48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress
Bothered by the complexity of installing magazine themes, about ten days ago, I told everyone that WordPress is a blog platform first and foremost so stop trying to do too much with it. This link basically proves that I was wrong. Hey, when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And ten days ago, I was wrong! However, that doesn’t mean some WordPress theme authors aren’t trying to do too much. Like I said before, if I don’t need to read a lengthy manual to install WordPress then don’t make me read one to install a WordPress theme.

The Future of WordPress Themes
Warning: This is a very long post made up of opinions by notable theme authors and bloggers blogging about WordPress.

Migrating to WordPress 2.5
A guide for plugin authors to prepare their plugins for WordPress 2.5.

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As I browsed the WordPress themes released for February 25th 2008, on WeblogToolsCollection.com, I came across a theme that had everybody raving. It was called Options and was created by Justin Tadlock, the same theme author who created Structure. As I browsed the theme, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities in terms of the icons that were being used, the navigational text/layout, the way the content was displayed, ect. It looked eerily similar to Brian Gardner’s Revolution Pro Media theme. Not only did I call Justin out on his release page, but I also sent an email to Brian asking him if he knew what was going on.

As it turns out, Options is a theme that was INSPIRED by many of the design elements found within the Revolution theme. It wasn’t a blatant copy, but it was close enough to stir up trouble. According to Brian Gardner, he contacted Justin off the record and asked him to make some changes to his theme and Justin has apparently gone ahead with the changes. Brian explains what happened:

I just want to briefly address this situation - when Options was originally released, the layout was MUCH different than it is now. It was quite obvious that at the time, the similarities were too obvious, which is why people notified me, and why I pursued conversation with Justin. He did have an “inspired” by note on his page, but at the time, I believe it was more than “inspired” by, which is why I got in touch with him. Since then, he has gracefully changed the design of his theme, which is why some of you think it’s not a replica of my site, as it originally “appeared” to be. I do appreciate all of those who contacted me regarding this, and understand that it’s easy to find inspiration in design elements.

Furthermore, I just want to point out that although the internet world is massive, it doesn’t take long for me (or other theme designers) to find out questionable things that other people do with our themes. I’m all for competition, themes “inspired by”, and so on, but there really wasn’t an issue on my side with Justin’s theme, since he took ownership of the situation and reacted by changing his look.

The bottom line is that whether people use free or premium themes on their site, Wordpress is ultimately promoted. I know there have been a lot of “hot topics” related to premium themes, but we are all in the same community, and shouldn’t be throwing stones at each other. The only time I am bothered by what happens is when people blatantly or maliciously affect me and my business - something that Justin did not do.

The situation between the two appears to be resolved. But this Options theme raises a couple points that I would like to address.

Right now, the magazine style of WordPress themes is still in full swing. However, Small Potato made some excellent points within the conversation that took place on WLTC. The first point is:

• Options = Revolution = Premium News = Options = Revolution…

This clearly indicates the magazine style trend in one sentence. I believe it has gotten to the point where one magazine/newspaper theme looks like another with some minor differences. I realize that these types of themes appear to be what people want, but theme designers, try to think outside of the box instead of rehashing ideas.

Another point that Small Potato makes:

• As for adding more features to these magazine themes, there’s only so much you can add until you’re the only one who knows how to fully use it.

There is a whole lot of truth within that statement. In my travels across the internet, looking for a new WordPress theme, I noticed plenty of them that utilized things such as custom fields. I also noticed many themes that utilized custom coded plugins and some themes even came with a manual that explained how to use them. Why is it like this? Why are theme authors releasing themes that require a Masters Degree to use? Let’s get back to making things simple. Sure, most of those fancy features require more skill and more advanced coding, but after checking out themes such as Shifter, I believe these challenges can be overcome.

