All posts in WP Themes

WordPress as eShop and Social Bookmarking Site – part6

by Ades on July 14, 2009 in WordPress, WP Themes with 16 Comments

This is a continuation of series on “Different Uses of WordPress”. Previously I have covered:

WordPress as eShop (Shopping Cart)

While WordPress has already been covered as eCommerce site in Part-1, this is a theme that is worth mentioning here. First of all, it’s free. Secondly, it comes with multiple free themes. Finally, its web2.0 features with ajax functions make it a better choice if you are setting up an eshop.

shopperpress

    ShopperPress is a fully featured shopping cart plugin for wordpress, suitable for selling any types of products, services, and digital downloads online. It has built in support for multiple payment gateways like paypal, 2checkout, worldpay, moneybookers etc allowing you to accept payments online.
    .
    ShopperPress also comes with its own multiple elegantly designed free themes. Adding products to the shop is done through creating pages and posts in WP. Products can have multiple options (weight / sizes / brands etc).
    .
    Price: Free
    Website: http://www.shopperpress.com

WordPress as Social Bookmarking Site

    bmpress.png
    .
    BmPress adds a social bookmarking capability to your WordPress blog. With this plugin you can create your own bookmarking service among your friends, community or company. Adding bookmarks will be through posts. It uses templates for displaying data, thus making it flexible in displaying your bookmarks in any way you want. See Demo Here.
    .
    Price: Free
    Website: http://www.bmpress.org

WP Theme: FREEmium WordPress Theme

by Ades on January 21, 2009 in WP Themes with 25 Comments

freebiesdock.pngFreemium Theme is a free premium theme for wordpress, it was designed by Paul Kadysz and developed by Dariusz Siedlecki and made free by http://freebiesdock.com.

You can see the demo here.

Some of the features of freemium theme are:

  • XHTML compliant
  • flickr RSS support
  • jQuery menu
  • 2 widget ready sidebars
  • completely free

Download: http://freebiesdock.com/freemium-wordpress-theme/

Brian Gardner’s New Project – StudioPress

by Ades on January 2, 2009 in Advice to Businesses, Make Money, WP Themes with 28 Comments

Brian Gardner, the person who revolutionized premium wordpress themes by his first project RevolutionTheme, has came up with a new project – StudioPress.com

Since it’s a newly launched project, currently there is only one wp theme available. However, more themes expected to be added very soon. The first theme is for real estate sites.

studiopress.png

If it works, don’t fix it

As you all know, RevolutionTheme project had been replaced with R2 (RevolutionTwo), and became Open Source. That meant, as I predicted no more less income for both affiliates and Brian Gardner himself. Brian wanted to change his business model from selling themes to selling support.

Before revolution themes were open source, they were selling like hot cakes. Obviously after they became “free”, no one wanted to pay for the support. Because most bloggers are very familiar with wordpress and most of them wouldn’t need a paid support to customize their themes.

Revolution2 was a huge misstep for Brian (from financial point of view). In order to correct this business decision, he had two choices; to bring back the old revolution themes or to launch a new project. Brian has chosen the second option. And I think that was a wise decision. Otherwise it would have been even more confusing for his existing customers from revolution-1 project. Because they are already confused with the whole discontinuation of revolution-1 project and revolution2/open source thing and how it affects them.

Making Money for Bloggers

StudioPress.com is a great news for bloggers. Because it means “back to making money” for most bloggers. Brian Gardner is a great designer, and his themes are one of the best wp themes on the net. Therefore, I have no doubt that this project will be a success.

His affiliates are paid 25% of the sales, that means if you sell one template worth $79.95 you will get $20.00. And if you sell all-inclusive package ($299.95) then you will get $75.00 of commission.

Are you ready to make money?

URL: StudioPress.com

Different Uses of WordPress (as Social Network Site & Contact Manager) – part4

by Ades on December 22, 2008 in WordPress, WP Themes with 16 Comments

Today, in Part-4 of our series of “Different Uses of WordPress”, we will be looking on how you can use WordPress as a Social Network Site and a Contact Manager.

WordPress as Social Network Site

    wp_as_social_community.png
    .
    BuddyPress will transform your WordPress MU into a social network platform. It is a set of plugins that has one core plugin (which acts as the main platform for all the other plugins) and a collection of other individual plugins that add distinct features to BuddyPress (e.g private messaging, activity streams etc).

    Each BuddyPress component is independent. This means you can pick and choose which features you’d like. In that sense, it works more like a Joomla, deactivating one plugin won’t cause any errors with the rest.

    It has lots of other features, see full features here.

    Price: Free

    URL: http://buddypress.org
    Demo URL: http://testbp.org

WordPress as Contact Manager

    wp_as_contact_manager.png
    .
    WP Contact Manager as the name suggests, is a WP Theme that turns your WordPress into a contact manager. Adding contacts will be through admin interface just like you create a “new post”.

    Price: Free

    URL: http://artisanthemes.com/themes/wp-contact-manager/
    Demo URL: http://people.thedesigncanopy.com/

    P.S There is another wordpress based contact manager called WP-CRM. It’s a free theme plus plugins that turn WP into a contact manager.

Different Uses of WordPress (as Discussion Forum and Membership Site) – part3

by Ades on December 5, 2008 in WordPress, WP Themes with 17 Comments

We continue our reports on different uses of WordPress, besides using it as a blogging platform.

Today we will be looking at two more uses of WP; as Discussion Forum and Membership Site.

WordPress as Discussion Forum

    wp_forum.png
    .
    Simple:Press is a free wordpress plugin that will turn your blog into a discussion forum. It’s surprisingly very advanced and feature rich.

    It fully integrates into your WP based site utilising the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page. It is fully customisable and comes with a number of skins and sets of icons to get your started.

    Price: Free

    URL: http://www.simplepressforum.com
    Demo: http://www.contestblogger.com

WordPress as Membership Site

    suma.png
    .
    Suma Plugin for WordPress is a membership and subscription management plugin for the WordPress. It turns your blog into a pay-to-view, membership (i.e subscription-based) website.

    You can restrict access to any pages, posts and comments. Members without subscriptions see only the title, or excerpt of the post depending on the administrator’s preference.

    Suma also manages the recurring billing of the subscriber according to the details of the subscription plan they choose. The administrator is able to define different types of subscription plans and has the option of including one-time initial setup fees, free-trial periods, and discounted periods as well as flexible billing periods defined in days, weeks, months or years.

    Price: $199

    URL: http://www.sumaplugin.com
    Demo: http://www.camacit.com/suma/demo

Different Uses of WordPress (as Review Site and Portal) – part2

by Ades on November 24, 2008 in WP Themes with 21 Comments

In Part-1 we have looked at how WordPress can be used as Job Board site and e-Commerce site. Today, we will be looking at two more themes that can extend your WordPress blog into a Review Site and turn it into a Portal.

WordPress as Review Site

    wp_review_site.png

    WP Review Site combined with the free WordPress platform, allows you to easily create powerful review-driven websites. It comes with its own set of plugins and professionally designed themes. It turns comments section into a review writing form, integrating star rating feature in it. It’s a bit pricey – selling at $97 – but it’s the best of its kind that you can get if you want to setup quality review site in 5 minutes.

    Price: $97 – Single License, $199 – Multi License, and $299 for Developer License

    URL: https://www.wpreviewsite.com
    Live Demo: http://www.awardwinninghosts.com/

WordPress as Portal

As you can see from the above examples, WordPress is definitely becoming more comprehensive platform besides just being a blogging system. In the next part, we will be looking on more different uses of WordPress.

Revolution Two themes, where is the download links?

by Ades on November 14, 2008 in Usability, WP Themes with 20 Comments

I talked to few people about Revolution Two themes going open source and everyone I talked to said they couldn’t find the download links. Some people were not able to find the download links even after several visits to the site. So, where are the links?

They are there, it’s just that they are little bit hidden (at the bottom of the page) and in small text size (see below):

revolution_two_download_links.png

I know Brian is trying to push paid support service, but I think it’s confusing too many people.

Update: It’s confirmed that the themes are no longer open source, therefore the download links are no longer available. Unfortunately now if you want the themes you need to buy them.

URL: www.revolutiontwo.com

Different Uses of WordPress (as Job Board and eShop) – part1

by Ades on November 11, 2008 in WP Themes with 21 Comments

WordPress is evolving from just being a blogging platform to more advanced systems, proving my personal theory that it will become full fledged CMS in the near future.

Thanks to its simple and easy theme structure, now people are coming up with different types of themes that can do specific functions. These themes are not just ordinary themes that have the creatives (graphics and designs) only, but they can be considered a whole system of their own – because they come with their own plugins included. These plugins do theme related functions, for example an eCommerce theme would have a Shopping Cart plugin of its own, making it easy for you to setup an eShop.

