WPDesigner

To recap Project H for new readers, Project H is Wpdesigner.com’s hosting service for high traffic WordPress-powered blogs.

Want to survive the Digg effect and consistent high traffic? Then, Project H is the home you’ve been waiting for. Along with free migration or server transfer and a 30-day money back gaurantee, Wpdesigner.com hosting service also comes with WordPress support and bonuses like free blog consultation, free plugin installations, and free paid WordPress themes.

The free consultation will be done by me. You cannot hire me for this service from anywhere else. Along with the one-time consultation, you’ll receive one paid WordPress theme, every two months, for free. So while your friend has to spend money on paid or premium themes, I’ll thank you for hosting with Wpdesigner.com by giving them to you.

Head over to the features page for details. And Here’s how to order. By the way, there are 116 spots left. If you don’t order now, don’t ask me to let you in later.

Continue reading:

• How This Project Started

Note: I strongly believe in my products and services. If they can’t survive by word of mouth then it’s proof they’re not worth the money. Therefore, you will not see any advertisement for Wpdesigner’s hosting service across the blogosphere. If I get in the mood for it, I might even publish 100 reasons why you should NOT use this service

It’s a new world out there for WordPress theme authors. They (including me) don’t mean to harm the theme users (you), but they’re simply new at this premium themes game. Luckily, Small Potato (yours truly) is here to help.

Before we get to it, first of all, not all premium themes are actually top notch themes. They’re basically called premium because you have to pay for them. Also, I’m personally responsible for spreading the “free premium themes” virus (which I regret). Theme authors are using that term so liberally that it has lost its meaning.

Second, assuming that someone great at creating and releasing free themes will be or is great at creating and releasing premium themes is a very dangerous assumption. This isn’t about not trusting your favorite free-theme author to do the right thing; it’s about protecting yourself and making sure your money will be well spent. (more…)

This is a beta release for Gluttony. Gluttony is a two-column, widget-ready, rounded-corners WordPress theme. It’s the sixth theme of the Seven Deadly Sins series to be released. Preview This Theme.

Orignally, I wanted to integrate Javascript in order to create an expandable and collapsible food menu layout. But after several tries with several different scripts, it didn’t work out that way. Therefore, this beta-release (version 0.1) does not include any Javascript. In the future, the official version 1 will include the Javascript to add the expandable and collapsible posts feature.

If you can help me make that happen, please leave a comment or contact me. Overall, this theme is work in progress and there’s a lot left to do.

Making of Gluttony

• Original Preview
• Revision
• Colors Poll

Download

• Gluttony version 0.1.1

Disclosure

The author and Wpdesigner.com is credited for this theme through a link in the footer.php file linking back to the original page where this is available for downloads. If you like, you may remove that link.

Known Issues

• The sidebar styles are not compatible with the sidebar Tag Cloud widget.

License and Credits

To prepare for unknown add-ons and external features, Gluttony is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, not the GPL license.

How do you separate your blog from the rest of the pack? Writing style, voice, and blog topics make you different, but those factors don’t matter to first time visitors. To them, yours is like every other blog.

So, how you do separate yourself from the pack? This fifth post, of a series called Wpdesigner Weekend Must Do (WWMD), will help you rise above the rest to make a more memorable first impression.

No Feedburner Chicklet - The Feedburner Chicklet, used to display your number of blog subscribers, is useful for attracting more readers, but browse enough blogs and you’ll begin to see why you really should remove it. Instead of an ugly little button to display your number of subscribers, opt for a text-based display of that number or completely do away with displaying your subscribers count. Try harder, don’t just slap a Feedburner Chicklet on your blog.

No Right Sidebars - I should practice what I preach, but I’m perfectly fine with my own right sidebar at this moment. But for you, if you have a small sidebar, consider moving it to the left. Someone should really run a test to find out the average number of blogs that use right sidebars.

Fluid / Elastic Width - Currently, only the unusually diligent developers have the patience to create a fluid or elastic design for their blogs - designs that fit in any resolution. Typically, if you take this route, you will instantly improve your readers’ browsing experience.

Irregular Advertisement Formats - Just because they’re advertisments, it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with them. Don’t go for the boring 125×125 button banners like everyone else is doing. Using irregular ads sizes or formats will help you look unique. It’ll also help your sponsors get more clicks because irregular formats tend to yield better results.

Now you’re armed with four new ideas. Have fun tweaking your blog this weekend.

I’m writing this post to shine some light on several happenings around the WordPress community that you might not have gotten the chance to come across.

• First is RockinThemes.com’s release of NewsPixel theme by Nathan Rice and Cory Miller. I haven’t reviewed this theme yet, but it looks promising and well designed. What it needs right now is a pretty skin. Maybe Nathan and Cory will sprinkle some eye candies on NewsPixel before December comes around?
• Second is the recent (November 20) release of Cornerstone premium theme by Charity of DesignAdaptations.com. Looking good Charity!
• Speaking of premium themes, Brian Gardner released the 2.0 version of his Revolution News theme. Check out the demo. It’s looking sharp with the new addition of DOMTab.
• Fourth is the launch of two new WordPress related sites. One of the two is BlogPerfume.com where Ray Cheung brings you the latest WordPress related resources. The other new site is WPThemez.com, a digg-like WordPress theme listing site by Dale Skarl.
• Last but not least, I’d like to thank Artur Kim of WpThemesGallery.com and Michael Castilla of WPCandy.com for helping me with answering theme support questions at the forums.

By The Way

• Small Potato is officially a RemarkaBlogger.
• The Wpdesigner Hosting service is almost ready to launch. Just for hosting with Wpdesigner, you’ll receive one premium theme every two months, more on that later.

It’s been four months since a theme created by someone other than the potato head (me) was featured on Wpdesigner.com’s free themes gallery. Nowadays, I’m very picky.

Although this theme doesn’t have the eye candies, it’s one feature-packed theme. From customizable elements via theme options to integrated and configurable social bookmarks, it’s impressive. Good luck to anyone interested in writing a full review for this theme. It would be a time-consuming and overwhelming task.

Go to 1blogtheme.com for the full features list.

Theme Information

• Author: Javier García
• Description: “1 Blog Theme is a WordPress theme with a clean, simple, classic design. Its layout includes a horizontal menu, a 3-part sidebar (single column followed by two columns) and a 3-column footer. It enables a WordPress panel section with lots of customization options.” - 1blogtheme.com
• License: Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike 2.5

Actually, 90% of it is here. This design launch is a bit rough. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning; I need some shut-eyes.

With every project or redesign, there’s only so much preparation you can do. At some point, you have to launch it then grind out the bugs as you find them. I can’t squash any bug at this moment because I’m going to sleep.

Take version 8 for a test drive and tell me what to improve. Thanks in advance

Wpdesigner7 is a red, two-column, semi-grid-based WordPress theme, currently used by Wpdesigner.com (November 14, 2007).

Preview this theme.

The default color is red, but it has a style-switcher you can use to pick blue or green. And if you know how, you can add other colors to the style-switcher. Use the blue or green style sheet as your guide. The style-switcher makes it easy to participate in projects like Pink for October.

Also, My Avatars plugins has been integrated with the comments template, but the avatars will not show up unless you have that plugin installed.

Download

• Wpdesigner7 version 1.01

Disclosure

This theme has a linkback to Wpdesigner in its footer.php file. Although you must credit Wpdesigner.com for this theme, you may remove that link if you like.

License and Credits

Wpdesigner7 is released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Thanks to FamFamFam for the icons and Paul Sowden article on A List Apart for the style-switcher script.

Changelog

• November 26, 2007 - Small Potato: Added tags listing to entry meta on the front, archive, and single pages.

Related Info

Check out Wpdesigner5 and Wpdesigner6 (Envy).

