WPDesigner

Hey Pawel,

Welcome to the community! I live in Miami, Florida so maybe we can hang, haha!

Anyways, I’m glad to see you will be continuing the tracks of Small Potato. I wish you the best of luck.

Michael

Awesome. Welcome and I’m excited to see WPDesigner move forward!

it’s great, welcome and enjoy Pawel, nice to see u

Hey,

Can you email me, then i can reply with my proposals of themes and such

Cheers

Hi,

You’re rich? … you paid a much money for a website

Welcome aboard Pawel, definitely interested to see this site grow, i’m a WordPress fan myself, let me know if you need any help.

Cheers.

@David & Paco

SP sold WP Designer. When a site like this has been set up perfectly to make money, someone is going to swoop in and take over. As far as I am concerned I think the site holds a greater future with SP gone. He built a great foundation but bounced around without much focus so much nothing reached full potential.

Now Pawel tells us he is going to line up some talented PASSIONATE wp community folk and get things rolling here again. I don;t see the loss. I see it as a major gain.

I have to agree, disappointingly short and dry. But maybe you’ll pull it off if you draw in good talent. My suggestion is to make the theme club themes awesome, and worth more than the price. That way people will come and join in droves. To make the themes valuable, they need to be truly original, not just the typical boxy designs I see all over, and please have the designers include these features;
1. custom contact page template
2. custom post template that does not display the same sidebars as the index page
3. custom page template with different sidebar options
4. gallery page template

Others can add to the list

I’m sorry to say that I’m rather disappointed too. Not only because of the “it’s all about the money” impression, but also because of the writing errors this post displays, which give a very poor impression as well. English is not SP’s first language (nor is it mine), but at least it was evident that he was making the effort. For being born and raised in Milwaukee and trying to make money out of a blog, which it’s all about writing, I think you should polish up this aspect.

“My names Pawel Ciszewski, the names (…)”… I guess you meant “name’s” or “name is”. I can understand you don’t have Polish letters like “?” in an English keyboard, but the ‘ is there.

“I’ve was born and raised” - I guess you mean “I was born”.

Well, just an opinion. Good luck with everything. I’m still subscribed to this site.

Hi! *waves*

Looking for any guest posters?

I’m pretty sure SP was never in it mainly for the money. So basically your going to rent the place out to a group of people?

@Colin & Jefferey: All this spiel about entrepreneurial strategy … it’s effing bs and you know it. Bottom line: at the core of WPDesigner.com is a blog. It’s not a magazine, it’s not a portal, it’s not a shopping outlet, it’s a blog. It’s personal, it’s informational but above all it was a 2 year labor of love. If you think back a little, SP only began separating ‘business’ from ‘pleasure’ a few months ago when he introduced Braintied. He probably knew at that point that he was going to sell WPD. Fair enough.

Now there’s no reason why Pawel or anyone else can’t pick up this blog and make it work, and for Pawel’s sake I really hope it does work out, but it has to have an identity, a recognisable driving force. My guess is that 70% of the readership was loyal to this site because they saw a role model in SP, they felt connected and with that came a sense of ‘ownership’ over the site. Well now that 70% needs a new role model, otherwise we’ll be dealing with ‘just another Wordpress blog’. You can talk as much as you like about marketing, strategy, business plans etc etc, but you can’t escape the fact that blogs are all about their authors.

Pawel, man, if you read this, I’m not out to bring your site down, I’m out to state an opinion because I care about WPD, it’s been one of my favourite reads over the past year and a half, and like many I’ve been inspired by SP’s work. If you want any help, feedback or whatever let me know, I’ll be happy to oblige.

That’s my $2 and that’s where I’ll leave it.

What’s wrong with business? What’s wrong with making money? Jeezes christ people you’re all real scared of communism and you’re all real glad people got rid of the reds — but an honest guy being UPFRONT about buying a site to profit in the long run gets a flame thrown his way?

Grow up, the internet has turned into business. Pawel is honest and said he’ll work hard to keep this site going — what more do you guys want?

Good luck Pawel, I hope your acquisition will turn out to be a profitable one to both you and the community.

