Top 5 BuddyPress Themes April 2014

BuddyPress ready themes enable you to create your own special social network centered around your website and content. This means that visitors can register as members and connect and network with other members who are part of your specific niche community. This is especially useful in creating and growing a social network where members share common interests. Here’s a rundown of the top 5 themes that have BuddyPress integrated into them.

WPLMS

WPLMS Premium WordPress Theme is a learning management solution for WordPress. It is designed to deliver and manage educational content for an online audience. WPLMS enables you to create and sell courses as single items, as subscriptions or as a combination of both. You can embed videos and other multimedia content into your courses, create your own question bank with multiple choice, single answer or essay type questions including quiz timers, timelines and auto submit with WPMLS’s built-in quiz and test capabilities. WPLMS includes an instructor dashboard allowing you to check submissions of students as well as your own course content. The theme also has a progress page for users to track progress and l badges and certificates earned and attained. This theme uses BuddyPress for collaboration and discussion with other learners.

Kleo

Kleo Premium WordPress Theme is a multipurpose theme designed to meet various requirements of most websites.This BuddyPress and bbPress ready theme gives you great flexibility to create a membership site with complete ease. Powered by the popular visual composer plugin, Kleo enables you to simply drag and drop elements into a single page. Kleo enables managing content according to membership level. The theme gives you the ability to restrict content according the type of membership one has. Kleo comes with key features such as an awesome option panel, shortcodes and templates for easy customization, 700+ Fontello icons, WPML ready, and so much more.

Xphoria

Xphoria Premium WordPress Theme showcases what BuddyPress and bbPress plugins are capable of doing. Xphoria gives you the ability to create display forums turning your site into a big social network exchange. Visitors can join groups, post messages, make connections and the like. Conversations are displayed in a neat tiled fashion showing the number of posts under each thumbnail. Groups are displayed on the homepage and may be viewed according to popularity, alphabetical order, activity or date created while each group has a separate page displaying member info and conversations. Essentially, a social network in a box, Xphoria can hel you build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community.

Plexus

Plexus Premium WordPress Theme is a multisite theme created especially for enabling your site to host a blog network within WordPress. This theme is fully integrated with BuddyPress and bbPress giving the social networking power fitting for a blog network. It comes with specific network settings that give you control over what blog admins can do with it. Aside from BuddyPress and bbPress full integration, the theme also includes: Visual Composer plugin for that drag and drop convenience in customization, Layer Slider plugin to create a responsive slider with hundreds of transitions, site wide widgets that display content across the blog networks, and so much more.

Klein

Klein Premium WordPress Theme is a powerful community theme that gives you the utmost power to maximize social networking. At the heart of this theme is the Gears core framework that enables you to integrate other plugins easily. This innovative WordPress theme was built to support BuddyPress, bbPress, and WooCommerce. It is ideal for a website that interacts with a lot of users. Members can create profiles, send messages, add connections, or simply share what’s happening. It also allows members to collaborate through forums or sell any products you require. Key features include: Visual Composer plugin for drag and drop layouts, paid membership pro features to manage subscription packages, supports Woocommerce to set up a vibrant private online ecosystem, etc. This theme works well with BuddyPress plugins such as Events Manage and Album Plus, extending the power of your site’s network.

7 Bestselling Unusual Themes for WordPress

There are some things that are truly unique and outstanding that they can’t help but stand out and rise to the top of the heap. Here are some of the best selling WordPress themes that owe their popularity to a unique niche that they fill.

X Theme

Dubbed as Themeforest’s most popular new product, this theme presents itself as the ultimate WordPress theme. The claim’s validity is backed by real world results and real time feedback from its satisfied users who have experienced the endless customization options available to its owners. While it offers a lot to those who want to dabble into the “nuts and bolts” of the theme, X also offers strong solutions for those who just want to get something up and running on their sites in no time. The theme has 3 predefined stacks that can be easily tweaked to give newbies and non-techies a “made by a professional” look for their websites. X offers features that have set the standard and raised the bar as far as WordPress themes go. Not surprising considering the experts who have given their inputs in the development of the theme not to mention the developer’s open ears to customer feedback. It is also not surprising that many already consider this as the last WordPress theme they will ever need.

