Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

So thrilled to announce yet a new quality freebie here on Blogsessive. Meet Typominima, a free typography based, gorgeous, minimal WordPress theme fit for the writer inside you.

If you’re looking for a free theme to help you put the content in spotlight, without worrying about it being suffocated by advertising space and unnecessary design blign, than Typominima is the perfect free WordPress theme for you.

The purpose of this theme is to enable writers and publisher to express themselves online in a clean and beautiful environment. You can check out the theme features and also a series of posts containing sample styling for the most common elements you’ll need on your blog before you download Typominima.

Typominima Preview & Download

Head over to the Typominima DEMO site to view it in action and learn more about its features.

And of course, you can download it for free here: Download Typominima (v1.0)

Note: Please do not link directly to the file if you wish to promote this theme. Link to this post instead. Thank you!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

Since Twitter is yet to offer an alternative to those less savvy with code implementation, I’ve decided to offer you a WordPress plugin to help you include the official Twitter Tweet button in your blog posts. Download the plugin and from this point on, it’s all as easy as 1-2-3.

Current plugin version: 1.1
Supported WordPress versions: Most recent. Pre-3.0 versions not yet tested.

Twitter Button WordPress Plugin Options

To easily adjust and include the Twitter button in your blog posts, you have a plugin administration panel. Here’s a screenshot of the options:

Download the Twitter Button WordPress Plugin

Click here to Download the Twitter Button WordPress Plugin

Plugin Updates

Version 1.1 has been released. Download link is still the same (above). Fixed a bug that prevented recommendations to be displayed. Please re-download and re-upload. No need to deactivate the plugin. Just overwrite the files in order to keep your settings.

Known issues

Since Twitter did not offer an image based alternative to the button and counter, feeds will only display a CSS styled Tweet button without a counter. As soon as Twitter completes their API, I will also implement it in the plugin.

* Support for the ‘Twitter Button for WordPress’ plugin will be offered only through the comments. Thank you for downloading and enjoy your new retweet button!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

Every once in a while I like to scan the plugins directory on WordPress.org and see what beautiful & useful pieces of code the community comes up with. Here’s a selection of 6 of the latest WordPress plugin releases that caught my attention during the last “scan”.

1. Simple Fields

Plugin description: Simple Fields for WordPress lets you add groups of fields to your edit post page. Simple Fields turns WordPress into an even more powerful Content Management System (CMS).

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Simple Fields

2. Simple Mail Address Encoder

Plugin description: Automatically encodes every e-mail address on posts, pages and sidebar widgets to prevent spam. Simply decodes any previously encoded e-mail address by just clicking the mail link.

Required WP version: 2.7+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Simple Mail Address Encoder

3. SEO-Tool – Keyword Density Checker

Plugin description: This SEO plugin automatically generate a keyword density report of used keywords and 2-/3-word keyphrases in the pages’ or posts’ content. The statistics will be updated at a specific interval while the author is typing in edit-post and edit-page dialog.

Required WP version: 1.5+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: SEO-Tool – Keyword Density Checker

4. Anthologize

Plugin description: Anthologize is a free, open-source, WordPress-based platform for publishing. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, pull in feeds from external sites, or create new content directly in Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a coherent volume for export in several ebook formats, including PDF, EPUB, and TEI.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Anthologize

5. FeedBurner Stats by DevMD.com

Plugin description: The plugin enables you to get a great insight into your FeedBurner feed, along with information and statistics about the subscribers, views, clicks, feed item information and chronological statistics right from your WordPres administration panel.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1
Also requires: PHP 5.1 or higher

Downlod & more info: FeedBurner Stats by DevMD.com

6. Members Only Menu Plugin

Plugin description: This plugin allows you to mark a page as “Members Only”. Once this is done, the user must login to view the page. However, you can still add the page to the menu, and it will then ONLY show up if the user is authenticated. That way you can have more items for logged in members on your website.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Members Only Menu Plugin

Important note

All the above descriptions are provided by the plugins’ authors. At the time this post was published, the latest stable WordPress release was 3.0.1, thus, all plugins are “Compatible up to 3.0.1″. Check out each plugin’s info page to see an updated compatibility as new WordPress versions come out. And remember, always try (if possible) new plugins in a testing environment, on a test installation of your WordPress blog, for safety measures. If anything breaks or you need instructions, please ask the authors for support, I’m simply the messenger.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

The latest major release of our favorite blogging platform – WordPress 3.0 – has brought quite a few new features to the table. Among them, the custom navigation menus and the post thumbnails (featured image), the latter being available since version 2.9 came out. This started a whole new trend between theme developers, most of them rushing to announce WordPress 3.0 ready themes.

In all this rush, some of the themes released suffered from one big problem: backward compatibility. Why is that important and how can we give some backward compatibility to our WordPress 3.0 ready themes?

