WordPress Music Themes April 2014

Music fan sites are a great way to bring together people who have a common interest in a specific musician, a music genre, bands, etc. If you are thinking of putting up a website for that type of audience, here are some of the latest music themes you can check out:

Dubstep – Premium Music WordPress Theme

Dubstep is a WordPress theme for bands, musicians, DJs, clubs and everyone involved in the music or entertainment business. This theme supports every post type that a music & entertainment theme would need such as: intuitive Events Management (ability to set date, time, venue, location, and map coordinates; provision for normal and recurring events, tickets support); Discography Management (ability to share your music with fans using either self hosted audio files using the powerful soundManager2 or embedded sounds from SoundCloud); Artists Management (display an infinite number of favorite artists, colleagues, or band members (their albums, tracks, or playlists) and categorize them easily; Media Management (share videos either self-hosted or from services like Youtube, Vimeo etc. and create endless interactive custom photo galleries from your events using templates or sliders).

SoundBlast – Music Band WordPress Theme

Sound Blast Premium WordPress Theme is a WooCommerce ready theme especially designed for bands and music websites. This easy to modify theme features include: Album + Track Management (options include Now Playing, Download, Play Only, and Buy Now), Slider Management, Event Management, Gallery Management, Sidebar Management, Powerful Theme Options + Page Builder, 2 pre-made color variations.

MusicVent – Premium Music & Event WordPress Theme

MUSICVENT Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, responsive, and a well-thought out HTML5 WordPress Theme for Music & Event related Personalities/Studios. The theme’s clean Lines & minimal design approach truly highlights the artist(s) and the work(s) showcased. Its unique design and streamlined navigation makes it easy for fans, music aficionados, potential producers, talent scouts, etc., to go through the website get the information needed and take the necessary action after. The 6 built-in page templates (Albums, Artists, Events, Gallery, Bloglist, Contact) are organized and give you or users everything that is needed. Transition and animation effects like black and white photos display their full colors when hovered over. It also includes 2 homepage layout options (fullscreen image slider and fullscreen video background) to choose from according to the audience you are targeting.

RockOn – Multipurpose Music WP Theme

RockOn! Premium WordPress Theme is a WooCommerce ready multipurpose music theme for singers, artists, music bands or musical events created using Twitter Bootstrap, with a responsive design which makes it a perfect fit for all devices. This theme includes features such as: Event Management using one of the best event management plugins – WP Event Manager, 100% responsive 3D Layer Slider, Sidebar Managerusing CrunchPress “CP” framework, WooCommerce Shop Catalog Grid OR Full Layout also Masonry (Filterable), and so many other features.

NOISE – Onepage DJs & Band WordPress Theme

NOISE Premium WordPress Theme is a cool, creative and modern theme perfect for musicians, DJs, bands and other music related professionals or businesses. Built with smooth and sleek CSS3 and AJAX animations including a unique spectrum analyzer to help you visualize music automatically on every single track. You can easily manage and display your artists, albums, audios, images, videos, events dates and sell your items (tickets etc.), allow users to rate music, and share instantly on their social networks. It also comes with 2 different players (SimplePlayer widget and Extended Player) to give users control over every single track played.

Music Club – Music/Band/Club/Party WordPress Theme

Music Club Premium WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for music, club, party, radio station, bands or even entertainment magazine. It comes with great features for music such as: a floating music player at the bottom of the page, a traditional boxed player for those who prefer something familiar, an Event post type that come with a ticket button with 5 tickets status, a Music Album feature which when clicked, automatically fetches all songs in an album to the floating player. Other outstanding features include a Page Builder, Revolution Slider, GoodLayers Importer, and other great music tools, to help you build a power music website users will truly enjoy.

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.

WordPress Plugins For Video

Video is a powerful tool to draw people to your site. Today’s audience is so accustomed to visual stimulation that the use of video has become one of the fastest, if not the most effective, ways of communicating to a wider audience. Hence, it is already a necessity for websites to be multimedia friendly and capable of handling all types of multimedia content, especially videos.

Check out these WordPress video plugins you can use to create more visual interest to your website.

