views
• The Video player which will aggregate all of your videos into one, easy-to-use-space
• A completely widgetized sidebar with custom widgets included in the theme packaging. No third party widgets required.
• Integrated Theme Options to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap, Image Gallery & Video Player
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
• Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide
• Five colour schemes: Default/Blue, Grayscale, Fresh, Green, Red.

Demo | Purchase | Single User: $70 | Developer: $150 USD or Join the Club

An Open Source Revolution

After days of hints and mysterious teasing, Brian Gardner has finally revealed his plans for the Revolution brand. Future Revolution themes will be released under an open source GPL license, meaning that the themes will be available for free download. In this way, he can give back to the WordPress community while still providing extra features to those who want them.

After 31 October 2008, the current Revolution themes will not be available for purchase. A new Revolution site will be launched, featuring a new set of GPL-licensed themes, and purchasable extras such as support, tutorials, customisation, etc. Users of the legacy Revolution themes will have a dedicated section of the support forums, and people who have purchased an all-inclusive package will be given automatic access to the new Revolution extras.

The new Revolution themes will be produced in collaboration with Jason Schuller of WPelements, who has also promised to support his Press75 themes after they are removed from sale on after 31 October.

Though this particular business model is not entirely new, having already been used in Justin Tadlock’s Theme Hybrid Club and Ian Stewart of ThemeShaper for the distribution of commercial child themes which complement their free themes, it’s an interesting change of direction from two of the pioneers of the premium WordPress theme industry.

Though I don’t doubt that the new Revolution themes will be superb, I’m wondering whether they’ll lose their premium cachet, just by the virtue of being readily available to all. What do you think?

Update: Brian has written a follow up post to clarify some issues arising from the announcement post.

In summary:

• The current Revolution themes will not be available for purchase after 31 October, but a support forum for these themes will be available for life. The themes will be updated in line with any WordPress upgrades until 31 October 2009. The existing forums will be accessible (read-only) on the new site.
• Customers who have purchased the All-Inclusive Package will be given access to the premium extras at no additional costs, and Brian has promised to provide some additional themes which will be exclusive to those customers.
• And to conclude, the prices of the theme packages have all been reduced by 25% for the rest of the month.

With those reassurances, if you’ve been thinking of purchasing a specific Revolution theme, or upgrading to the All-Inclusive Package, now’s the time.

Purchase: Single License: $59.95 | Multiple Use Package: $149.95 | All-Inclusive: $299.95

The Travelling Vegetarian

An Aud Life