Importance of backward compatibility

While I feel that generally offering some sort of backward compatibility is just a common sense policy, in this case it’s more than that. Let me explain why.

Not everyone uses the latest WordPress release, and that is for various reasons:

• Failed to update, or waiting to make sure it’s “stable”;
• Doesn’t really get the importance of an up to date software;
• Certain plugins they use are not yet 3.0/3.0.1 compatible.

This doesn’t mean they don’t want to try and use your beautiful 3.0 ready WordPress theme, or that they shouldn’t. But you see, the biggest trick resides right here, in this terminology: “3.0 ready”. The actual meaning of this is that the theme is compatible with the 3.0 version, not that it requires 3.0 or higher to function properly, and this leads a lot of people into a trap that will cause their blogs and websites to break.

So, the common sense thing to do would be to take the time and apply certain checks and fallback solutions to our themes. Lets see how we can do that.

Adding WordPress 3.0 features with fallback support

Both of the above mentioned features – custom menus and post thumbnails – are based on a WordPress function added once 2.9 was released: add theme support();

Adding post thumbnails support

In order to add post thumbnail support to your theme, you’d write this in your functions.php file:

// Adds support for post thumbnails
add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

Simple adding this will cause any WordPress installation prior to 2.9 to break, as the add_theme_support() function was not part of the WordPress core back then. The fix? As easy as this:

/* Checks if the installation has the function defined.
If true, continues to add the support for post thumbnails. */
if(function_exists(add_theme_support)) :
	add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');
endif;

Adding custom menus support

In order to also add support for the custom menus feature, you’d normally write this:

// Add theme support for custom menus
add_theme_support( 'menus' );

// Register a custom menu name/location
register_nav_menus(array(
	'custom-menu' => __( 'My Custom Menu' ),
));

In this case, we obviously need to check for core support of both functions: add_theme_support() and register_nav_menus(). Let see how we can do that, also including in this check the post thumbnails:

if(function_exists(add_theme_support)) {
	add_theme_support('post-thumbnails'); // Support for post thumbnails

	if(function_exists(add_theme_support)) {
		add_theme_support( 'menus' ); // Support for custom menus
		register_nav_menus(array(
			'custom-menu' => __( 'My Custom Menu' ),
		));
	}
}

In case you wonder why I chose to add support for menus only after checking if register_nav_menus() is defined, it’s simply because there’s no point in adding support for a feature that you won’t be able to use. Remember, add_theme_support() was added in 2.9, while register_nav_menus() became available only in 3.0.

But how about adding compatibility in the front-end of your theme?

When using post thumbnails, never call them without checking if the function exists first:

// Performs a check to see if the function is available and there's also a thumbnail attached
if (function_exists(the_post_thumbnail) AND has_post_thumbnail()) {
	the_post_thumbnail();
}

For the custom menus, the thing is just a tad trickier, but simple as well. I’m usually using a function that I wrote to specifically check for custom menus support, and even though the wp_nav_menu() function provides a fallback solution, defaulted to wp_page_menu(), this fallback will only activate for 3.0 installations without any menus created and allocated to the reserved space. The fallback won’t set off if you’re using a version prior to 3.0.

Due to my preference of wp_list_pages() over wp_page_menu() – for more customization options – the following function will apply a compatibility fallback to wp_list_pages:

function my_nav_menu() {
	// Check if installation has wp_nav_menu() defined.
	// If true, generate the menu, but don't print it yet;
	if(function_exists(wp_nav_menu)) {
		$my_nav_menu = wp_nav_menu(array('menu' => 'Top Menu', 'container' => '', 'fallback_cb' => 'wp_list_pages', 'depth' => 2, 'echo' => false));
	}
	// If false, generate the menu using wp_list_pages, but don't print it yet;
	else {
		$my_nav_menu = '<ul class="menu">'.wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&echo=0&depth=2').'</ul>';
	}
	// Prints out the menu;
	echo $my_nav_menu;
}

Now, in the front end. instead of calling your menu with wp_nav_menu() you’ll now use my_nav_menu() to display a backward compatible version.

Conclusions

Caught in the rush of doing something nice and new, like a child discovering a shiny new toy, we can miss out some of the most basic problems. Most of them are really easy to solve, like the above mentioned and it would be common sense to make use of them.

And remember: if ( function_exists(function_name) ) is your geeky B.F.F.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Do you need quality design resources? Graphic River has them. Tons! And cheap...

December 26 is here, which means today I am going to announce the two winners of the Xmas ReTweet Contest.

Each of the winners will have the possibility of choosing one of the Premium WordPress Themes available in the WordPress category at ThemeForest as their prize.