If you are a theme designer, please do me a favor. Do your research, then take a top-down look at the current state of WordPress themes. Then, do us all a favor and create something that has yet to be done before. I know that most ideas are rehashed, most ideas have already been worn out, but try to do something that doesn’t make us think about something else that has already accomplished the effect. For example, please end this stupid trend of having two dynamic sidebars smashed together on one side of the blog. Why not place widgetized areas in more places within the theme, giving the end user more freedom and flexibility without the need of having to touch the code. Another example is to build flexibility into the theme that can be accessed via the admin panel. Instead of giving the user instructions in the read me file that tells them how to change the number of pixels in the CSS file to change the overall width of the blog, make it a user configurable option in the themes admin panel. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Now here is where I ask you questions that I have no answers for. For instance, at what point does inspiration turn into ripping? If there is a theme that closely resembles a paid theme, at what point does that become unacceptable? The reason I raised hell about the Options theme is that, it closely resembled Brian Gardner’s theme so much that I thought it would end up taking money out of his pocket. Because we all know, if there is a free version of a theme that requires money, we are going to go for the free version first.

What do you think will be the next WordPress theme trend? Personally, I believe the next trend will focus around Widgets. I think the poster child for the future of WordPress themes revolves around the Shifter Theme system. Widgets give power back to the end user. As a theme author, you no longer have to provide detailed instructions on how to hard code a plugin or widget into the theme. Just make it a widget area, and the user can drag and drop the content element into an area that seems appropriate. I also believe there will be a trend towards themes offering an admin page which contains settings that control various aspects of the theme. This is a welcomed change if you ask me, since this doesn’t require editing the CSS file or any of the core theme files to make the changes.

Finally, what are your thoughts as to everything I’ve just stated? Does it have any merit, or is this just a bunch of hodge podge?

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Do you know exactly what you’re buying? Where does everything within that paid WordPress theme come from? Of course, you don’t have those answers.

Theme authors (people you’re buying from) are responsible for answering those questions and making sure everything you’re buying was licensed for commercial use and redistribution. Unfortunately, some theme authors simply don’t care enough to provide those answers and do it the right way.

While I’m trying to make my themes more unique and referencing everything that I use and redistribute within my products so you can rest assure that what you’re using is actually LEGAL, some theme authors’ method of creating “premium” themes is jamming other people’s stuff together and resell it to you without prior written permission for the rights to resell (sell first, ask later).

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve written about this topic before. At this point, I’m not mad at the fact that those careless people are giving paid theme authors like myself a bad name. No, I’m just disappointed because I was naive enough (the first time around) to believe those careless people simply didn’t know better and that they would improve.

Obviously, having to write about this again proves that those theme authors simply don’t give a damn. And, it’s sad because they’re putting theme users at risk. In the WordPress community, if you’re experiencing some form of success, it’s likely because people are buying your stuff so they could thank you for all the free work you’ve contributed prior to becoming a paid theme author. To the best of your knowledge, the least you can do is everything you can to make sure you’re not putting those people at risk.

And no, I’m not going to name names. I didn’t write this to smear anyone (if I want to, I’d do it later ). I wanted to remind you to be careful and I wanted to vent a little. If you know who I’m writing about, please DON’T point them out in the comments. Thank you.

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—-

Recently, I’ve been reading quite a few articles about what makes a premium theme… premium.

First, let me say that the word “premium” bothers me. Mainly, it’s misleading because other theme authors use it liberally to label non-free themes. Like someone said in one of the discussions that I read, premium at this point is simply a marketing term. There’s no higher level of quality to back it up across the board for all themes and all theme authors.

Second, from now on for every paid theme, I’ll aim for the following features:

(For the beginners, the following will look like mumbo-jumbo. If you’re a theme developer, you’re welcome to improve this list through the comments.)

Multiple Custom Templates

• Default Templates: index, archive, category, page, 404, stickied w/ excerpts and asides index, tag, author
• Magazine/Portal: Allows room for growth or in case you want to turn your start-up blog into a multi-author or user-generated magazine.
• Gallery Template: For all the photos and portfolios.
• Custom Archives: Crucial for old blogs with tons of archive links.
• Custom Links Page: For the promiscuous linkers
• About Template: Very important, but often neglected
• Advertising Template: Should include a table for advertising options and pricing
• Multimedia Template: This is top secret.
• Contact Template: Contact page with integrated contact plugins and other options.
• Subscription Template: Just in case you want to guide new readers through subscribing and using RSS or email subscription.

Multiple Skins - Simply multiple color schemes and styles.

Unique Design - I’m still learning and trying to stay away from using too many gradients. It’s too bad top designers have better things to do. Really top notch designs are what the WordPress themes market is missing. Here’s my new list of elements to keep in mind while laying out a new theme…

• Header: logo/title, search form, horizontal navigation, subscription link
• Post: date button, post title, categories, comments link, author link
• Entry-content: paragraphs, headings (h2, h3, h4…etc.), custom text styles, blockquote, blockquote within blockquote, code, image aligned left, image aligned right, image aligned center, unordered lists, custom variations of unordered lists
• Next and Previous links
• Stickied posts
• Asides
• Sidebar: regular and widgets
• Plugin styles for integrated plugins
• Alternating post backgrounds
• Alternating comment backgrounds

Efficient Codes - Of course, it’s not all about design. I always try to code everything with the least amount of codes, not because I’m trying to become a good coder and programmer, but because I’m lazy hehehe.

Thorough Documentation - This is another very important area I think we should focus on. A good read-me file can go a long way. Not only does it reduce stress for the users, it also helps reduce theme support time .

Flexibility - It’s a little bit harder to design for potentially… everyone. I try to keep the designs and codes as flexible as possible because I never know what you’ll use it for.

Plugin Integrations - This area should be easy if you have the last step down to a science. Flexibility and plugin integrations go hand in hand. For myself, I’m trying to take it a step further and pre-style the plugins. In my own themes, you’ll typically find the following integrated plugins:

• WP-Sticky
• WP-PostRatings
• WP-PageNavi
• Comment License (more important people realize)
• FlicKrRss
• Share This
• Author Highlight
• Contact Form

Other Features

• Cross-browser compatibility
• Banner switcher and other theme options
• Print Stylesheet
• Dynamic Tabs
• Social Bookmark Integration
• Slideshow
• Multimedia Integration
• Translatable

—

To all loyal small potatoes: Sorry for the recent silence on this blog. I’m working hard on the themes club so I can take a break and make it in time for the Thailand water festival in April. Then, hopefully, I’d be able to hop from Thailand to Korea by May.

That’s it. I’ll be back with some new stuff for the themes club next time. Peace out small potatoes!

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Mark of Automattic.com corrected this problem.

Akismet, the anti-spam plugin / tool we all know and depend on to filter millions of spam each day is being used to censor certain bloggers. Recently, someone or a group of people blacklisted my online-moniker, Small Potato.

I know this because my comment (on my own blog) is listed on the Akismet Spam list. This morning, I posted a comment on WpCandy.com to thank Michael Castilla for featuring my themes and that comment also didn’t show up. (Michael de-spammed my comment so you can see it now.)

Maybe I’m paranoid, but I have a feeling getting blacklisted a week after launching my $5 themes club isn’t an accident or a coincidence. After all, a lot of what I said, how I see things, and what I do in the WordPress community rub people the wrong way.