Releasing a highly customized and private theme for public use is not always easy. If you spot any trace of Wpdesigner.com within Wpdesigner7 then please let me know.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins theme series, Gluttony is the second last to be released. The last one is Sloth.

This poll is either promoting user participation or simply laziness from Small Potato. In any case, you get to vote for your favorite out of the available color schemes for Gluttony. The most popular scheme will be the default style for Gluttony’s upcoming theme release. The rest of the schemes will be worked on and released at a later date. The poll will be open until Monday afternoon.

Preview the schemes:

• Firenze
• Gray
• Neutral Blue
• Orange On Olive

 Loading …

(You can find more color schemes at kuler.adobe.com.)

Update: This poll is closed. Gray takes it by one vote.

I haven’t been writing tutorials and giving you cool WordPress stuff to use lately, but I’m getting back to it. Starting with this post, the following are my personal bookmarks for this week:

WordPress Theme Hacks
On his new project, Web Designer Wall, Nick La of NDesign-Studio.com shows you how to use conditional tags, dynamically style certain features like a horizontal menu, and how to place whatever you want in between each post.

WordPress Help Sheet
This help sheet is for newbies. Instead of going through the WordPress Codex to look up every basic function, bookmark or download this all in one basic functions guide. Combine this with Nick La’s theme hacks and you’re good to go.

Top 40 Blogs About WordPress
An interesting list by Artur of WPThemesGallery.com, in which Wpdesigner.com is ranked #3. Thanks Artur! If your site is not up there, send an email to wpthemesgallery [at] gmail [dot] com to get listed.

Out of the all the two cents already published about WordPress.com upcoming premium themes marketplace, my own thoughts are best described by the following:

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on. - George W. Bush

What I think of WordPress.com marketplace:

It’s a brilliant idea and I can’t wait to work twice as hard for half of the money (50/50 split with WordPress.com) selling CSS only GPL licensed premium themes to uninformed WordPress.com users and give those themes to everyone else for free because I still wouldn’t be working hard enough to justify my above minimum wage income supported by the generous WordPress blog platform.

Coming up with a high quality premium theme without breaking any law isn’t already hard enough. To all you lazy theme designers spending only a week on each theme, step your game up. If you get on WordPress.com’s good side, you’ll get the chance to sell GPL licensed CSS only themes to more than 1.7 million WordPress.com users. And that’s important because those uninformed WordPress.com users, making you work twice as hard to provide support, is definitely the crowd to cater.

And don’t worry about thieves stealing your theme by simply copy and pasting your GPL licensed CSS. WordPress.com will be there to protect you even when it can’t.

What you should know:

• This is not about you. It’s about WordPress.com making money off of you. Don’t get it twisted.
• You’ll work for exposure to the wrong crowd - people that need more support than you’re willing to give.
• Even if you’re willing to sell your soul for cheap, you won’t get the exposure you’re dreaming of because you’re not allowed to credit yourself for the work by linking back to your site.
• After a grueling week of design and development, you can look forward to splitting 50/50 with WordPress.com. Even if you net $2000 per theme, it isn’t worth it to split 50/50. On your own, you can EASILY make more than $2000 per theme. Just ask me or Brian Gardner. (Splitting 50/50 to sell text link ads might be the right thing to do because you don’t have to directly work for that money. But creating WordPress themes is no joke so don’t get wamboozled into splitting your hard-earned money.)

What you should do:

• Stop dreaming of a central marketplace giving all designers (you) a fair chance to compete. You don’t need one.
• Stop being lazy and build your own buzz. Release free WordPress themes, then advertise your services / products.
• Stop thinking about working with WordPress.com and start thinking about working against WordPress.com. Start a similar service. Get designers on your side. Charge a flat fee instead of 50%. Don’t wait to see what happens with WordPress.com themes marketplace. While the WordPress.com team is working on their own system, you should be working on yours. Launch before them.
• Stop jumping onto the bandwagon. Remember the last time you got wamboozled?