Complete list of participants

Below you’ll find the complete list of participants (39) that had valid contest entries (followed both steps in order to enter the competition):

1. Bloghita - @bloghita
2. Marius. - @Marius__
3. Radu Panciuc - @panciuc
4. Eugen - @pauneugen
5. Nikolaevi4 - @Nikolaevi14
6. JeremyOLED - @JeremyOLED
7. Aldo - @iFeelanceWeb
8. Kimberly Castleberry - @KimJCastleberry
9. AlexT - @alext_1020
10. Razvan Girmacea - @RazvanGirmacea
11. Cristian VADUVA - @Vaduva
12. Youwei - @Youwei
13. Calítoe.:. - @Calitoe
14. Daniel - @danielpeisar
15. Anand Srinivasan - @knewthis
16. Margaret Ayad - @eracose
17. Nice from Thailand - @SE7ENize
18. Jennifer - @grizzarkhov
19. Dimitry Ekzarkhov - @design_deity
20. Tracy - @mattnem05
21. Dhaunae @Dhaunae
22. Jessica Dooley - @jessicadooley
23. Jason - @jasontromm
24. elmot - @elmot
25. Kat - @simplywp
26. Codrut @ Blog Post Ideas - @CodrutTurcanu
27. Damir - @wisehat79
28. Melvin - @melvinblog
29. Prasanth Chandra - @pcsbox
30. Jacob Yap - @jacobyap
31. Raju - @rajupp
32. naz - @aenaz
33. Suhas - @suhastech
34. Siddanth
35. Slipdisc - @Roadrippersid
36. technbohowl - @technohowl
37. Rich - @fireitup4USA
38. Michael Cannon - @SMARTcutGeek
39. Kushal Chen - @slayershanks

Contest winners

Here are the lucky winners:

2. Marius. – @Marius__ and
23. Jason – @jasontromm

The 2 winners have been selected using the random number generator available at Random.org. See screenshots below for the winner drawing process:

Xmas Contest – Setting up the draw

Xmas Contest – Draw Results

Claiming your prize

Marius & Jason, I will contact you both via the email addresses you have used to place your comments (contest entries) and we’ll set up the prize selection and delivery. Congratulations!

I would also want to thank everyone else who participated in this fun Christmas contest. The number of entries has surpassed my expectations. If it were possible, I’d gladly give a prize to each and every one of you. But fear not, there will be more contests, so stay tuned to Blogsessive through the blog or my twitter account: @Blogsessive

Happy Holidays!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

How long has it been since I’ve held the last contest on Blogsessive? Too long, but since holidays are close, lets have some fun and make two of you folks the owners of a brand new premium WordPress theme from ThemeForest. It is a simple contest and everyone owning a Twitter account is invited to join in!

Xmas Contest Prizes

Two of the contest participants will each win a premium WordPress theme of their choice from ThemeForest. Contest prize selection is restricted to the WordPress category on the previous mentioned website.

The two winners will be randomly picked by me on the day of December 26th. Read the rules below.

Xmas Contest Rules

Do you own a Twitter account? If so, there are two things you need to do in order to enter this contest:

First you will have to retweet an exact copy of the following:

Win a Premium #WordPress theme in @Blogsessive’s Xmas Retweet Contest! http://bit.ly/XmasRT Click to enter!

Second, after you’ve retweeted the above message, come back here and post a link to the Twitter status containing the retweet in this post’s comments section.

Important:

Entries are valid ONLY if both steps have been followed exactly. Participants are allowed one entry per Twitter account!

Xmas Contest Results

The contest results will be made publicly available on December 26th. I will contact the winners via the email addresses they will use to leave comments on this post, so make sure you comment with a real valid email address in order to claim your prize.

Good luck to you all and let the fun begin!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

With the StudioPress WordPress themes you can really take your blog to a higher level!

As promised a while back, I’ve finished editing the Corporate Blogging Guide in PDF eBook format. So, today I give you the chapters you’ve had the chance to read online plus a whole new chapter (8. Technical aspects) and some bonus tips to guide you in your corporate blogging adventures!

How to download the eBook?

In order to download the ebook, all you have to do is to subscribe for free to Blogsessive’s RSS feed (if you haven’t done so until now) and you’ll find the download link at the end of each article in the feed.

eBook preview and contents

Here are two screenshots of the book’s cover and the contents page:

Don’t forget to subscribe…

… to Blogsessive’s RSS feed to download the eBook and to stay updated. There are plenty more freebies in the works, including a new WordPress theme and my second eBook: “From Zero to Blogging Hero: 100 Blogging Tips”

Enjoy the eBook friends!

PS: Please do not link to the download link in the feed. Instead, if you wish to promote this ebook, link to this post. Otherwise, I will consider it spam and wrongful usage!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Blogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!

The wonderful community of WordPress developers constantly provides us with interesting new themes and plugins. I have scanned the most recent WordPress plugin releases and came up with a list of 10 plugins definitely worth taking a look at.