For the sake of a coherent message, I’ll put my thoughts in an ordered list:

1. First of all, I do not know how Akismet’s internal system work, but I managed to track it down to my name, Small Potato. Fortunately, my email, blog’s address, and IP are fine. I was testing the comments on my personal blog (not this one) and my comments got through as long as I didn’t use the name Small Potato.
2. Second, I’m pretty sure that I’m not dumb and / or sleepy enough to mark my own comments as spam again and again for the past several days. At this point, I believe it took the effort of a group of people to blacklist me.
3. Third, the other possibility is the spammers are going after the term Small Potato and I’m simply caught in this new spam wave for potatoes. I doubt it.
4. Fourth, if some people did get together just to blacklist me, that’s really lame. Don’t blacklist me, bro! Hahaha. However, what’s happening to me isn’t a surprise, like most things you do with other people in life, you have to trust the people until they prove otherwise so I’m not going to start doubting my friends and people I know.
5. Fifth, even if this whole thing turns out to be an accident or a glitch in the system. The potential to privately censor people is there. And, it’s difficult to combat this sneaky method. No matter how big or small, going through the spam list is a tedious task that no one wants to do. Therefore, if you’re being blacklisted on your friends’ blogs, they won’t check for you unless you bring it to their attention.
6. Sixth, who knows how many people are being blacklisted. I get hundreds of spam comments per day. Usually, I just clear the spam list without looking through it. (You probably do the same.) And that’s really…unfortunate for those blacklisted bloggers like myself.

I don’t care about my own comments, but I’ll test out an alternate spam filtering system for the sake of this blog’s commenters.

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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.

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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?

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Right now, TemplatesBrowser.com is down, but another site has taken its place. The new WordPress theme spammer site is WordPress-Designer.com.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Themes that are up for downloads on WordPress-Designer.com have been re-packaged with a spam link to promote a blog about forex trading.

As you can see, even one of my themes, Digg 3 Column, is on that site. And of course, I DON’T support what they’re doing.

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve given up freelancing for a long time. It’s no longer fun or worth while. I’m aiming for higher than what freelancing can pay me on average. Yes, I’m aware there are $10,000 projects out there, but the point is I would be working for someone else. Once the project is finished, I get the money and nothing more.

If you’re one of my loyal readers, you know I’ve been dying to open up my own WordPress theme store, especially after what I experienced first hand from the success of the Showcase theme. Ideally, I want to duplicate that success over and over again with less effort, and without the word freelance.

But at this point, after some research, it looks like it isn’t worth while for me to go with the WordPress store either. First of all, Showcase caters a special niche, website galleries / photo-blogs. Customers are more willing to pay a higher price for a premium theme like Showcase. Second, it’s very time consuming to create a high quality, but regular blog theme that you can sell over and over again.

For example, Template Monster maximum-buys are six per premium WordPress theme. Their high average is five purchases per theme.

Let’s round up Template Monster’s average price and assume that they don’t have to pay any transaction fees. That’s $60 per theme with a $300 revenue potential ($60 x 5). $300? Unless it takes $30 to produce a theme that earns $300, I wouldn’t know why anyone would do it.

In Template Monster’s case, their themes are not hard to produce and duplicate. (They do duplicate and modify a little to come up with new designs). Plus, they probably have in-house designers that work for cheap. I’m talking offshore kind of rates, which means Template Monster’s headquarter isn’t located in United States, Canada, or any Euro countries.

Assuming that Template Monster pays offshore rates for WordPress themes production, I went looking for offshore web design firms. So far, I’ve found a lot of cheap rates, but no high quality results.

Let’s make another assumption, you can’t outsource. So what do you do to compete with Template Monster? You spend several days on each theme to create awesome designs that totally put Template Monster’s WordPress themes to shame so you can run them out of business or price your theme at a higher price. But wait, because each theme will be purchased around five times, what will you do to keep the money coming in? Would you spend several more days on each new theme to create more awesome designs?

How will you get the targeted traffic to average five purchases per theme in the first place?

That’s an exhausting pace and one reason why I’m re-considering the idea of opening a WordPress theme store.

The above are unedited random thoughts. I will post more to expand on this topic as I explore other options and business models for WordPress designers.

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To nominate a theme, write a comment based on the following format:

• Name of Theme
• Download page / address
• Author’s home page (optional)

Nomination period closes at 3:00 PM (PST) Sunday, September 23, 2007. Please double check nominated themes before posting yours.

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