Nov.20.2007
Themes, Resources, and Thanks
- Filed under: Wpdesigner.com
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.
You’re welcome and thank you for the link. (:
No problem SP! And thanks for the link as well (:
Hi, SP. The latest version of WPDesigner looks great. SP, I got an error when clicking RockinThemes.com’s link, http://www.newspixel.rockinthemes.com/. I try using http://newspixel.rockinthemes.com/. It’s working
Both Cory/Nathan and Charity have come out with nice looking themes - well done all of you! SP, great job on the new theme - please don’t give me any reason to do a reboot. My visitors will kill me!
@Kate - Thanks Kate. Link’s fixed.
@Brian - It’s a hard thing to grasp, but I believe… you reboot more often than I do
Thanks for the plug SP! Posts like this are great because I can catch up quickly on whatever I’ve missed lately. The WP community is a lively one for sure. Must be something in the air for all these launches to be taking place simultaneously.
SP,
Thanks for dropping the link, bro. You didn’t have to do that, so it is much appreciated!
I’m rebooting both my .org and .net blogs soon too. It doesn’t surprise me that good designers reboot often. When you get an idea in your head, it’s hard to ignore!
Nathan
Thanks for the shout out. I really hope the many tremendously talented WordPress theme designers, such as yourself, and aspiring new artists will come and summit their work.
FYI: Wpdesigner 7 WordPress Theme is current the number ranked theme on wpthemez!
Just found two “new” magazine / newspaper wp themes
http://wpsorted.com/saytantah/
http://thewebguy.tv/…
Both are less than $20…
I think 20 bucks are a fair price… around 100 dollars are really expensive. Serious, who would buy a theme for 100 bucks?
A company? No, I don’t think so. A company wants some UNIQUE design… so they probably pay a lot of more money.
Individuals? $100 for a theme for their private blog… well… I don’t think so.
So who are the customers? Did anyone ever sell any premium magazine themes? This is a serious question…
I still wonder why there ain’t any open source magazine project… that would sure kick all the so-called “premium” magazine themes…
I haven’t gotten the chance to review any of the premium themes thoroughly so I can’t speak for any of their qualities and cannot defend any of theme authors out there.
However, in most cases, you get what you pay for. If you take a closer look at your first suggestion, that theme’s design was basically lifted from another site.
Also, not every theme author has the exposure of WordPress.com or TemplateMonster.com, you can’t expect them to sell at $20 and still make a living.
At this point, we can’t assume anything about the premium themes niche. Everything has to be tried and tested. I can speak from experience; I sell Showcase at $70 and orders are still coming in.
Companies are clients with bigger budgets, they’re not likely the ones to buy pay-per-download themes, but that doesn’t mean the market is not there.
I hope my comment above cleared up some questions for ya.
Nice list of WP sites. I already bookmarked BlogPerfume. Gonna bookmark the others later
As for the high prices for blog themes. There are many bloggers that earn a lot from their blogging. John Chow for example. They would buy a premium theme for 100 dollars. Dunno if they would buy a premium magazine theme though
@SP
Thank you for replying to my comment.
There’s just this one thing that I don’t get. I sure understand there are many people out there who earn money (advertising) from their blog. Some less, some more.
I don’t know if I am the only one, but if I’d earn money from my blog I would save it and then give to some designer. The designer would create a *unique* looking web site.
I wouldn’t want my web site to look like 1000 other web sites…
you know what I mean?
There are so many talented designers/creators out there, I’m sure one would get _hundreds of offers_ if one would post a message like
“… have XXX dollars.. who can create a professional looking unique magazine style wp site for me?”
Maybe I’m wrong…
Whether to buy a non-exclusive theme or have one custom designed for you depends on many different factors. The importance of your blog and your budget are two big factors.
I think saving money for a unique design comes down to personal preference. For others, maybe their blogs don’t deserve $500-$1000 unique themes yet. Maybe a $50-$100 non-exclusive theme is the best option for them (at the moment).
Buying a non-exclusive theme is one way to look half-unique without breaking the bank. If a certain premium theme is already too popular and it doesn’t offer anything other than a semi-unique design, you’d probably not buy it anyway.
In cases like Showcase and Revolution, people were looking to make WordPress display and function differently.
As of right now, hiring a good WordPress theme designer isn’t easy. For example, if you contact Nick La (really talented designer), he’ll probably send you to me. If you contact me, I’ll point you to another person because I’m not for hire. It’s a circle of “I’m not for hire”
At some point, you’ll end up contacting someone that is for hire, then comes the part when you have to convince that theme designer to work on your project because money is not enough.
Good designers in general and good theme designers in particular are picky so you’ll need to pay well and your project has to be somewhat attractive (interesting)…. unless you’re hiring a design firm, not an individual.
Working with an established or distinguished design / development firm means you have to spend more moola
Established designers are either:
1. too expensive
2. not available
That’s just fact.
So the premium themes serve 2 purposes … they extend the capabilities of WordPress and they give “web designers” an easy way to make have a blog without having to learn WordPress. Generally speaking, these premium themes are very easy to customize, especially for web devs.
So you lay down $100, change up the CSS and put a new header in, and you have yourself a new theme, unique and all.
So to me, 50-100 bucks is worth it.
@Nathan
Yes, I understand what SP and you are saying.
Please, don’t get me wrong. Many premium themes are just great. Brian’s themes, Adii’s themes, etc. Great work!
But like I said, I don’t see much sense paying 100 bucks to someone for a template… especially when hundreds of others are using the same design. Sure, I could change the colors, the header image… and then it’s “kinda unique”… but still 100 others are using the SAME design. Maybe not my own logo, but the rest is the same.
By the way, there are hundreds of design students out there who are doing great work, they’d appreciate 200 bucks and would create a unique and professional design as well…
Like I said, don’t get me wrong.
*Sorry if this turns out as a double post, I tried submitting and I don’t think it went through…
@SP - Very well said on your last response.
When one considers the cost of a totally exclusive, uniquely tailored design (which could be upwards of $3500 depending on the designer you hire) - I think $100 bucks is a drop in the bucket. Of course you’re not going to have exclusivity, but what can you (the consumer) expect for that price? Buyers can’t have both cheap and exclusive, it just doesn’t work that way.
Consider a source like Template Monster. They’re completely saturated and not what I would consider quality products - but even they are charging at least $50! I worked with a number of their templates a few years back… the PSDs were messy and unlabeled, and the html was riddled with tables. Ick. (Granted this was before they started cranking out WP themes.)
@Marco - Buying from an independent themer offers two things for those who are budget conscious: 1) semi-exclusivity, and 2) good quality. The reason is because that designer (if he or she cares about reputation at all) probably busted their ass to put out solid work.
In my mind, the amount of work that goes into making a GOOD theme could not be justified for $20.
Marco, just for the sake of argument, can you tell that these three sites are using the “same design?”
http://jbowersonline.com/
http://www.carola-veit.com/
http://cvgoffice.com/
Just have to put my word in…
@ Brian
With the customization these sites don’t look like they are using the same theme. And great job with the Revolution design! It looks very nice, and obviously easy to customize…
Do WP Remix theme qualify to join the list?
I hope it does.