Below we will be looking at two different themes that use WordPress as their platform, namely; using WP as a Job Board and using WP as an eCommerce platform.

WP Theme as Job Board

    jobpress theme

    JobPress is a wordpress theme that turns your website into a perfect working job board. It comes with its own payment system as well, you just have to insert your paypal email in the settings and you are ready to accept payments. According to the description, it does accept Credit Cards as well.

    Price: $59 for Single License, and $149 for Developer License

    URL: http://www.dailywp.com/jobpress-wordpress-theme/
    Live Demo: http://www.dailywp.com/jobpressdemo

WP Theme as an eCommerce Shop

    market_theme.png

    Market Theme transforms any standard WordPress into a fully functional eCommerce store complete with backend product administration. It utilizes its own ajax shopping cart and uses PayPal as a payment gateway system. Adding product is simple as well, it generates a sub-tab “Add Product” under “Write Post”.

    Price: $55 for Single License, and $150 for Developer License

    URL: http://www.markettheme.com
    Live Demo: http://www.markettheme.com/demo

OmniTheme: 4 themes for the price of 1

by Ades on November 6, 2008 in WP Themes with 15 Comments

omni4.jpgOmniTheme is a premium WordPress theme that comes with four different styles: Original, Black, Pink and Tan (see pic).

Normally they are sold separately for $79.99 each (for single license) and $199.99 for a developer license.

However for a limited time, the author is giving all four themes for the price of one. That’s right, for $79.99 you can now get all four of them.

Another good thing about this offer is that when you purchase you will receive free updates for life!

URL: http://www.omnitheme.com/buy/

Revolution Theme goes Open Source

by Ades on November 1, 2008 in WP Themes with 16 Comments

Brian Gardner, the creator of popular Revolution Themes for WordPress has made the themes open source. That’s right, the themes will be free after this. Old themes will be discontinued and the website closed. The new website (www.revolutiontwo.com) has already been launched with initial 10 themes.

revolution2

Below are the Live Demo links to some of these new themes:

Just like any other open source project, the support for the themes won’t be provided. If you need a support you will have to pay for it. The fees are quite reasonable though; $99.95 for one year unlimited support, and $149.95 for lifetime unlimited support.

But I am sure, most of the experienced bloggers won’t need support, they just need an access to free, professionally designed themes ;) For that reason, I am not sure if Brian and his team can earn the projected income as they planned with this new business model.

Because previously Revolution Themes were selling like hot cakes, and I am sure they (Brian and his team) made tons of money. In good month, I alone sold close to $700 worth of themes for them. But now, since they became open source, it’s difficult for bloggers to sell subscription based plans for Revolution2. I am afraid bloggers (i.e affiliates) will be shifting to other premium wordpress theme providers like OmniTheme, WooThemes, PressBox etc. thus reducing the earnings of Revolution2 team significantly.

Whatever it is, good luck to them and thanks for the free themes!

URL: www.revolutiontwo.com

WP Theme: Simply Ornate

by Ades on October 15, 2008 in WP Themes with 11 Comments

simply_ornate.pngSimply Ornate is a great, free WP theme designed by Evan Eckard.

Besides blue, it comes in four different flavors, they are; Royal Red, DARK, Pixel Gray and Pinkie. See them all here.

His other themes are great too (and free as well), they are: Gotham Nights, Royal, and Notepad Chaos.

You can download them at http://www.evaneckard.com/pages/themes.php.

Flowgram.com – making (ppt) presentation from live websites

by Ades on August 11, 2008 in Online Tools, Screenshot Takers, WP Themes with 13 Comments

flowgram.pngLet’s say you want to have your own website. You tell freelance webdesigner to design a nice looking website, and you give him some websites as references.

Usually you would just pass him the URLs and tell him that you like this part of this particular website and that part of another website etc.

Better way is with Flowgram

So how Flowgram.com can improve this process? With flowgram you can add live pages to your presentation, make comments on the surface of those live websites, add photos, add powerpoints and even add RSS feeds. Once you are done with your presentation, you can just send him a link that looks something like this http://beta.flowgram.com/p/f4xhdtkgp7usnv

You can also use it to bookmark sites, like what I did on the above link. I have put together a list of wordpress related websites.

Flowgram is in Beta

Flowgram is still in beta, so you need to apply to get an invitation. I do have 10 invitations though, I can give them to the first 10 commenters for this post. I had subscribed a while ago, but it too many usability issues to mention it on the blog. Now it looks quite stable.

URL: beta.flowgram.com

← Older Entries