WooThemes released a new theme yesterday called Placeholder. They’re working to get it easily integrated with the WooFramework to present an attractive landing page to your visitors while you continue to develop your site behind the scenes.

Placeholder Includes:
- Links to your external social profiles
- Simple sign-up form for capturing visitors’ e-mail addresses
- A live countdown timer to notify visitors when to return
- User-friendly options panel for entering your site’s logo, introduction text, launch date, etc.
- Custom typography
- 5 alternative color style options
Check out a screenshot of the options panel to see just how easy it is to use:

The Placeholder theme was designed by Magnus Jepson, who has designed several of the most successful themes in their line. This is without a doubt one of the most attractive free placeholder themes available to WordPress users.
If you are preparing to launch a site, don’t opt for an ugly white page generated by a maintenance plugin. Placeholder offers you a more professional option and ensures that you don’t miss your chance to keep your visitors informed and engaged, as well as to capture their contact information.
WooThemes is a trusted theme provider that does not add malicious code of any kind to your free download. Siobhan has been writing quite a bit lately about how to know if a free theme is really trustworthy. Our friends over at WooThemes are the real deal. Head on over to the Placeholder theme page and check out the full list of features.
Out of all the WordPress ecommerce plugins available, MarketPress has got to be the winner - easy to configure, powerful functionality, multiple gateways and more. A simply brilliant plugin!
Find out more
If you're thinking about starting a paid, or just private, membership site then this is truly the plugin you've been looking for. Easy to use, massively configurable and ready to go out of the box!
Find out more
Now there's no need to pay for a third party service to sign up, manage and send beautiful email newsletters to your subscriber base - this plugin has got the lot.
Find out more
Take, set and manage appointments and client bookings without having to leave WordPress. Appointments+ makes it easy.
Find out more
It's now incredibly easy to start your own Q&A site using nothing more than WordPress - The Q&A plugin simply and brilliantly transforms any site, or page, into a perfect support or Q&A environment.
Find out more
No javascript required, no third part chat engine, just fully featured chat right in your own database on your own WP sites - couldn't be easier.
Find out more
Fully integrated with the SEOMoz API, complete with automatic links, sitemaps and SEO optimization of your WordPress setup - this is the only plugin you need to help you rank your site number 1 on Google - nothing else compares.
Find out more
Would you like to add Facebook comments, registration, 'Like' buttons and autoposting to your WP site? Well, The Ultimate Facebook plugin has got that all covered!
Find out more
To get a wiki up and running you used to need to install Mediawiki and toil away for days configuring it... not any more! This plugin gives you *all* the functionality you want from a wiki, in WordPress!!!
Find out more
What would be really nice is if this theme could be added as a splash page to the Maintenance Mode plugin I’m using. That way I could have the slick look and still use my domain for closed alpha/beta testing. :)
Hi Sarah. Thanks of the referral. During construction on a multisite platform, is it possible to use the placeholder theme as the primary site in a multisite set up, and use the BP plugin on the secondary site. Then, just before launch, make the BP site the primary without affecting the database?
No, I’m pretty sure that’s not possible as BP needs to run on the root site.
Thank you Sarah. I wish my response can be as colorful as yours. :(
Awesome countdown timer. Is it possible to utilize this same timer on another theme? I have this free theme but also a purchased woo theme that I’d like just the timer on.
Sonny – I think so but you’ll have to check with the WooThemes team on that.