Directory

This unique theme allows you to easily set-up an online directory portal listing categorized items of any type. You can have a directory of shops, websites, companies and more. This may be accomplished conveniently with from a frontend like admin panel giving you a more user friendly set-up experience. Visitors will find Directory a convenient reference resource as it delivers information in a concise, convenient manner. Entries are displayed as pins on a google map of the locale of interest. Alternatively visitors may search from a search box or browse off a category of entries. Directory comes with a lot of ad spaces so you can cash in on the traffic your content generates. This theme is integrated with Paypal so administering payments from advertisers and listed establishments isn’t a hassle. With more than 6000 satisfied users, Directory is considered the Best selling directory portal theme on themeforest.

Gymbase

This theme has been around for quite a while but remains a bestseller in its own right because of its special qualities. First and foremost it’s a Gym theme – unique and not like the rest. It addresses a viable niche market – the health and fitness market – where gym owners can easily create a website that can service players in this industry. Some of the useful features the theme has include: a timetable plugin included that allows members and visitors to plan the classes they will attend, Gymbase also displays the pricing for classes, features that allow updates for its members regarding upcoming classes, an easy to use admin panel equipped with a color picker to help you create your own custom look, and everything else you need to run a health and fitness website.

Academy

Designed to be a learning management solution for educational or training institutions to maximize the power and reach of the internet, Academy enables you to sell and share knowledge online. This theme gives you the platform to deliver classes and lessons to interested parties. Academy allows you to upload media content and documents as well as to encode quizzes and tests to check for your subscribers competency. You are also able to check the progress of your students, monitor the courses they take, as well as, administer payments. This theme is integrated with WooCommerce. Academy is an invaluable tool especially today, as more and more people turn to e-learning as a means of acquiring new skills and education.

Fundify

Fundify is the first WordPress theme designed for crowdfunding. This enables you to have a websites in the likes of Indiegogo and Kickstarter where parties can setup campaigns to raise funds for causes they support. Fundify allows you to setup campaigns for a fixed amount of money where supporters are only billed if the minimum target amount of the campaign is reached. Alternatively, the theme also enables flexible campaigns where whatever amount pledged is collected. Fundify also allows you to administer rewards to those who support your causes. The theme integrates with Paypal and easy digital downloads which makes it convenient for supporters to finance causes and advocacies that appeal to them.

Knowhow

With knowledge and information being an important commodity nowadays, it is not surprising to find a knowledge base theme in this list. What makes Knowhow special is that it enables you to setup your own knowledge base with ease and convenience while maintaining the privacy and control of information not available on public Wikis. You can list your content in the form of an FAQ. Knowhow also allows users to search by question or by topic which makes searching more convenient. Not your ordinary WordPress theme.

Jobify

Globalization and the internet have made the job market more competitive. Jobseekers have a need to display their resumes online so they can get the best jobs available. In a similar fashion, employers need to get the best talent available. Jobify is a job exchange solution used by top companies like dropbox to acquire the best talent globally. Employers can subscribe to your site for posting privileges. Jobseekers can post their resumes in response to job postings. This theme integrates with WooCommerce and Contact forms plugins to give you the best in payment and input management.

Ecommere – Tap Into What People Are Really Buying?

THave you ever had this brilliant idea of a product that you just knew was going to sell like hotcakes but then flopped in the end? Have you ever considered tapping into the enormous income potential the Internet offers in terms of ecommerce but just didn’t know where to start?

Here are some of the many important insights shared by Ezra Firestone, ecommerce, SEO, and online media buying expert, and successful internet marketer of various products, real estate and training courses online, during the recently held Traffic and Conversion Summit held early 2013. Ezra’s vast experience and knowledge of landing page psychology, ecommerce user behavior and social media marketing has led to the success of many of Ezra’s ecommerce and online businesses.

According to Ezra,

“Someone is looking for a product. You show it to them. You don’t actually have to persuade them to buy it. They’re already looking for it. They buy it from you and then you ship it to them and they have something in their hands that they got from you.

It’s just like it’s such a good business model and it just felt really good and I could tell my wife’s parents about it and so I was just really happy when I stumbled across ecommerce and I kind of just went full-fledged into it and my put my 10,000 hours in because I had found a business model that really resonated with me.”

Why eCommerce and why sell physical products:

Ezra shares:

  • There are more buyers out there for physical products vs. info products
  • Ecommerce has highest value per visitor
  • First visit transaction – people buy the first time they come
  • Higher conversion rates
  • Higher perceived barrier to entry – less competition in niche
  • All work upfront. Finding marketing is hardest part. Ongoing work is traffic + testing
  • Easier to sell to customers
  • Ecommerce is a baby – only 8% of retail sales are done online and it’s growing 15% every year

Tips on how to address the most common concerns people have about getting into ecommerce:

  • Finding markets and evaluating whether to go into a specific market or not
  • Find developers of top carts who have done redesigns.
  • Find markets that lend themselves to return customers. ex. gift market, gift baskets, etc.
  • Find markets that lend themselves to multiple item orders where people are going to order more than just one thing at a time.
  • Find markets that look for products that are difficult to buy locally and meet their needs
  • Seasonal business that have a high season where people are willing to just buy, buy, buy
  • Try to choose products that aren’t super heavy to lessen shipping problems
  • There are great opportunities in markets that are geared towards women

2 Ways to make more money on your eCommerce site:

Get more traffic

  • The most important page on your store is your product page – the page that is displaying the products that you’re selling. Study how you can get maximum value for your product page.

Increase your conversions

  • What value are you bringing to the products? What value are you bringing to the marketplace beyond just listing the products?
  • Do you have a video talking about this product and showing its features and benefits?
  • Do you have a really rich description that talks all about not just the features of the product? Most people are talking only about the features. Who cares about the features? What people care about are the benefits of the product.
  • What value are you adding to the market? Are there education guides, informational guides on the products. You can add to the market beyond just listing the products is huge for conversion.
  • Do you have a frequently asked questions video? Do you have a video on your contact us page introducing yourself?
  • Do you have a shipping information video right there on your product page? Everybody wants to know what your shipping policies are.

According to Ezra,

“Create a relationship with your customers. I think that adding value to the marketplace is by far the highest leverage conversion lever that you have. Second is congruency. I see this is so big and so many people don’t do this. When someone clicks Add to Cart, it takes them to a page that looks nothing like the website they were just on. It looks nothing like the store that they were just on. You’ve got to have your shopping cart process look congruent to your website.

Otherwise you will just significant decreases in conversion. When people implement this, they often see a doubling in their conversion rates and then the third thing and I think what everyone knows about, it’s super hot right now, is video. Product videos convert. Sixty-four percent of the people who come to your website will watch that product video for an average of two minutes. Product pages that have videos on them convert at 164 percent higher on average. They work. You have to be doing video.”

Doing a video blog and blasting it out there on social media and getting it out in front of your customers that way and building a relationship and building engagement. What that does for us is it creates repeat sales. It creates community. It creates repeat business. It’s the third part of the puzzle. You need to be visible so you need people to know you exist. Then you need to convert them into buyers. That’s conversion.

More next week.

Awesome New Themes for June 2013

Orange Core

If you’re looking for a theme that can do a lot to meet what a host of clients need then you definitely want to check out Orange Core. This multi-purpose theme is great for business and corporate sites although it does have excellent portfolio capabilities too. Awesome presentations may be done using the panoramic full-width homepage slider. Built in pricing tables, service pages, column variations and other page templates included are great tools necessary in building business and corporate sites. Orange core can be a great way for potential customers to get information about your business using these features. Orange Core is optimized for mobile and touch screen devices and is built on twitter bootstrap.

Vernum

Vernum is a clean, modern and powerful One Page Parallax theme that can virtually be what you want it to be. This theme has a drag and drop page builder to help you create the pages you want. Vernum also uses the parallax effect for added drama as you scroll down the page. In addition to these, Vernum uses retina ready graphics, is responsive, has great blog and portfolio capabilities, and uses CSS3 animations. It is flexible enough to meet the demands of websites of different kinds.

WP Education

WP Education is a premium theme designed for schools and educational institutions. Many educational institutions suffer from unimpressive websites. WP Education is a viable solution to add that professional air to any academic institution. Aside from the normal blog and gallery capabilities, schools can use this theme as an administrative and organizational tool to publish available courses, their descriptions and comments, and even process applications from prospective students.

Universfolio

Universfolio is a responsive multipurpose theme you can use for business or for pleasure. Whether it’s a corporate website, a personal blog or a creative portfolio, Universfolio has something for you. The theme uses the popular and powerful Revolution Slider to give you stunning slide transitions and layered 3d effects. This allows you to present eye catching slideshows to make casual visitors stay on your site longer. The theme also has awesome portfolio and blog page templates to showcase your work and keep visitors up to date with what’s going on. Universfolio is WooCommerce ready giving your site extra ecommerce capabilities.

JP Animated vCard Theme

JP is a cool and modern vCard WordPress theme for the creative professional. It’s got everything you need to create a good first impression on visitors, current clients, and potential clients. It’s simple and clean menu system allows you to navigate through the whole site without much fuss. It includes a great portfolio that allows you to showcase images, videos and other media projects on your site for interested parties to look at. You also have a blog page so visitors can get an insight on how you approach projects and tasks. This theme also has a Services Page and a Contact Page for those interested in hiring your services.

Lambo Photography Theme

If you are a photographer wanting to setup your own website or wanting to revitalize your existing one, check out Lambo. Lambo Premium WordPress Theme gives you special ways of showcasing your photos and images. This theme is perfect for the photographer or graphic artist who wants his/her work presented to potential clients artistically. The theme’s homepage slider is designed so that the graphic gives you the semblance that you are looking through a lens. The full screen slider presents your works in a choice of sliders including one with the popular Ken Burns effect.

Realia

Realia Premium WordPress Theme is a real estate and property rental theme ideal for real estate agents, brokers and professionals. This theme allows you to manage properties for sale or for rent so that potential buyers can go to your site and look for the property they desire and easily find it. This google map integrated theme allows visitors to search according to location based on defined filters like: number of baths, price, whether for sale or for rent. This theme has a dedicated page for each property with a description, an image gallery and a google map indicating its location. An inquiry form is conveniently located on the sidebar to facilitate contact with a broker. Property owners can submit their properties for sale. Theme supports IDX infrastructure trusted by professionals in the real estate industry.

Interesting WordPress Themes April 2013

Academy (Online Education)

Turn your website into a functioning e-learning solution with Academy Learning Management Theme from ThemeForest. This premium wordpress theme takes the elegant form of an ecommerce site and tweaks it to meet the needs of the e-learning market. Share, sell and promote your knowledge online effectively. This powerful theme includes features and functions to help you manage course offerings, rate their popularity, and publish subscription plans aimed to reach your target market. This theme includes a powerful options panel that allows you to create courses and lessons.This theme provides awesome features for creating online courses, such as extended user profiles, rating system, questions system, file attachments, embedding self-hosted media, tracking course progress, WooCommerce integration and more.

Responsive Knowledge Base & FAQ WordPress Theme

For the business or website that exists to help people make the most of their computing experience, Responsive Knowledge Base is the perfect theme to use. This premium WordPress theme was built for support providers as a first line response solution for clients seeking answers to their problems, technical or otherwise. This theme acts as a knowledge base or depository where visitors can search your site for solutions to their issues. Users can browse through Q and A pages, articles and similar material or do a live search (jQuery TypeAhead powered) to help them identify their problems and find solutions.

Rescue – Animal Shelter Theme with Petfinder Support

Animal lovers unite! Rescue Premium WordPress Theme is a theme built with a specific purpose – to get animals adopted. Outstanding pet-related WordPress themes are few and far between that’s why Rescue is a special theme pet lovers can find a home in. What makes it more unique is the built in Petfinder API support that allows you to easily sync your pets from your Petfinder profile to your WordPress install. Petfinder is an online, searchable database of animals who need homes. It is also a directory of more than 13,000 animal shelters and adoption organizations across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

GymBoom (Fitness)

If you are in the fitness business or if you own a gym, a health club, or a wellness center, check out GymBoom, a responsive fitness theme with a built in dynamic calendar to manage training schedules for those serious health buffs and fitness addicts. This responsive theme also sports a unique diagonal slider created with the slider creation tool. It’s got useful shortcodes to post lists, highlight text, create multiple columns and more. You also get two homepage option styles: one with a slider and a page styles option. Gymboom includes a google map shortcode integrated in the widgetized footer section.

WordPress Admin Panel

Navigating your way around in the backend area of your WordPress website need not be complicated even if you are a beginner. The WordPress Admin Panel area found in the backend is a powerful and flexible area where you can manage your website content and other WordPress functions. It has continually evolved since 2003 and with the help of and contributions from the WordPress community has improved and become more and more beautiful and user friendly.

The Administration Panel provides access to the control features of your WordPress installation. Each Administration Panel is presented in sections:

The Header

The top portion of all Panels, the header, is featured in dark shading. The header shows the name of your blog as a link to your blog’s main page, comments awaiting moderation, +New to add new posts, pages, media, or users, a Search Engines Blocked message if you Privacy settings block search engines, a favorites menu, and links to your profile (shown as your user name), and Log Out. Just below the top shaded area are two hanging tabs, Screen Options and contextual Help, that can be clicked to expand them.

The Main Navigation

On the left side of the screen is the main navigation menu detailing each of the administrative functions you can perform. Two expand/collapse arrows just below the Dashboard and Comments allow the navigation menu to collapse to a set of icons, or expand (fly-out) to show an icon and description for each major administrative function. Within each major function, such as Posts, a pull-down arrow is presented upon hovering mouse hovers over the title area. A click of that arrow expands the menu to display each of the sub-menu choices. Clicking that arrow again collapses the sub-menu.

The Work Area

The large area in the middle of the screen is the work area. It is here where specific information relating to a particular navigation choice, such as adding a new post, is presented and collected.

The Footer

Finally, in the footer, at the bottom of each Administration Panel in dark shading, are links to WordPress, Documentation, and Feedback. In addition, the version of WordPress you have installed is shown. Just below the menu tab section, if your version is NOT the latest version, you will see the message An updated version of WordPress is available. Please update now. Click on the provided link to navigate to the Updates SubPanel.

Below is a list of the submenu items you will find in your default WordPress Admin Panel main navigation menu. Some of them may or may not be included depending on the WordPress version you have installed.

Dashboard

The Dashboard tells you about recent activity both at your site and in the WordPress community at large and provide access to updating WordPress, plugins, and themes.

WordPress Updates

This sub panel gives you an easy method to update WordPress, plugins, and themes. Note not all hosts will allow the automatic update process to work successfully and will require you to manually upgrade by following the Upgrading WordPress instructions.

Posts

This sub panel is where you can publish writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, and, yes, even rantings, of a blog owner and contributors. Here you can write new Posts, create new Categories, new Tags, and new Custom Fields. In addition, any Media (pictures, video, recordings, files) can be uploaded and inserted into the Posts.

Media

This sub panel allows you to upload new media to later use with posts and pages. A Flash Uploader is provided and the ability to use a Browser Uploader is supplied if the Flash Uploader does not work.

Pages

A good example of a Page is the information contained in About or Contact Pages. A Page should not be confused with the time-oriented objects called Posts, nor should a WordPress Page be confused with the word page referring to any web page or HTML document on the Web. In this Sub Panel you can select the Page to edit or delete. Multiple Pages can be selected for deletion and for editing. As with Posts, a powerful bulk edit tool allows certain fields to be edited for a whole group of Pages. A handy in-line edit tool, called Quick Edit, allows you to update many fields for an individual Page. Various search and filtering options allow you to find the Pages you want to edit or delete.

Comments/Reader Feedbacks

Comments are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to Posts. In this sub panel you can edit and delete as well as mark comments as spam. Comments that are awaiting moderation can be marked as approved or previously approved comments can be unapproved. Multiple comments can be selected and approved, marked as spam, unapproved, or deleted. A section at the top of the Comments SubPanel displays the number of comments awaiting moderation and the number of approved comments. A search box allows you to find specific comments.

Appearance

From the Presentation Administration Panel you can control how the content of your blog is displayed. WordPress allows you to easily style your site by either installing and activating new Themes or changing existing Themes. This sub panel includes customization controls for Themes, Widgets, Menus, Background, Header, and Theme Editor.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to add new features to your WordPress blog that don’t come standard with the default installation. This sub panel allows you to view the plugins you’ve downloaded, add new plugins, modify the plugins and choose which plugins you want activated on your site.

Users

Every WordPress site probably has at least two users: the admin, the account initially set up by WordPress, and the user account you, as the author/owner of the blog. This sub panel allows you to set up all of the user accounts you need, change user information, assign roles, or delete users.

Tools

WordPress Tools provide you the ability to speed up WordPress for your local machine, import content from other sources, export your content, or to upgrade your WordPress software to a new release. This includes the Import, Export, and Press This functions.

Settings

The Settings Administration Panel contains all of the settings that define your website as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site. This sub panel includes control settings for: General (basic configuration settings), Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Privacy, and Permalinks
(source: WordPress codex)

The backend or Admin Panel may vary from theme to theme. The look and appearance may vary depending on the customizations and tweaks done by authors and developers. Nevertheless, no matter how Admin Panel is tweaked, these basic functions are standard and generally remain the same no matter what WordPress theme you install.

The Beginner’s Guide to Learn Almost Everything About WordPress

So you’ve been blogging for quite sometime now and you’ve been posting random personal and business stuff on one of those free hosted sites. Everything has been going on well so far until one day this free hosted site suddenly announces that it is shutting down and all your content including all your contacts, posts and thousands of images will no longer be available after a certain date. Horrors! You now scramble to download every last post you’ve made and backup all your data before the clock strikes twelve or else everything disappears forever. Have you ever had that happen to you?

And then you stumbled upon WordPress. The thing is you know very little about it and so you start googling about it which is also probably why you ended up here and you are now reading this post. You want to know more.

Below are some useful resources to help jumpstart your WordPress journey. These resources are mainly aimed towards the novice or beginner level so WordPress savvy professionals might find some of these a bit elementary. Nevertheless, these references can someday come in handy whether you are a beginner or a true blue WordPress guru. We would also like to ask our readers to join the conversation by leaving a comment, any helpful suggestions or additional resources to add to our list.

For those who are about to begin their WordPress journey, check out these resources we have compiled to help you get started:

Websites to Bookmark

  • WordPress.com – A blog web hosting service (free) powered by the open source WordPress software. A good starting point on how to learn the how WordPress actually works at the backend and also to familiarize yourself with running a WordPress site. You can always upgrade to Premium status once you know your way.
  • wpmu.org – The number one source for WordPress news, tips, plugins, and theme reviews.
  • WPBeginner.com – A WordPress resource site providing quality tips, tricks, hacks and other resources for the WordPress community.
  • Speckyboy.com – Web design magazine that offers tutorials, time-saving techniques, inspiration, and useful resources for the web including WordPress.
  • wp.tutsplus.com – A site dedicated to teaching people how to use WordPress, develop widgets, plugins and themes.

Books to Read

Channels/Videos to Watch

  • WordPress.tv – A visual resource for all things WordPress including tutorials, updates, and the latest news.
  • WordCamp.tv – Presentations, highlights, and behind-the-scenes look at WordCamps around the world.
  • Lynda.com – Online courses and tutorials on anything WordPress.
  • StudioPress.tv – Step by step video tutorials for the Genesis Framework for WordPress.
  • Youtube WordPress tutorials

Authors/Developers to Follow

Straight from the Source

  • WordPress.org – the ultimate source for all things WordPress.

There are so many resources out there and so many tutorials that can help you get started. These are just a few to help point you in the right direction.

25 Very Useful WordPress Calendar Plugins for 2013

Time management is one of the biggest problems faced by business owners be they digital business or brick and mortar. There are too many things to do and when you do one thing you obviously can’t do something else (MBA programs call this the “opportunity cost”). Therefore, to manage your time properly and make the most out of the few working hours that exist each day, you must find the best tools to help you manage your time properly. Enter digital calendars.

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