Keep in might that these are new releases and so, their stability and status should be considered as BETA. You might want to test them on a backup server before going live. The descriptions listed here are those submitted by the plugins’ authors and do not necessarily express my views.

1. WP Content Slideshow

WP Content Slideshow shows up to 5 Posts in a very nice and powerfull Javascript Slideshow. On the left side of the Slideshow it displays an image for every post. On the right side, there are all the titles (and a small description under the title) of the posts. The Slideshow highlights the active post and repeats automatically after getting to the 5th post. You have a powerfull Administration Area to adjust the category, the number of posts, the width and height, and many colours for the Slideshow!

Download: WP Content Slideshow
Compatibility: 2.6+

2. Sidebar Generator

Now you can create as many sidebars as you need for any page you want. Thats right, page/post specific sidebars. You can easily seperate your site into sections, or make every single page have specific sidebar content on it. Great for CMS sites.

Download: Sidebar Generator
Compatibility: 2.8.0+

3. WordPress Tabs Slides

Tabs and Slides (in post/page) Plugin gives you the ability to easily add content tabs and/or content slides. The tabs emulate a multi-page structure, while the slides emulate an accordion-like structure, inside a single page!

Download: WordPress Tabs Slides
Compatibility: 2.5+

4. Custom Login Page

With the Custom Login Page, you can change the background image of your login page, the background image/color of your login form div, the main logo image of your login page, and add custom CSS. All through a simple interface. Remember to view the Help tab at the top of the settings page of the plugin.

Download: Custom Login Page
Compatibility: 2.0.2+

5. Featured Page Widget

Allows you to feature pages on your sidebar using an excerpt of the page and a text or image link to the page.

Download: Featured Page Widget
Compatibility: 2.8 – 2.8.4 (maybe 2.8.5)

6. Ecwid Shopping Cart

Ecwid is free full-fledged shopping cart that can be easily add to any blog. It offers the performance and flexibility you need, with none of the hassles you don’t.

Download: Ecwid Shopping Cart
Compatibility: 2.7+

7. SubHeading

This plugin uses a custom field to allow subheadings to be added to both posts and pages. The custom sub heading field is re-positioned so that it is displayed directly below the main title.

Download: SubHeading
Compatibility: 2.8.2+

8. ShowTime Slideshow

Displays all pictures attached to a post/page as a slideshow. Simple setup. This plugin requires Adobe Flash, reverts nicely to default WordPress gallery if Flash is not found. Choose among high quality transitions. Ken Burns (pan&zoom) and many other effects. Full Screen mode.

Download: ShowTime Slideshow
Compatibility: 2.7+

9. Quick Adsense

Quick Adsense is an Ads management WordPress plugin. It offers a quicker & flexible way to insert Adsense or any Ads code into a blog post. Besides, it can randomly place the Ads anywhere within a post. It comes with a simple setting page, and it does not overwhelm you with complicated customizable options.

Download: Quick Adsense
Compatibility: 2.5 – 2.8.4 (maybe 2.8.5)

10. Members

Members is a plugin that extends your control over your blog. It’s a user, role, and content management plugin that was created to make WordPress a more powerful CMS. The plugin is created with a components-based system — you only have to use the features you want.

Download: Members
Compatibility: 2.8+

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Blogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!

Loving WordPress is SO easy! You got thousands of great looking blogs, custom themes, free themes, premium themes and designers go beyond that by using WordPress as CMS for their non-blog projects. A while back I showed you 10 non-blog websites powered by WordPress, and now it’s time to take a look at 10 more!

If you have any additions to the list and wish to suggest a website for a future post, do so by adding a comment.

1. ProBar

Visit ProBar

2. Krispy Krush

Visit Krispy Krush

3. The Salon

Visit The Salon

4. Imaginaria Creative

Visit Imaginaria Creative

5. Lyndsey Hamilton Events

Visit Lyndsey Hamilton Events

6. IOKON Media

Visit IOKON Media

7. Loja Birds

Visit Loja Birds

8. Bug Interactive

Visit Bug Interactive

9. Ville de Falaise

Visit Ville de Falaise

10. Cow Says Moo

Visit Cow Says Moo

Yes! WordPress is fun. And easy!

If you’re looking to have a site built on WordPress, I can help you through my WordPress focused design studio.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Blogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!

A few days back I was reading this interesting post on BloggingTips.com on how to plug an eBook on your blog and I instantly remembered all those ugly looking eBook sales/landing pages that you STILL find all over the Internet, like we’re still way back in ’98.

Do you have a good product to sell on your blog? Then why not give it a real chance. Why tell your visitors straight from the sales page that they are either stupid (“Please X, let me buy your book for only $29.99!) or that your have no idea how to make a unique presentation for a unique item!