Welcome mate. Enjoy your stay.

Any idea of when the next theme for themes club will be out?

Hello! It’s a little bit of a shame that you seem to be a bit of more business-orientated as opposed to a passionate WordPress guy, and you’re not going to be at all hands-on. You don’t appear to be at all experienced in this field. But I wish you the best of luck all the same, and maybe this business approach will work.

There always have to be a few that overreact.

Anyway, welcome Pawel. Looking forward to the continued growth of wpdesigner.com. Let me know if you need any help.

Welcome Pawel, congratulations on the purchase. Hope to see WPDesigner continue to grow and enhance the WordPress community. All the best.

Welcome Paul. I’m sorry that negative comments have been made about you. It’s unfortunate that some people have decided to pass judgment. I think it’s far too soon for that and they need to remember it’s your website, not SPs.

Bringing in different talents to develop themes is great idea. In all honesty, you could set guidelines for your new themes allowing interested designers to contribute, and just give them the recognition on your site (designer directory?). Eliminate paying for the designs, plus get a larger talent pool. Just a thought.

Welcome to the community. Hopefully u may continue the themes club..

Tanti auguri!

Ciao.

Hi Pawel. First, I want to say welcome to the community.

I think many of us are still a bit disappointed that SP sold the site because we’ve followed him for a long time and have become more than just subscribers. I think I’ve followed his work from about the time he created Peaceful Rush.

I’m glad you’re up front about wanting to make a profit. Most of us wouldn’t have believed you otherwise, especially after the amount of money you dropped for this site.

I guess, since everyone else is doing it, my advice is to keep making it all about the community. Keep giving back as much as you get and then some. Keep the articles coming. I never cared about downloading SP’s themes because I always wanted to create my own. He essentially taught me WordPress design with his tutorials.

Make the people that come to your site your friends. Treat them that way and you’ll profit in more ways than just dollars.

So, is there a way to contact you other than posting comments?

Hi Pawel. Welcome and best of luck to you! For me, WordPress is my business and future, my children’s college, etc. WPDesigner has been a hugely important resource for me, but by no means the only or most important. As others have said, it won’t survive if you don’t have guest bloggers on here that are working with the tool daily. I will continue to subscribe and sincerely hope it continues to be a solid resource. I just started receiving it and leaning on it when SP sold, so I’m bummed but haven’t counted you out yet!

Feel free to tap on me for help. I’m a bit of a newbie but learning lots fast and furiously and am spending about 6 hours a day developing WordPress Sites.

Best,
Carolyn

Hi Pawel,
Greetings from Shanghai

Nice 2 meet u

Good to have you Pawel! I like people that are making money…..that way you know you are going to get a good product, because they want you to come back. (Open source is great too)

Congrats on the website………. Can I talk you into producing political themes? And please make your themes WPMU compatible.

[…] telah jumpe pemilik baru utk website tersebut. WPDesigner.com dijual pada harga 65,000USD kepada Pawel Ciszewski. wuhuuuu… 65,000 […]

Welcome Pawel - hope new and better themes will be out.

SP you will be missed.

Welcome! I’m Italian!

I hope you are going to take this site to its full potential. Keep the current visitors, by posting often and provide great WP themes, because that’s why people come here. Cheers!

welcome!

great, hope you may bring more and more good article to us in future, i am fan of wpdesigner

Damn.

I was hoping SP could find a more passionate owner.

Hey, welcome to the community!

When are we going to see the first post?

Alex

Every day that goes by without a blog post from you, or a guest blogger, you will loose page rank, visitors, goodwill, and ultimately, money. You need to start blogging, and talking about themes, tutorials, contributors, ideas, plans, etc. Regular visitors at this point are still interested, but that will change very quickly.

Hi,

Nice to hear about the man behind the site. I think it was a great purchase if you consider all the great themes that have been made and widely used under the WPDesigner brand name.

What I suggest you do is allow readers to submit articles in return for a backlink?
(And obviously only accept the EXCELLENT submissions).