Advanced Responsive Video Embedder

This simple and lightweight plugin lets you embed videos from many providers with full responsive sizes via URL or Shortcode (clean and easy shortcode syntax). You can show videos as thumbnails and let them open in Colorbox. The Plugin has a set of customization options to embed the video exactly as you like which includes custom URL parameters. You also have options to make the videos as unobtrusive as possible to keep visitors on your site.

YouTube Plus

This plugin allows you to upload content to your YouTube account and easily embed content straight from your WordPress dashboard. Upload new content to YouTube, delete old content from your YouTube account, get other YouTube users videos and even track your YouTube analytics right from the WordPress dashboard. You can also delete content from your YouTube account right from the WordPress dashboard. No need to leave your blog to go remove videos from YouTube. The built in validation makes sure that only you can delete content from your YouTube account. Through the YouTube Plus analytics section you can track important YouTube analytic information for the 25 most recent uploaded videos. The analytics section comes with a fully interactive world map and tons of metric information displayed in tables.

Video Embed

This plugin is a smart and easy way to add responsive HTML5 Video gallery and Video player to your WordPress Site. The plugin adds a Video gallery tab to your admin menu, which allows you to enter Video Title and Video source items just as you would regular posts. Also added setting page “Smartvideo Settings” under “setting” menu to set the height and width of your video player.

Video Thumbnails

Video Thumbnails makes it easy to automatically display video thumbnails in your template. When you publish a post, this plugin will find the first video embedded and locate the thumbnail for you. Thumbnails can be saved to your media library and set as a featured image automatically. This plugin also supports custom post types and custom fields. Additional features include maximum image sizes, more powerful bulk scanning options, a customizable upload directory, and support for popular video services like YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Dailymotion, Google Drive, etc.

JW Player for Flash & HTML5 Video

The JW Player WordPress Plugin enables you to embed Flash and HTML5 audio and video, plus RTMP and YouTube streams, on your site using JW Player 6. This plugin allows for easy customization and embedding of Flash and HTML5 video using the JW Player in your WordPress posts. It provides support for all of the JW Player 6 configuration options, including custom watermarks, HLS/RTMP streaming and VAST/VPAID advertising.

Events and Entertainment WordPress Themes – December 2013

Get into the groove with these cool WordPress themes just in time for the most event-filled season of the year. Create a site for you or your clients that will surely stand out with these creative events and entertainment WordPress themes.

POLARIS – Responsive WordPress Theme

Polaris Premium WordPress Theme is an ultra responsive and modern one page WordPress Theme suitable for events or parties. This premium retina ready theme comes in 16 color styles and includes: Magnific popup, Font Awesome iconic font, parallax, easy to extend and much more. It is a great way to present your important events and activities all in one sweep.This premium theme is based on popular Twitter Bootstrap framework. This template uses the latest HTML5 and CSS3 technologies.

Clubix – Nightlife, Music & Events WordPress Theme

Clubix Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive theme designed especially for nightlife, events, and music related websites. Party goers,fans, followers, or nightlife club hoppers are always on the lookout for the latest happenings around town. A cool way to address the needs of this specific market is putting up an online calendar of events, concerts, gigs, tours, launches, and other events or nightlife activities that will keep them up to date. For music enthusiasts, Clubix has two custom post types ‘under the hood’ to help you create and upload new songs organised on albums and events. You can customize your background image and also the color of the main elements from the theme, add music players, sliders, WooCommerce, Google maps, and so much more.

Flycase – Complete Music Solution for WordPress

Flycase Premium WordPress Theme is a professional and easy-to-use Music WordPress Theme that is highly and easily customizable, ready for all devices, simple to set up, and even e-commerce ready. Specifically designed for music enthusiasts, professional or not, this theme includes all the features you need to present, promote and sell for your band or label. This edgy, modern theme has everything a fan wants and everything a music artist needs – from photo/video galleries, discography, tour dates, multiple playlists, etc. – all in one cool theme.