Yes, I’m sure that almost every internet marketer will tell you how those ugly pages are effective, and how their “call to action” phrases and messages are really effective. Allow me to disagree! I hate them. You hate them. We run away the second we land on them!

A sale is not make by the number of colors and fonts you use on your landing page. It’s not made by the number of screen scrolls a user has to make in order to get to the part where the “call to action” makes him feel small and stupid compared to you, the big internet marketing guru!

A sale is made based on the quality of your products and ease of the (guided) buying process!

How can ClickTale help?

I discovered this tool (ClickTale) while working with one of my studio‘s customers and i was impressed by how easy it is to use it and how much useful information it provides:

• Record and watch actual user browsing sessions (real-time);
• Link analytics;
• User behavior: click heatmaps, scrolling heatmaps;
• Form analytics;
• and more…

Here’s a quick presentation of the tool:

So, there you go. A good user tracking tool that will give you enough insight on your visitor’s behavior and will help you discover which are your sales/landing page weak spots. And the best part? There’s also an option of signing up for a FREE account (of course with limited capabilities).

Also, if you’re looking to go pro with this tool, the guys over at ClickTale have a damn good offer of 20% off for a 6-month plan and 40% off for the annual subscription.

Go, take a look at ClickTale, test it out and say NO to those ugly looking sales pages!

This post does NOT contain affiliate links and it’s NOT a sponsored post.
It’s a post about a tool which I believe will help you improve your online sales!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

Setting up correctly the permalinks in WordPress is one of the things that contribute to your blog’s better search engine optimization (SEO). Using relevant slugs for categories, pages and posts will help improve your general ranking. Those looking to get the most out of these permalinks will want to remove the ‘category base’.

There are about a dozen tutorials out there, telling you how to handle this job on your own, editing PHP files, the .htaccess file and adjusting WordPress settings, but what you actually need is one small and efficient plugin that does it all for your, with no extra effort, other than the download and installation process.

WP No Category Base

The WP No Category Base plugin will remove the category base from all your linkd in a SEO friendly way, using 301 redirects for all your old permalinks to the new ones. Also, it is compatible with other Sitemap plugins and works with multi-level categories.

There’s one downside to this method (actually the reason why WordPress decided to use the category base). If you’re going to use the same slug for both a page and a category (‘news’ for example), clicking on a link similar to http://yourdomain.com/news/ WILL take you to the category archive, and never to the page. So, be careful when choosing you permalink slug by keeping them unique.

For those using WordPress as CMS and not as a blog engine, this downside might prove useful when creating a page based navigation. Adding a page with a slug ‘news’ will redirect that menu link to the news archive, which is indeed useful.

Download the plugin: WP No Category Base

The plugin works with WordPress versions from 2.3 up to 2.8.4.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Do you need quality design resources? Graphic River has them. Tons! And cheap...

A while ago I wrote about a cool project that allows users to check how their blogs and websites stack against their competitors, Review My Web. Today, I’d like to present you with another free (and so useful) tool, from the same developer: RockinSEO.com.

Free Keyword Tracker

Yes, that’s what you get with RockinSEO. You get to track your website’s results in Google, Yahoo and the recently released Bing for up to 20 keywords, for free. More than that, for the same keywords you can compare your results with those of up to 3 competitor websites or blogs.
The results are easy to read and interpret as you can see in the following screenshots:

Track search engine keyword position

Check keywords against your competition

As you can see, the tool is really useful and simple to use, and any blogger interested in his blog’s position in the most relevant search engines should give it a try. And if you decide to do so…

Get Blogsessive’s Coupon and track up to 50 keywords!

Yes, that’s right. Even if the tool comes with a limit of 20 trackable keywords, the author, @Terry Novak has been kind enough to offer a special coupon to all the readers of Blogsessive who sign up for FREE until the end of this Friday. Use it and increase your account’s limit to 50 keywords.

Coupon code: blogsessive50

Now, go sign up and start optimizing your blog to number one!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

There’s a huge hype these days around WordPress and the (infamous?) GPL license. Out of the “big guys”, first Brian Gardner of StudioPress (ex-Revolution) decided to distribute his themes as GPL. Later, iThemes followed, and now it’s time for WooThemes to adopt the license.

The discussion around this always seems to evolve into “open source” versus “author protection”. As Alex King pointed out in one of his posts, theme authors should be aware of what the GPL license exposes them too, while it provides freedom for basically everyone else.

I’m not by any means against freedom and open source. I’ve been preaching about the power of WordPress and the wonder that it is, but what I love more is to see a protection system for those authors that make a living out of releasing quality themes and plugins for WordPress. Somewhere along the way, in our quest for “freedom” we forgot how hard it is to earn our living, how hard it is to learn the things we now use to feed our families.

With all the respect I have for Brian, Adii and Alex who have been more than an inspiration for so many people and their contributions to the world of WordPress changed our lives, I fail to see how this sudden change of heart (or maybe “dictated” by Matt Mullenweg’s recent reactions) will help other developers.

