Xmas Contest: Prize Winners

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

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A Look Into the WordPress Themes’ Options Pages

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.
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Thesis 1.5 – A Premium Theme Worth Every Penny

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.
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Things You Can Do To Help WordPress Developers

Today I’ve exchanged a few emails with one of Simple Balance’s users which made me think about several things that users could do to help out WordPress themes and plugins developers.

This article is written purely for the purpose of giving you an idea on how to give back to those that invest time and knowledge to give your free quality WordPress resources.

So, here are a few things you can do to help them out:

Offer to test out their themes and plugins

If their project is still in Beta stage, ask to join the testing group or register we’re this is permitted. Test out the product in whatever environment you have available and report bugs and unusual behavior to the designer / developer. They are only humans and most of the time work on too many project and might miss out things, being so closely involved in the project. An outsider could observe things that they can not.

You can also test the projects after the official release. Help is welcome anytime.
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Free WordPress Themes Watch: Too Newsy

Although not a day goes by without someone putting out there another WordPress theme, days like this one, when I see one theme that truly impresses me, don’t come that often. On January 26th, Performancing.com, in collaboration with Sophia Lucero, launched the “Too Newsy” free WordPress theme, and this is one theme you should definitely check out.
Click here to read the full blog post!