WPDesigner

Below is a list of my favorite Sandbox skins from the Sandbox Design Competition, listed in alphabetical order. I included notes written about each one while judging for the competition. View all 46 skins. Which ones are your favorites?

(The competition and judging period is over. According to the guidelines for judges, I’m allowed to publish this post. See who won.)

Diurnal

DIURNAL PROs:

• Well spaced
• Fluid width
• Valid CSS, light weight
• Use of CSS imports for additional features
• Wide image doesn’t break layout

(more…)

TemplatesBrowser.com/wordpress-themes/ is a WordPress theme download site, re-distributing hundreds of modified themes while piggy-backing the theme authors’ credit messages in the footer to link back to TemplatesBrowser.com.

Other than ripping off GPL and even Creative Commons themes, it isn’t safe to use themes modified by Templates Browser. They don’t simply link back to their own site. They also package encoded, hidden ads via the themes’

files.

Additional Readings:

• WordPress & Joomla users beware!
• Beware of TemplatesBrowser.com

After reading:

• Matt takes over http://themes.wordpress.net
• If I could walk on water, you’d complain I can’t swim
• wank.wordpress.com

I realized that I’m a complete douchebag. Whatever I thought I knew or believed about WordPress and its community went out the window. I don’t know where to start explaining to you how blind I’ve been.

Of course, I don’t expect you to understand what the heck I’m writing about right now. I think only 5% to 10% of everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) involved in WordPress or uses WordPress actually understands this post, which is a shame.

The three pages I linked to above are real eye openers. (I’m not saying you should believe in everything on those three pages.) However, those pages are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much truth to uncover and so much more that none of us could ever get to (unless, we were the ones involved), it’s sad.

The bottom line is the people that are actually helping others without ulterior motives should receive more recognition and rewards, not that they’re asking for it. Second, debates and everyone involved should be more transparent. Third, don’t trust everything you read. Fourth, don’t trust everyone you meet. Fifth, Small Potato is an uninformed douchebag.

Let me start out with my own wish list.

1. Circular navigation and the option to turn it on and off - I wouldn’t know where to even begin with this. It would be unbelievable if the WordPress team could tack this on for the future. Here’s my example of a circular menu (created in Photoshop):

   

2. Dynamic sidebars - You’re already moving sidebar widgets up and down, back and forth. Why not apply that feature to the actual sidebar content? Allow users to rearrange sidebar content, not just from the Sidebar Widgets page. Check out the iTheme by NDesign Studio for an example.
3. New SEO-friendly structure - Although Google loves blogs and not many bloggers actually care about SEO (search engine optimization), it would be nice to go to sleep knowing that your blog’s theme is SEOed. For one thing, WordPress uses H2 for sidebar titles, when it should be using H3 or no heading tags at all. Sure, you can change this by using a
   functions.php

   file and tell it to adjust the tags before and after sidebars titles, but it’s a pain if you have to do that with every theme.

That’s all I can think of for now. Do you have a WordPress theme wish list?

In the previous post about business models for WordPress theme designers, I mentioned a little about designing stock themes. Here’s how I think stock themes should be done.

Why create a theme for sale at $10 per download? Why not create a theme for free and let people upgrade to an advance version for the same $10?

For now, the fact is not many people would buy stock themes or pay-per-download themes at $10 to $50. The best you can do is average ten sales for each theme. That’s a waste of time if you’re not outsourcing at a very low rate.

If you create a great theme and release it for public use, you’ll get the traffic needed to generate sales. Once you’ve gotten the traffic, allow users downloading your theme to upgrade to an advance or premium version of that theme for $5 to $10. The upgraded version would include color scheme variations, more integrated plugins, and other custom features that are not available to the free version

You’re not tricking or egging anyone into buying the advance version as long as the advance version has custom features or extra details that themes don’t normally provide.

One drawback to this business model is the pricing. Charging for a non-exclusive theme at $50 per download is possible, but not likely for upgrades only. However, the traffic generated from releasing a free version will balance out that drawback. Along with selling upgrades, you can leverage the remaining traffic to sell advertisements on your blog.

One popular (great) theme garners more rewards than ten average themes. If you don’t have the patience to put out a great theme, you’re wasting your time. So, while you sit there to admire your creation, here are some things to think about to better your theme.

Although the future for free WordPress themes is more and more plugin support and customizable theme options, looks matter. Bloggers are judging free themes, mostly, by the quality of their designs. With less experienced theme users, you need to make a good first impression.

Second, your theme needs to function well. Cross-browser compatibility is a must. A widget-ready sidebar is a plus (should be a must). Fluid width is a plus (expand and contract, based on users’ resolution). And if your theme supports multiple plugins, you’ve got a winner.

Last but not least is patience, design is about details, styling is about details, coding is about detailed testing. Without a lot of patience to take care of the details, you end up with an average theme.

Before you start another free theme, make a check list. Don’t release that theme until every item on that list is checked.

It’s a shame theme designers don’t have too many options in the WordPress world. Luckily, there is more than one business model. However, only one of them seems to be worthwhile and profitable, for now. Below are the models that I’m aware of.

Freelancing for Small Business Owners

Small business owners are trying to take their presence online and / or trying to establish a relationship with the clients. Targeting small business is the most profitable option for freelance WordPress designers. Small business owners are more willing to pay you what you deserve, usually upwards of $1,000.

If you’re not working for small business owners, you’re probably making anywhere from $200 to $800 per project. Regardless of how much clients would pay, generally, they’re annoying. (Web developers and customer service is a bad mix.) Why not get paid more for the same amount of annoyance?

Unless you’re under contract for big projects after big projects, targeting small businesses is the way to go. You can look to solostream.com for an example of a WordPress designer catering the small business niche.