What a waste…

When will the next post come?
Come on post some stuff dude - im gona delete the rss subscription

@Tony - Yeah, yeah excuses, excuses. He’s posited himself as an entrepreneur so he knows full well time is money. Either he is in some sort of personal predicament or he has more money than sense. Unless it’s a case of force majeure, the whole thing is off to an unprofessional start. You don’t have to be a blogger or writer to give your audience a couple of updates on what’s happening behind the scenes. I think people’s frustrations are absolutely valid. The sad thing is that all it would take to turn things around is a couple of posts…

Anything is great but having this great stall is discouraging to come back. You have a certain time to market your product to maximize profits and revenue and that window is closing…meaning the rewards are less. In other words post something.

Definitely sounds like money was the bottom line motivation for much of this transaction… Sad to hear about it. I hope wpdesigner survives the change.

@Nate: The whole point of blogging/social media is content and expediency - keeping up with the latest stuff. I’ll reserve your ‘be patient’ model for my days in the retirement home thank you very much.

@SP: “It’s not easy to get one on board”, I understand your personal interest in WPDesigner and the need to defend your creation to the bitter end, that’s obvious, but I think you know as well as everyone else that there’s no excuse other than lack of planning here, and the level of discontent voiced in this comment thread is really just inevitable. Had it been you stepping into this game you’d be doing whatever it takes to leverage this site’s appeal.

When you have a sizeable audience, particularly when you’ve paid top dollar for that audience, the last thing you do is keep them waiting. It’s not rocket science, it’s common sense.

Greetings, new owner
How come you didn’t get a drawn mustache?

oh - good luck with your new project.

It’s barely been a week, but it is kind of disappointing that the theme club will be the main point of the site now. I think a lot of people (myself included) were mainly here for information about creating WP themes and such, though I have no idea if the advertising that SP had up made enough money for writing the posts to be worth the time.
Also, what happened to braintied.com? It says the account’s been suspended.

SP: Try asmallorange.com. 1and1 is also good, but their phone support sucks.

I don’t know SP, it would probably be a good thing to get off topic.

Seriously people relax. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He obvioulsy has some sense if he spent 65 K on a website. That tells me several things. He’s obviously smart, I’m willing to bet that not a single person that has posted in this thread has the money to buy this site. He’s a business man, and understands what it’s going to take to be successful. You guys are frying him for his post here and that, but he’s just the money behind the project, he doesn’t need to be the heart and soul, he’s going to pay someone to be that. Just chill out and let him do his thing. At the end of the day it’s just a website, don’t be so emotional about it. Sorry SP, I know having a site is so much more when it’s your own, but at the end of the day if it goes extinct, it goes extinct, but I have a feeling it won’t. This guy has the money to do some nice things. Let the site grow and prosper. SP, you should have started a cult, you have some devoted followers here, start one and take all their earthly possessions, lol. Seriously guys, just relax.

Oh… AND BRING IN JUSTIN TADLOCK TO BE THE FACE OF THE SITE!!! He’s the best out there outside of the couple big dogs. He’s got a following, he understand WP, he’s the best free agent out there. Do it, do it, do it.

after reading through the post by Pawel as well as the comments on this post, it’s weird and funny that Pawel hasn’t reply any comments at all. Or at least have some say on the discussion that’s going on here? At least SP has made the effort to come in as a guest and discuss together.. That’s what a real blogger is! Pawel should join in here and discuss with everyone

just my 3 cents

starting to get boring now! i HAD the money and thought about buying but my limited wp knowledge and other businesses stopped me.

Look’s like i should have gone for it at least i would have got some post’s out by now even if they were not the quality that SP had before I would have at least made some questions asking people about ideas..they would have at least got me connected to the community!

at the moment we have nada and i have a STRONG feeling that’s the way it’s going to go…

SP you should stop defending the new owner he is doing nothing but destroying your legacy and p***ing people off, and anyone who is ‘an entrepreneur’ like he and many who are commenting are claiming should wake up and smell the coffee, the market and clients are to fluid and demanding to sit on your butt doing nothing even a week is too long!

Pawel if your having doubt’s then hand it over to someone who gives a damn!

