How to design a commercial WordPress theme — Draft podcast
This week’s Post Status Draft podcast is hosted by Brian Krogsgard, and he interviews WordPress theme designer Mike McAlister. Brian also talks about the value of attending events.
Category: Themes
How to create better, more accessible WordPress themes
Accessibility is an important part of modern web development. It is our responsibility as creators of WordPress themes to make them accessible to all users, on any device. In this article, I’ll offer some simple tips to create better, more accessible WordPress themes.
Theme Review Team to require using the Customizer for all theme options
All theme options must now be included in the Customizer for themes submitted to the WordPress theme repository. Custom theme options pages will not be allowed. The change will have implications for authors, reviewers, and users of WordPress themes.
Layers, by Obox, introduces a beautiful page building interface
Layers is the latest WordPress theme with page building as the core feature. Obox has made a heck of an effort to ship 1.0, and while I have some issues, I’m incredibly impressed with the overall user experience. I think Obox has created something that’s worth checking out, though I think this market has plenty of maturing to do yet.
WordPress.com and Jetpack should lead the way toward standardizing custom post types
Two themes were released in the last few days by a couple of theme shops I hugely respect: Bailey by The Theme Foundry (above) and Designer by Array (below). Both themes are for portfolio websites, and both themes use a custom post type for the portfolio. What’s interesting, is that both themes are offering support […]
Lift has acquired ChurchThemes and intend to enter the hosted church website market
ChurchThemes was started by Frankie Jarrett in 2011. Frankie is now the Head of WordPress Product at X-Team, makers of Stream — a product I reviewed a few months ago. Frankie also talked about Stream and ChurchThemes on the Matt Report recently. Today, Lift is announcing the acquisition of ChurchThemes. Lift is a consultancy and also owner of UpThemes, […]
Automating i18n in WordPress themes
According to the Polygots Make blog, WordPress is used all over the world and in many different languages. To put that in perspective, more than a third of existing WordPress installations are non-English and in his keynote at WordCamp Seattle, core developer Andrew Nacin mentioned that only 5-10% of the world speaks English. At AudioTheme, […]
The Pressware shop is open, and ready to cater to WordPress publishers
Tom McFarlin is a veteran of the WordPress product space. Today he’s announced that his company, Pressware, has opened a shop for selling WordPress products. Pressware’s first product has been out for a while now; the Mayer theme has been available exclusively through WordPress.com since February. Now Mayer is available for self-hosted bloggers as well. […]
Who is buying commercial WordPress themes?
To say the theme marketplace is undergoing a transition is probably an understatement. We’ve seen many shops sell or change focus over the past year. A few have maintained their place in the market or even grown some, but it’s not easy work. One theme shop that’s seen steady growth since launch is Theme Furnace. They’ve learned […]
UpThemes adds Lucid theme collection to their reportoire
The Lucid Theme shop was run by Jon Bellah until today. He still maintains the Lucid brand, but he’s sold his themes to UpThemes. When I inquired with Chris Wallace, founder of UpThemes, about why they made the acquisition, he said, “each of the themes fills a need that our current catalog does not reach.” The […]
Press75 has been sold to Westwerk, the company behind WerkPress
In mid-April I wrote that Press75 was for sale on Flippa. That auction ended without a sale, with bids for up to $45,000. Today, the Minneapolis based Westwerk is announcing that they have bought Press75 from Jason Schuller. It’s my understanding that the official transition of the website occurred yesterday. Jason was public with his […]
The state of the WordPress theme industry
Editor’s Note: This story is republished from Medium, with author David Perel’s permission. David has a unique take on the industry and has some very poignant thoughts that I wanted to share with this audience. The times, they are changing. Having been in the WordPress Theme industry since 2009, I think I have a rare […]
Make and Make Plus, a drag and drop framework from The Theme Foundry
The Theme Foundry today announced Make, a free theme that “takes the drag and drop page builder from Basis to the next level.” The fact that Make is a free theme is notable, as most of The Theme Foundry’s themes for the past six years have been commercial themes. Make’s main focus is on the drag and drop […]
Syed Balkhi, of WP Beginner, enters the commercial theme market with ThemeLab
ThemeLab has been around since 2007, started by Leland Fiegel. Leland released dozens of themes on ThemeLab, most of which were free. He also wrote a consistent blog and was generally an active member of the WordPress community. Over time though, as has so often been true, his activity slowed and the site lost focus. […]
From ThemeForest to Array, the story of a theme business
Mike McAlister has been an active member of the commercial WordPress theme space since 2009. He started by selling themes on ThemeForest. He transitioned to the Okay Themes brand in December of 2011. And at the end of March of this year, Mike transitioned yet again to Array. While these transitions may seem like arbitrary branding, to me […]
Press75, one of the oldest WordPress theme shops, is for sale
Started in 2008, Press75 is one of the oldest WordPress theme shops. Jason Schuller has run the site for years, and according to the listing, it was once a half a million dollar per year business. Now it’s for sale. Jason has been moving away from the theme business for some time. He’s created a couple […]
Devin Price is the new owner of DevPress
Devin Price is a developer from Austin, Texas and owner of WP Theming, an excellent WordPress blog. He also hosts his plugins and themes on WP Theming. Devin is the author of the popular Options Framework plugin, the Portfolio Post Type plugin, the Portfolio Press theme, and the Visual theme. He also sells commercial versions […]