Stock Theme Design / Pay Per Download

Basically, you create a theme and sell it multiple times, like $49.95 per download. This option is a bit risky because you have to sell a lot to profit and it’s kind of NOT worthwhile if you don’t get the full $49.95 back or can’t find great designers to outsource at a very low rate. Not to mention, you have to pay online transaction fees for the theme purchases and worry about restricting usage to only one theme per domain.

The good part is that once you’re done, you’re done; you can sell the same theme over and over again. On the other hand, let’s say every theme is worth a $1,000. You’d have to sell more than twenty copies per theme. Twenty seems like a low number, but not many people are willing to buy WordPress themes at $49.95 (stock themes range anywhere from $15 to $60). You’re lucky if you can sell ten copies, regardless of the quality.

Free Theme Sponsorship

You create a free WordPress theme. Look for sponsors to pay you to put text links (to the sponsors’ sites) in the footer of your theme. And then, you hope a lot of people download and use your theme.

This is the last option that I would wish any theme designer to resort to. Actually, I wouldn’t want anyone to follow this business model at all. You’re basically selling yourself short. It’s not even worthwhile as extra-income. Here’s Matt Coddington’s detailed break down of this business model.

If you’ve found another way to make money with WordPress themes or have an idea on how WordPress designers could make more money, be sure to let me know so I can add it to this list.

First, I admit that only geeky WordPress designers like myself would find this amusing. It’s a small error in the WordPress default theme, Kubrick.

Here it is…

The paragraph tag is not closed correctly. If you have the Kubrick theme activated, on your password-protected post, the comments area will say, “This post is password protected. Enter the password to view comments.”

You can find that message in the Kubrick comments.php file as:

<p class=”nocomments”>This post is password protected. Enter the password to view comments.<p>

To close it correctly, it should be:

<p class=”nocomments”> </p>

I spotted this a long time ago while learning how to customize the comments template and thought that the WordPress people would fix it soon. Looks like they haven’t touched the comments.php file for a while, not even after WordPress had to update Kubrick for the 2.1 series.

I’m posting it now to reiterate the first rule in my WordPress tutorial series, which is close everything in the order that you open them.

While developing your own WordPress theme, you should validate all versions and templates of your theme, which should include the password-protected message. For a list of pages and template versions to validate, go to lesson number 16 of the tutorial series.

The results have been in for days. So what’s the verdict if you haven’t seen the poll? Over one third (36%) of you wouldn’t pay over $100 for an exclusive WordPress theme. For nonexclusive (pay-per-download theme), it’s $20 for each download, which sounds about right.

Reality Check

From a web designer point of view, the top voted price for an exclusive theme is beyond comprehension. Let me paint a better picture:

In general web design, a five-page website costs you typically $300 - $500 among the average freelancers; that includes design, coding, and content integration (filling the site with text and images). A ten-page site will yield an $800 to a $1000 quote.

Those numbers are ballpark prices among average freelancers. Contracting a company or highly distinguished web developer to handle your site would for sure cost upwards of $1000.

Why such a big difference?

I’ll go over three outstanding reasons.

Low-level Freelancers - Although you do get what you pay for, however, I’m not talking skill-wise here. The problem is there are many freelancers willing to work for a lower price range just so they can get the job. Although this also applies to general web development, I have to mention this reason because it’s even worse within the WordPress theme circle.

Consider the Client - WordPress theme clients are different from general web design clients. I believe WordPress theme clients are more knowledgeable. Some are interested in modifying the final product rather being happy with receiving a well-designed theme.

Ease of Use and Management - A part of the problem is how easy it is to set up a WordPress blog, add content, manage it, and find free themes for it. What you end up having to deal with is knowledgeable and more experienced clients that simply want custom modifications to look unique instead of a completely unique/exclusive theme.

Regardless of how easy or hard, graphic or code intensive, WordPress themes are time consuming. The time it takes to put together a theme ranges from three or four hours to three or four days.

Every WordPress designer has to go through the same process:

• Design
• Code
• Skin for WordPress
• Test
• Correct
• Validate

Some themes are free. Some cost $45 (per download). Some cost $2,000 (completely unique/custom and exclusive). Question is…

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For those that don’t know, free WordPress theme sponsoring is the practice of paying the author/designer of a certain theme to link to your site through a footer link (usually in the copyright area).

The designer gets paid and the sponsor’s site gets promoted for being linked by hundreds of blogs. (It’s almost guaranteed that each free WordPress theme gets downloaded at least one hundred times. Several of my themes have been downloaded by the thousands.) The main benefit for the sponsor’s site is Google Pagerank. Pagerank is only important to people that know what it is. If you don’t know then forget about it.

So what’s the problem?
The problem is that, to some, theme sponsoring is considered spam. Right now, sponsored themes are up for downloads just like regular free themes. You download and use it for your blog, but you don’t know the sponsored link is in the footer of your site (unless you check for it), which means you’re unwillingly linking to the sponsor’s site without knowing it.

How come this is happening?
Not all bloggers, downloading themes for their blogs, are checking for the sponsored links. Not all bloggers are aware of this in the first place. Sponsored themes are being uploaded onto free-theme-download sites just like the rest of the free themes. It’s hard to tell unless you actually check theme-by-theme to make sure you’re not downloading a sponsored theme. And last, but not least, the theme designers are not warning us up front.

So what’s my take on it?
I am not against it if the theme designers make sure that people know what they’re downloading. If you know that it’s a sponsored theme and know that there will be a site-wide link at the bottom of your blog (to whatever site), yet you still download and install it, that’s acceptable to me.

Personally, I chose not to offer theme sponsorship.

Advice for WordPress theme designers
I know it takes quite a few hours to put a theme together and all of us should get rewarded for that, but try to be transparent and up front with what you’re putting out there. Then, you should be fine.