The problem does not reside in the GPL license, but rather in the fact that by using WordPress you have to also release your “products” under this license. In theory the GPL license is an amazing thing that allows people to improve and build upon other people’s work, and thus contributing to the development of a bigger, better product, free or paid.

The problem comes when commercial work can be distributed for free, once you get your hands on it. Brian and Alex both agree on the fact that most times, people come back to get support after getting pirated or unsupported versions of their work. Is this a good business model? Yes, if you are Brian, or Alex, or Adii. For those thriving in this poor economical moment the GPL license and its enforcing is like a hammer in the head.

While I totally agree with the ability of being able to contribute and improve software, I can’t stop thinking about those who will try and benefit for the work of developers, and not in a GPL-ish open source friendly way. Some developers don’t have the brand and support of thousands of bloggers that Alex, Brian or Adii have to fight these entitled-to-be pirates.

Can’t get the reality of this comment Alex received on his blog out of my mind:

But me, being an unknow guy from Mexico who is trying hard to make a living and if I released my work under GPL and you, The Alex King, repost my work for free, nobody will care who I am or if I’m having difficulties paying the rent.

Sure: “GPL ftw!” “Yay freedom” “That’s the spirit of the opensource” that is all b*****it if somebody use that freedom to take away food from my table.

I like opensource, but I prefer my three meals a day.

I’ve already release 2 of my works for free, the Simple Balance theme and the Latest Posts by Category plugin, plan to release another one pretty soon and I for one believe in helping as much as I can the others. But that’s the whole point: AS MUCH AS I CAN or AFFORD TO.

Developers are “forced” to find different business models: donations, updates, support. Again, all works well when you’re on top, otherwise the donation/support model is worth nothing. I’ve never expected huge donations for Simple Balance and I was right. 15.000 downloads later (with no promotion through the WordPress.org directory) the amount of donations is… $75. I can celebrate by renting a 3* room in a hotel in my city. At the same time I’ve lost count of the support requests, some of them starting like this: “This is URGENT, you must help me do X”. No, I don’t, especially if your communication skills are well below ZERO.

The only feasible business model under GPL is making a name for yourself. Don’t doubt it. As long as people will have the possibility of getting something for free. WordPress has to come up with a way to support ALL honest developers, not just the big names and those looking to make a quick buck. Even if that means an additional commercial license for WordPress, for those looking to be able to sell their products without the “limitations” of GPL. May it be a single-usage license or percent of the sale, this could be a good alternative and if I’d ever decide (which should be my decision) to release a commercial product, I’d gladly share my profits with this amazing platform that is WordPress.

Until then, some will only see the joys of GPL while others will see their own failure to make an honest living with the skills they’ve trained so hard and for so long. Unfortunately, there’s no middle way, at least for the masses, but I’m definitely looking forward for what Matt is preparing for those who embrace the GPL license.

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Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

For a long while the option panels where something that people could only find in premium (commercial) themes, and for a good reason. The pricing of their licenses allowed the premium theme developers to invest more time in giving theme users the ways to do through these panels what they could not do through coding.

With the buzz created around these themes, regular users became aware of what could really be achieved, and thus, those that could not afford the license of a premium theme, became more selective with the free ones. A good-looking theme was not enough anymore, and WordPress developers realized it.

A good premium theme would bring its developer not only a good amount of money, but also recognition in the community, and this is where the free theme developers scored their biggest points. Now that their “turf” was endangered they had to react, and they did. For premium themes like Thesis or WP Unlimited, users have now alternatives like Thematic, Hybrid, Carrington, WP Framework or my own (even if not a framework) Simple Balance.

Why should free theme developers consider adding an options page?

Because being “cool” is just not enough anymore. Theme developers need to learn how to be useful. Free stuff can be either useless and ignored or useful and praised. I’m yet to see the developer offering a free theme without gaining something from it, be it awareness, expertise, backlinks, donation money, you name it! But none of these are achieved through an uncompetitive – even if free – product.

5 Most looked for options in a WordPress theme

“Stand out from the crowd!” If I had a penny for every time I read this I’d laugh at Shoemoney’s AdSense check image sipping a chilled cocktail somewhere on a tropical island, but you know what? This saying is so true that it cannot be repeated enough, and users KNOW IT! Theme users want to be able to have their own identity online. They need to be able to customize their themes and make them express who they are and what they believe in. And this is where options pages come into play. What are the most looked for options? Let’s see…

1. Logo and / or header image update / replacement

It doesn’t matter if it’s a professionally designed logo or a simple Windows Paint play. If it gives the blogger satisfaction and he wants to display it, let him do so. Add either a file upload box or an input box where the user could enter the full URL to the logo image to use. Same goes for the header images.

2. Layout structure

If you’re developing a 2 column theme, give the user the option to choose to display the sidebar either on the left, or on the right. With 3 column themes, you can give them even more options, like having the content centered, between the sidebars, or having both sidebars on the same side (right or left) of the content. If only takes a couple of PHP conditions and some “visionary” CSS coding.

3. Custom navigation menus

Don’t expect users to want every page that they publish to show up in their blog’s main navigation area. Give them the option to select which pages should show up there, and why not, add their own links, even if external.

4. Custom RSS URLs and email subscription forms

Implementing a FeedBurner email subscription form is fairly easy for any developer, and I’m pretty sure that any dveloper knows how to customize such a script. The fact that it functions mostly based on a simple user ID should make the customization even easier through a theme options page.

5. Advertising management

Not everyone uses services like BuySellAds, or is affiliated with an advertising network. Some users actually prefer to take care of the advertising themselves. So, why not give them the possibility to do so by adding a few more field to the options page. Let them select the number of banners they need displayed, do-follow option, position of banners and so on. It takes a bit to develop, but the user response to it is amazing.

Additional options you could consider implementing

While the 5 options above are the most looked for, some users might also find the following options useful:

• Overall switch between serif and sans-serif typography;
• Theme color adjustments. Here are a couple of web-based color picker scripts you could use: one, two, three and four;
• Alternatively, you can offer a built in color schemes system;
• Custom “featured” areas;
• Additional, customizable widget areas;
• Twitter updates area;
• And the list could go on and on…

The limits are set by your knowledge and enthusiasm

While the enthusiasm is not something you train, but rather have it or not, knowledge can be trained. Remember that the WordPress Codex is your best friend, and the support forums can be of tremendous help. Additionally, Stefan Vervoort of DivitoDesign and WPToy has put together a very useful PDF called the “WordPress Theme Development Checklist“. Do take a look (and use it!).

So, the next time you think of releasing a free theme, ask yourself this: Is you theme competitive enough? If it’s not, it will not stand a chance when the alternatives are so smart!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

Recently I came across a relatively young WordPress plugin that allow WordPress users and designers to use basically any TrueType font you have on your computer on your WordPress blog, replacing post titles, widget titles, links and so on with automatically generated SEO-smart images using your desired font. The plugin is called AnyFont and it has been developed by Ryan Peel

The generated images have a very good level of clarity, way better than the classic SWF replacement and the plugin is really easy to administrate and customize.

AnyFont plugin management

See for yourself how easy it is to set up the output style:

And the output is really good:

As I said, the output is SEO friendly, each image being given an ALT and TITLE attribute that either automatically take content from the original text, or you can set your own values.

The plugin also uses an image-caching system to ease the server load.

Click here to go to the AnyFont plugin download page.

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Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

In the months past I’ve received a lot of messages, comments and emails, each asking something about Simple Balance. To some I have answered, to others I couldn’t, due to various reasons (mostly time).

Please understand that the simple fact that I released this theme for free is a “support” action itself, and most times, my daily activities do not allow me to help everybody in their quest to customize this theme the way they want to. That would mean to cut time from my clients’ projects to offer support for this free theme. I am sure that you can understand this situation.

That’s why, for a limited period of time, I’ll check out this post daily and try to answer any question you might have, be it design or source code related, as long as it is about Simple Balance. If you have previously asked the same thing on another topic, or sent a mail and did not get an answer, please ask again here so that I can answer your questions.

So… fire away!

PS: Some questions could already be answered in these posts:

• Simple Balance – Right Sidebar Alignment Bug Fix
• How to Add Your Logo to Simple Balance
• FeedBurner Email Subscription in Simple Balance 2.0

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

With the StudioPress WordPress themes you can really take your blog to a higher level!

Let me start off by saying that I’m not easily impressed by the huge number of “premium WordPress themes” out there. Sure, some of them are really good looking, but in terms of customization, most lack that something that would make me say: “OK, this one I can easily adjust to my needs!”

It seems that almost every premium theme out there focuses to much on delivering a top-notch design, that would make it hard to non design-savvy people to tweak to their own liking. This is where the new Thesis 1.5 theme makes a huge difference.

Options galore

With the huge amount of work I have to deal with daily, designing one of my non-profit blogs would take too much time that I could invest in client work or in Blogsessive. So, I’ve decided to give Thesis a spin for this future blog and I instantly fell in love with the options panel.

Those of you that have tested my Simple Balance theme know that I have a thing for easy layout customization and enough options to cover basically every need people might have.

Well, for the $87 personal license or $164 developer license, Thesis takes this customization to a whole new realm with:

• SEO settings;
• Layout settings: number of columns, position of columns, width of columns;
• Layout styles: Classic blog layout, magazine style layout;
• Typography settings: You can easily adjust the fonts used by almost every important element on your blog;
• Expert, clean written HTML, CSS, PHP code;
• And many more amazingly useful options.