April’s fool?!?!?!?

I thought this was a very elaborate joke

SP: I want your babies, not that dude’s babies

Oh, AND HIRE JUSTIN TADLOCK!!! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DEBATING ABOUT?!? There’s Brian Gardner, who is established, then there is the other guy from the other country who is already established, and then there’s Justin. He has the same morals as SP, he isn’t just about making money, he doesn’t sell his themes, it’s the perfect fit, Reward the guy and let him do what he does, and cut him a check every week. Put the boy on.

I myself won’t be actively posting or building themes, not by expertise and leave that to those who are.

Well, that is what Pawel said. That obviously means, he is currently searching for others to create themes AND to blog….

Pawel, if your as smart as I give you credit for, you’ll take the time out and post an update letting people know how your search is going, and all the other things behind the scenes. All it’s going to take to keep getting 100 comments a post is keeping people informed, so that they feel like they are a part of what is going on here.

I’ve been waiting for something. Anything. When are you going to get up to writing posts? Would be great. Site is slowly losing value!

It should stay to see what other users think.

I’m hoping that the themes club paypal charge is not a re occurring thing. Had I known that the site would be sold this way, I would have never paid my 5 dollars. I see no theme development other than the few currently there. What gives!?

By the way, how many themes are in the club? I was interested but by the lack of updates I’m tempted not to.

Since he mentioned he would hire a designer or something similar then it might make things interesting.

Hope he drops us a line soon. I fell in love with this blog the moment I found it.

agree to chris, #115, I also paid (and I did heartfully), but now this place seems worthless. The four themes I saw were nice, a product of design love from SP, I am really curious about the future of this page. BOB (blog oh blog) sold out, too and improved quite a bit but I doubt that this will be the case here because SP had a personality that cannot be easily replaced by someone saying “hey, I am the new owner, but I wont post here at all, see ya..”

@FR: you should have waited, it may be a while before your account is activated.

@JEZ: Geez. Well once this place starts going, you’ll have all the praises in the world for this site.

Hey Chris, how many themes are there?

I would like to know.

There are 4 CLUB themes. There are several more free themes.

People who are posting negative comments are doing so in the hope that Pawel will pop in here and prove them wrong. Nobody wants to see it all go down the drain.

Too bad Pawel doesn’t seem to understand blogging, or communities……

@SEO BLOG WIRE: $5 is still worth it just for the 4 themes.

Those who complain that they haven’t gotten more than the four don’t seem to understand that any other paid theme out there costs $20 - $79 each.

good lucking running wpdesigner, hope you can run this place as good as SP did

Pawel it’s been two weeks wheres the beef. It doesnt take two weeks to hire a WP Theme designer. We want small potato back !!

When will the other themes be designed? Not that I’m “demanding” a response or anything but as Shane has said above “It’s been two weeks” and still no details. Normally this would not be an issue for me If there was no money involved, and even though the 5$ dollars is minimal, it’s the principles of it all.

I feel shortchanged … “I’m asking”, please, be courteous and let the club members know the status of the theme development. Incidentally, I found this on digg. http://digg.com/users/pccasino/history

Is this the same Pawel from Miami? If it is true, will wpdesigner.com be inundated with pop up ads for online casinos etc?

Witam,
ciekawa wiadomo??

pozdrawiam i ?ycz? powodzenia
Dominik

Hello,

http://acpaf.wordpress.com/

ok, i conceded to the others, this place is dead

Crap ………………….

wpdesigner=CRAP!!

Wait a second folks, I think you need to give Pawel a chance to do what he has pledged to do, which is perfectly reasonable. Obviously we’re losing an WP development enthusiast , but give the guy a chance to replace that loss with stand-in, and possibly more diverse, expertise.

This is still a great site as far as I am concerned.

As a charter member (j/k) I am interested in, and looking forward to, added value in belonging to the themes club.

Oh, btw, welcome Pawel!

- Ro

[…] and so I do not want to charge you for a theme that I am yet to release. I have seen many people feeling dejected after joining the SP’s theme club. Even though it was just 5 dollars and he already gave 4 […]

Good Luck Body!

So are you ever going to post again? Or like once a month? Ive been waiting and waiting. Looking at the rss feed everyday, and i think “Hi, I’m the new owner…” is kinda stuck in my head permently lol.

Post something up mate. Let us know what your plans are for WP. Whats going on behind the scenes? Whats gonna happen to the theme club for def.

Things like that.

How do you all know something terrible hasn’t happened to him or someone he knows? There are more important things that posting to a website sometimes.

Give it a month or so for him to collect himself or get new developments ready. In the meantime go build a site, or play outside people. Sheesh.

funniest part is the guy posting that he knows the new owner is smart because he paid $65, 000 for this site - haha, not exactly the conclusion at which I’d arrive

it’s crazy that dude paid $65k for WPDesigner.com and does nothing with it but then again, it’s crazy that anyone would pay $65k for WPDesigner in the first place, so who the hell knows what to expect?

Small Potato got crazy paid out the ass from this - he’s the big winner and it’s not even close - everyone else loses but hey, nice going SP - I’d bolt for a third of that

By definition, the people reading your question are here - however, I think it’s more than safe to say that far fewer are coming here than before and that the number continuing to do will continue to dwindle as long as WPD continues to rot

@ David: I still come here to read the comments. I find it interesting to hear what others have to say, and how the mood has progressed form the first comment.

“funniest part is the guy posting that he knows the new owner is smart because he paid $65, 000 for this site - haha, not exactly the conclusion at which I’d arrive”

The funniest part of this thread is you making an ass out of yourself by trying to make an ass out of me, because you took what I said completely out of context. The statement I made is that guy has to be smart to have 65,000k to spend on a website. To have that kind of money you have ot have some kidn of success elsewhere. Whether or not it was smart to pay that much for a website that you have no way to run on your own is another story altoghether.

PS - I really like your website layout/organization - will definitely study it while working on my redesign

Thanks Cats, lol.. didn’t mean to jump off

Greetings Pawel. I would like to assist you with your new acquisition, I feel that wpdesigner.com is a great resources and asset and I have been working professionally in the field of WP templates for some time now, I actually run a small team. It would be beneficial for you to contact me regarding this, I don’t want to see wpdesigner.com die so lets try to collaborate on something, hit me up when you can. Thanks

There is no point even addressing that MALAN. It may be a year before Pawel even starts up anything here. Till we hear from him again, there is no point in complaining or even telling him how to run this site.

To bad SP just doesn’t close comments for this post, or at least suggesting it to Pawel.

EDIT:

Hey guys, do you realize In a couple of days it’ll be _ONE MONTH_ since the last post!?!?

…one month…

wow this is really lame. I just found this blog, got SUPER excited on the fact that I could build a wordpress theme from scratch, and then read this entire entry with its’ comments, and finally decided that this entire shit is lame.

SP, I can understand selling your site for 65k. That’s one year’s worth of salary. Unless you’re living with your parents, which then it’s about 5 years worth of living expenses. But still, shame on you for not having principle.

If anything, negotiating the care of this blog through a mutual contract to continue supporting advice and entries from (possibly) various members of the community itself, if not yourself, would have been a great alternative to the straight buy-and-go plan that has seemed to unravel.

And second. Well, I’d never do business with Pawel Ciszewski. He obviously has no real passionate fulfillment in life other than monetary goals.

- First time go-getter

I have once used SP’s template on my other blogs and still kept one today. I am here just to check for an update and I was disheartened to see all this mumblings and ramblings here.

It’s clear that on the internet, there are losers and winners. I hate to think we are the losers here so Pawel get your act soonest as this site is too good to be dumped as many people here began to think.

And guys, let’s respect SP’s decision to sell. We all don’t know the reasons behind. Maybe he’s in need or something.

Good luck to all of us!

Hi. I have decided to close the site. It was a great tax write-off. Thanks for sticking around this long.

Kathy, the comment above you isn’t Pawel..

But i’m afraid that the ThemeClub and WPdesigner are bleeding to death..
SP didn’t choose the wright person to run WPdesigner…