Amplify WordPress Theme

Amplify Premium WordPress Theme is not your typical band theme with its minimalist and clean design but still capable of managing music website requirement such as gigs, discography, and videos with ease using the AudioTheme plugin. The WordPress admin panel is transformed into your band’s ultimate management tool with an easy-to-use user interface. Add your own language and display RTL languages as intended. Upload your tracks and allow users to play clips or full songs on every page of your website with the custom audio player. It ties in directly to your AudioTheme tracks and offers an easy-to-use interface for selecting and updating tracks in the jukebox. This theme is powered by Foundation by Zurb and Sass, a powerful CSS pre-processor where you can either edit the CSS directly or use Sass to regenerate your theme CSS easily and quickly.

Applause – One-Page Responsive Music & DJ WP Theme

Applause Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive one page band & musicians theme, built using Bootstrap framework using HTML5 & CSS3. For all who love music or those who are in the music industry such as music bands, musicians, DJs, producers, labels or organizers of events and festivals, this theme is the perfect solution to organizing necessary information and media such as Events, Audio, Galleries and Videos. Applause can display each event on their own map with its location and venue, the price and availability of the tickets. It can display your latest audio tracks with awesome player and you can even add a remote link or upload your own mp3.

Creative WordPress Themes – November 2013

Are you working on a project and in need of a WordPress theme to match your client’s needs? Here are some of the latest creative and interesting WordPress themes to inspire you:

Attitude: Multimedia Portfolio for Media Artists

Attitude Premium WordPress Theme is a multimedia portfolio and blog theme specifically designed for media artists. This theme comes with 3 main media formats: audio – to share your creative sounds with the world, video – for producers, directors, and video designers to publish and share video, and gallery portfolio formats – for architects, interior & landscape designers, photographers and others who have few or many pictures for each project. Notable features are: fully compatible with high-resolution screens like a laptops with Retina-display, two color schemes – Light and Dark, custom slugs, portfolio migration from other themes, custom styles, motion typo, and demo XML to get started.

Swiss – Premium WordPress Theme

Swiss Premium WordPress Theme is an ultra minimal yet elegantly styled WordPress theme based on the Swiss design principles for layout, colors, and typography. Its European design flavor featuring big, bold typographic elements applies itself well to an agency, blog or portfolio website. This theme comes with 3 different homepage options, 2 blog styles, 3 filterable portfolio presentation options, a team members page, and many other features that will surely make your design company stand out. It also comes with a free Cr3ativ Shortcodes plugin you can use to easily add fully responsive elements such as google maps, alert boxes, columns, buttons (with or without icons) choose colors for buttons, pull quotes and so much more.

Pix – Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme

ePix Premium WordPress Theme is a feature-packed theme suitable to the demands of creative professionals like photographers, design agencies, creative freelancers, and the like. It is loaded with unique features like: the Fullscreen gallery, Stunning Galleries, advanced live Skin Editor, Visual Page Builder, Gallery Media Manager, Parallax, etc. It also includes other features such as: fully responsive, retina ready, advanced theme options, full WooCommerce design integration and WPML ready, font awesome integration, advanced typography options, Custom CSS field, SEO basics built-in, Wistia Video Hosting Integration, JW Player 6.x Integration with Audio / Video, extensive documentation and detailed screencast video tutorials and top-notch custom support.

Porcelain – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme

Porcelain Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and dynamic, fully responsive, parallax WordPress theme suited for all types of website needs. It comes with some awesome features, such as custom headers and custom background sections and it is the perfect canvas for your creative ideas. The combination of responsive design and parallax animations creates a high impact and impressive home page that looks great on all kinds of devices. Features include: an extensive admin panel, packed with various options so you can easily modify stylings, colors, fonts, layouts, etc., a flexible AJAX gallery with jQuery animations and effects, the gallery also provides an AJAX pagination and category filter for a better items organisation, content slider, Nivo slider, masonry layout support, and so much more.

OneUp – One Page Parallax Retina WordPress Theme

OneUp Premium WordPress Theme is a fully responsive HTML5 Retina enabled One Page WordPress Theme suitable for any kind of creative or business use. Built upon the responsive Twitter Bootstrap framework, the theme is highly optimized for both mobile and desktop platforms. This premium theme utilizes lazy-loading of images and compression of all required scripts, to ensure a fast-loading and awesome looking website. Features include: advanced page builder, layered slide builder, drag ‘n drop galleries, custom thumbnail cropping, WPML compatible, 4 slider engines, and many other great features to create a high visual impact website.

Gothica – A one Page WordPress Theme in Goth Style

Gothica Premium Responsive WordPress Theme is a bold and striking one page theme with a modern gothic flair. This premium theme features innovative AJAX loading of Posts and Portfolio items (can be turned on or off on demand with one click in Page Builder), premium Aqua Page Builder, Revolution Slider, responsive design, unlimited homepage templates, CSS3 features and animations, 5 Post Templates (Standard, video, link, gallery, audio), Team Page, and so much more.

Tao: Retina & Responsive WordPress Portfolio Theme

Tao Premium WordPress theme is unique and incredibly easy to use WordPress portfolio theme that’s quick to setup and easy to customize. This premium handcrafted theme is perfect for showcasing your work with a creative twist. Check out the unique folding effect of the grid boxes. Other features include: fully retina & responsive, semantic and clean HTML5, coded with graceful degradation and SEO in mind, focus on user-experience, usability, and beautiful typography, WordPress 3.0+ ready (featured images, custom post types, custom menus), unbranded theme options, localisation support, widget enabled, diversified portfolio, etc.

WordPress 3.6 and Beyond

Oscar is out of the can! No, it’s not a trash can and Oscar ain’t grouchy either. Named in honor of the great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, WordPress 3.6 Oscar is out of beta and has been officially released premiered with a cool video to go along with it. Matt Mullenweg introduced the latest version in WordCamp San Francisco and along with several other announcements. Versions 3.7 and 3.8 are close on its heels too with a tentative fall and end of the year release together with a book in the offing. It can only get better.

Here are some of the highlights of WordPress 3.6 Oscar to get excited about:

User Features

  • The new Twenty Thirteen theme inspired by modern art puts focus on your content with a colorful, single-column design made for media-rich blogging.
  • Revamped Revisions save every change and the new interface allows you to scroll easily through changes to see line-by-line who changed what and when.
  • Post Locking and Augmented Autosave will especially be a boon to sites where more than a single author is working on a post. Each author now has their own autosave stream, which stores things locally as well as on the server (so much harder to lose something) and there’s an interface for taking over editing of a post, as demonstrated beautifully by our bearded buddies in the video above.
  • Built-in HTML5 media player for native audio and video embeds with no reliance on external services.
  • The Menu Editor is now much easier to understand and use.

Developer features

  • A new audio/video API gives you access to metadata like ID3 tags.
  • You can now choose HTML5 markup for things like comment and search forms, and comment lists.
  • Better filters for how revisions work, so you can store a different amount of history for different post types.

The Future: WordPress 3.7 & 3.8, WordPress The Book, and a whole lot more

Matt Mullenweg mentioned that the first chapter of WordPress The Book – a book about the history of WordPress – is currently being written in Github similar to the way the software itself started. They’ve also been working on security and stability features He also announced a developer resource dedicated to WordPress developers (developer.wordpress.org). He also mentioned the work they were currently doing on the MP6 plugin project and the development of WordPress 3.7 and 3.8 aiming for smaller teams, quicker iterations, less bottlenecks, and temporary hooks. In WordPress 3.7, all developments will be done as independent units or plugins while in WordPress 3.8 is targeted for release in December 2013. WordPress 3.8 will be similar to the 3.7 model. Another target is the release of Twenty Fourteen theme before 2014.

Matt also mentioned that there was a 96% attrition rate on those who start a blog and actually follow through (wordpress.com data) – a danger that needs to be addressed. The goal is to improve the numbers by next year in line with democratizing publishing on the web. The success of WordPress lies in the fact that the WordPress community is and has always been actively committed and involved in improving this open source software even after a decade later.

MultiMedia WordPress Themes August 2013

Today’s multimedia audience has been bombarded with multi sensory stimuli that engage and entertain like never before. Competing in such an environment is pretty challenging and demands a lot of creativity especially when it comes to web design. Here are some innovative WordPress themes that offer you more than your usual WordPress fare:

Fuji Full Screen WordPress Theme

Fuji Premium WordPress Theme is an innovative theme with design aesthetics that are far from your typical WordPress theme design. Its modern and clean design is visually refreshing in every aspect. All the best trends in web development have been implemented in this theme: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations are just some of the features of this theme. It also includes features such as: 9 different page types (Home, Standard Page, Column Page, Full Page, Half Page, Collection, Gallery, Video and Blog), Unlimited Galleries, Unlimited Collections (Portfolio) and Unlimited Audio Tracks, and so much more to fit any type of web application you need.

Acid Unique Horizontal Blog and Portfolio Theme

Why scroll downwards when you can scroll or swipe sideways? Acid Premium WordPress Theme combines the best design features you adore in Metro and One-Page and brings it all together into this one theme. Choose from Colorful Hipster, Serious Black, and Retro Grandma to create the website you need in the style that you want. This theme includes the following key features: unique portfolio layout, unlimited color options, mini parallax, unlimited scroll, One-Page horizontal layout with the option to choose and use the Metro Style blog and portfolio or a combination of both.

Anthe WordPress Theme

If creativity is your passion then up the ante and create a website that reflects just that with Anthe Premium WordPress Theme – a reliable, fast and responsive WordPress theme designed to promote small design agencies or big creative minds. This fresh and creative premium theme gives you four page styles and two page layout options. It’s a 2 in 1 theme – multi-page & single-page solution – all in one package. You can combine your WP pages to create incredible single pages with only a few clicks.

WildHorn Full Screen WordPress Theme

Wildhorn Premium WordPress theme is a full screen theme designed to put your multimedia content (images, videos, and audio) in the spotlight. Equipped with the bests trends in web development such as: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations. This theme also comes with an embedded music player (can be turned on or off) to add that something extra to the whole web experience.

Wave WordPress Theme for Artists

If you are an artist looking for a theme to house your art on the web check out Wave Premium WordPress theme – a responsive WordPress theme made for artists that can also be used as a portfolio cum blog by anyone needs a theme to showcase images and galleries and a blog as well. It is designed on a 1180px grid with 16 columns which can be quite flexible for showcasing art in different sizes or dimensions. This premium theme is also WooCommerce ready which opens up opportunities for artists to sell their artwork online right on the spot.

Take Care Of Your Affiliates And They Will Take Care Of You

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer‘ or ‘brand‘), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate‘), and the customer. (source: Wikipedia). It is a way for a company to sell its products by signing up individuals or companies (“affiliates”) who market the company’s products for a commission.

Here are some important notes shared by Mark Jenny and Vincent Fisher during the Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013.

Why You Want Affiliates to Promote You:

  • Affiliates help scale your business faster
  • Larger sales force marketing your business aside from you.
  • No marketing risk
  • Impossible to implement everything yourself. Let your affiliates be the experts on PPC, Direct Mail, Banner Buys, etc

Tip: Focus on helping your affiliates make as much money as possible. Your affiliates will build your business. The more they make the more you make.

Affiliates are always looking for a winning offer which consists of:

  • A converting product – your best product
  • Support – excellent product and customer support
  • Highest payouts possible – offer best commission scheme possible

Where do you find affiliates:

  • Competitors – your competitors can sometimes be your best affiliates (partnerships, joint ventures)
  • Networks – affiliates are already in the networks
  • Customers – turn customers into affiliates
  • Affiliates Promoting other niches congruent but not directly related

Commission Payouts and Affiliate Rewards Tips:

  • Payout affiliates as much as possible (lead generation, CPA, revenue sharing)
  • Never, ever miss a payment to your affiliates
  • Send affiliates notices when payments are made even if they aren’t getting any payment
  • Hold frequent contests and offer unique prizes or random gifts

At the end of the day, focus on your affiliates and not yourself.