Check out this 12 minute video by its creator – Chris Pearson – and see for yourself what awaits you inside the administration panel.

Working the magic

It’s no wonder that famous bloggers chose Thesis for their main or side projects. Here are some samples of what can be achieved with Thesis:

• Brian Clark’s Copyblogger
• Darren Rowse’s TwitTip
• Chris Brogan’s blog
• and one of my favorites, Blogussion’s recent Thesis redesign by Alex Fraiser.

I for one can’t wait to find that bit of free time to setup Thesis on my side blog. I feel like a kid getting a brand new shiny toy!

So, if you need a really premium WordPress theme that is guaranteed to do the job, you’d better get Thesis version 1.5. Worth every penny!

Disclaimer:This is not a sponsored post. The above post contains affiliate links. I would never use affiliate links or recommend products or services that I do not believe in, so rest assured that the above is my true opinion about Thesis.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

My friend Adrian Diaconescu has released a new free WordPress theme called Empty Canvas. Those familiar with his previous theme, Corporate Sandbox will observe the similarities between these two themes, but as Adrian says: “[...] don’t download this theme and expect the Mona Lisa. It’s only a simple theme, that does wonders for me.“

I’ll tell you what to expect. Expect a clean design, an update of his old theme, ready to be adjusted as you see fit for your future project and mostly for corporate blogs. The name says it all. This is a clean, empty canvas waiting for your creativity spark!

Empty Canvas

Empty Canvas is a two column widget ready WordPress theme, compatible with WordPress 2.7+, cross-browser tested and valid. It does not feature support for threaded comments by author’s decision (probably to preserve the comment styling). As the author says, the theme is “following a ‘want more stuff? add it yourself!’ philosophy“.

Preview here
Download here

Looking for more free corporate WordPress themes?

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Do you need quality design resources? Graphic River has them. Tons! And cheap...

The time when WordPress was used strictly as a blog platform is long gone. WordPress has evolved into a mature CMS that gives designers and developers the right tools to create amazing non-blog websites for their clients. As proof for that stand these 10 beautiful websites powered by WordPress.

FernWoodCoffee.com

Visit website

Herout-Caves.com

Visit website

SearchInsideVideo.com

Visit website

Discounted.ro

Visit website

Healogix.com

Visit website

Emploi-Manche.fr

Visit website

HotelParadiso.it

Visit website

Typechart.com

Visit website

P41Studios.com

Visit website

EnrouteFilm.com

Visit website

Do you know more?

If you have more samples of beautiful non-blog WordPress websites, feel free to leave a comment linking to them, and I’ll create a follow-up to this post to include them.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Do you need quality design resources? Graphic River has them. Tons! And cheap...

While working on a couple of WordPress projects these days, I’ve been on the look out for some new WordPress plugins. During my searches I’ve come across some really cool and useful plugins that you might want to check out too.

Manual Related Links

Tired of the old and sometimes irrelevant automated “Related posts”. This new WordPress plugin allows you to hand pick the links to be displayed at the end of your posts. Also works with off site links. Some might think that it’s a waste of time, other like me will see the value in giving the reader really relevant, hand-picked links.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Aaron D. Campbell

WP htaccess Control

No need to access the FTP or the cPanel anymore to add rules to your .htaccess file. With WP htaccess Control you get to do that from the comfort of your WP Admin screen.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: António Andrade aka Dardna

Magazine Columns

This is a cool WordPress plugin for all you “magazine-style” fans out there. Ever wanted you posts to be displayed split into 2, 3 or more columns, just like in a newspaper? By adding a shorttag – <!–column–> into your posts you’ll be able to do so. Easy to use, nice result.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Chris Bavota

Pretty Links

“Pretty Links” is a nice little plugin that allows you to setup custom URLs on your blog to act as either short URLs or affiliate marketing links. Also features click statistics.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7.1+
Author: Blair Williams

Template Tag Shortcodes

Justin Tadlock, author of the cool Query Posts plugin gives us yet a new useful tool for our blog. The “Template Tag Shortcodes” does exactly what the name says. It takes WordPress’ template tags that you usually use in your hardcoded templates and transforms them into shortcodes that you can also use in you blog posts and pages, in the admin screen. Really cool, and supports over 40 template tags and growing.
Download hereWP Version: 2.5+
Author: Justin Tadlock

Post Snippets

This plugin comes in handy when dealing with post series and recurring snippets of code and text in your blog posts. Setup new snippets of HTML code via the plugin admin page, then call them in you posts through a small button that’s added to you post edit TinyMCE editor.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Johan Steen

Important

As all of these plugins are recently released, I would advise some testing before going live. If you have access to a local server of test version of your blog, try using these plugins there first.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive