A major reason behind the popularity of WordPress is the easy availability of various readymade themes to help you give your website or blog a unique look. In fact, a search for “wordpress themes” on Google returns over 154,000,000 results.
However, searching for WordPress themes on Google is not the best solution, and this is where premium theme providers come into play. In this article, I shall be taking a closer look at some of the leading premium theme makers for WordPress.
I am a huge fan of WooThemes.
When I was just getting into WordPress they were the first premium theme developers I came across. And when I decided to launch my own blog in June 2011, my theme decision was a shootout between Thesis, StudioPress and Canvas — Woothemes’ “flagship” theme.
In reality, it’s been adapted by many (myself included) as more of a framework than a plug-and-play theme. Whilst my blog’s original design was somewhat vanilla, I was able (with the help of a tame coder) to mould it into something a little more unique over time.
WooDojo is a theme-independent collection of plugins that enhance WordPress functionality and theme management — a “functionality suite”.
WooDojo is a brand-new functionality suite that democratizes awesome functionality that was previously only available via our themes. This means you can now use WooDojo functionality with *any* theme, regardless whether it is from WooThemes or not. :)
- WooDojo’s Vimeo video description
WooDojo was released in April 2012, had over 12,000 downloads in its first week, and became Securi Security approved earlier this month.
Last updated: 9:45 am Eastern Time on December 12, 2012
(Also see Round 2)
About this Theme Review
When looking for a theme framework, I want to make sure it can handle any project that comes my way. I want to know my chosen theme framework inside and out. I don’t want to have to pick Genesis for this, Elegant Themes for that, and PageLines when “X”. I want to know it will work with MultiSite and popular plugins. I want page loading optimized, the ability to choose responsive or not, and a solid support channel for when I need help or want to flesh out some ideas.
WordPress theme designers are under the same kinds of market pressures that any other seller is under.
How do we sell our themes in a huge, competitive market?
How do we stand out from the hundreds of other themes and developers?
The designers of both paid and free themes have three choices to make. They can either innovate, build upon previous successes, either their own or others’, or they can follow trends.
Sometimes trends are good, or fun, like putting bacon in everything, but nonetheless probably bad for you.
Sometimes trends are just embarrassing, like mood rings or acid-washed jeans. (I’m dating myself.)
Every now and then I’ll come across some fascinating data relating to WordPress, such as the 20 Compelling Statistics that Represent the Dominance of WordPress that I covered back in April. I’m a bit of a sucker for stuff like that, and I know that many of you are too.
Which brings me to this article. The folks over at HackerTarget.com have been very busy analyzing the top 1 million websites (as ranked by Alexa).
They uncovered some rather interesting information relating to WordPress sites and theme usage specifically, which I would like to share with you.
Free vs. Premium
I have a shocking fact to reveal – some people just aren’t that interested in design. Sure – they recognize that a good design can make all the difference for the success of a website, but they want something that works and is easy to implement.
Whilst we slave away for hours, tweaking here and there to produce what we consider to be the perfect design for our blog, there are others who just want a quick and easy solution.
The BuddyPress theme market has a new player: WooThemes has jumped in with the release of Canvas BuddyPress beta. It’s a child theme of their very popular Canvas theme. Here’s a screenshot of the member directory:
If you currently own a copy of Canvas or are a Standard / Developer Club Subscriber, you can log in and download Canvas BuddyPress from there. The Canvas BuddyPress child theme is not sold separately at this time so you’ll need to own Canvas or be a member of the WooClub to have access to it.
WooThemes has just launched its new job board – the unsurprisingly named WooJobs. The new job board is aimed at the following:
WooThemes Modifications – theme users can be incredibly demanding. A modification here, a tweak there, or just some strange functionality that no one else in the world would ever think up. If you’re into modding WooThemes you should hop over to the job board for some work.
Same goes for any theme you can think of, or plugins, custom development work or anything at all WordPress related. Hint: Don’t go looking for Drupal jobs. You won’t find them there.
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:
