15 Sensational Mobile WordPress Themes

 

According to a survey I came across a few months back, the number of people who use a smartphone is larger than the number of people who use a toothbrush! This means that if your website is not mobile phone friendly then you are missing on on a lot of visitors. Some people feel that if the number of people who surf the Internet on smartphones is A and the number of people who use the Internet from their computer is B then the total number of Internet users is A + B. Wrong!

A lot of people browse the Internet on their smartphones only when they can’t access it via a computer for e.g. while travelling in a car, train or bus etc. This means that there is a big overlap between A and B. A major portion of smartphone browsers is a subset of computer browsers. So what does this has to do with your website? A lot. If you ensure that your site is easily accessible to smartphones then the number of page impressions your site gets can dramatically increase as the same people who were visiting your site via their computers can visit it even when they are…say…travelling.

Below we have collected 15 beautiful WordPress themes designed specifically for mobile phones. Some are free and some cost a nominal amount. Check them out and see which ones work best for you! NOTE: A post on great Responsive WordPress Themes for 2013 is coming soon!
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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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Elegant Themes Shortcodes: Now Responsive!

With the advent of mobile platforms, WordPress themes have to adapt to the demands of this steadily growing user base. It can really be quite frustrating to read articles from any major newspaper’s website on iPhone or Android and get all the content mish mashed. Theme developers and web designers need to move more and more toward this emerging trend towards responsive themes.

It is a welcome development that Elegant Themes recently released its responsive shortcodes. While Elegant Themes has been churning out responsive themes for quite a while, the shortcodes were left out. It took 10 responsive themes before mobile friendly shortcodes were released. Great news, indeed!

So how do these new shortcodes, improve mobile browsing experience? Elegant Themes’ blog cites two examples of their improvement strategy. Tabs have always been an issue when websites typically viewed on a 960px wide screen to a 320px width. No matter what you do, having 10 tabs will alway come out cramped. Solution: Tabs turn into a slider when switching to mobile mode. It just makes sense to have sliders rather than have unreadable tab labels. Another example cited was the case of columns. As the content width gets narrower, text in columns become a bunch of flying letters. Solution: the new shortcodes convert columns into boxes when switching to mobile screens. Brilliant isn’t it? Regarding the new shortcodes, Elegant Themes has declared them to be fluid width giving them the capacity to shrink and expand according to screen size.

Web design and the emerging technology innovation and trends are accelerating even faster. More and more mobile users prefer to access the web through their devices and WordPress Themes providers need to step up their game. For loyal subscribers of Elegant Themes, these concrete steps towards updating and upgrading all Elegant Themes products is always welcome and appreciated.

Congratulations to Elegant Themes for taking WordPress theme development one step further and fully embracing the future of WordPress.

See Elegant Themes’ Responsive Shortcodes

How To Make Your First WordPress Theme

With WordPress being one of the most popular content management systems available today, many WordPress users, developers or not, are beginning to realize that there is a market out there seeking for new and innovative themes for their WordPress powered sites. So how do you start make your very own WordPress theme? Let’s look at a few resources available on the web to help us do that.

Our first stop is the WordPress Codex. This compendium of WordPress resources is rich with “how to’s” from installing your WordPress theme to playing around with code. If you go to the Codex’s Theme Development section, you will find all the useful information from the structure of a WP theme, to template files to practically everything you want to know about WordPress. It has links to sections on theme design, teaching about the proper layout and other design aspects of the theme. Studying the Codex is essential to serious players in the WordPress community.

When you’re ready to try our information you learned from the codex, siteground.com has an interesting tutorial to build a simple wordpress theme. The site helps you go through the process of creating simple code to generate a simple WordPress theme. You can play around with the code to make more complicated themes if you wish. This would be a great place to help you take your baby steps a little further as you work towards being a more experienced theme developer.

If you’re really in a hurry to build your theme because of an opportunity you just can’t miss, you can probably start off your first few themes with Artisteer. This is a WYSIWYG theme builder software which enables you to make professional looking WordPress themes in minutes. You can create a theme in Artisteer then export it to WordPress in the form of a folder containing the normal WordPress files. Studying the files and your Artisteer rendition will give you a lot of information about building themes. The Artisteer’s home edition is available for download at artisteer.com at a price of $49.95.

A lot of folks who want to develop themes are more designers rather than code geeks. If you feel more comfortable with photoshop than messing around in notepad to tweak code, then you might fancy psd2cssonline.com. This utility enables you to convert your photoshop design into the equivalent wordpress files in a few minutes. Now you can spend more time working on the aesthetic aspects of your theme and worry about the code later. Check out this video to get an idea of how easy it is to use psd2cssonline.

You can also check out an excellent article on Lifehacker entitled “How to Create a Custom Theme for Your WordPress Blog with Minimal Coding Required.” What’s great about this article is its simple approach on what you can expect as you go through the process of creating your own theme. It also has valuable resources like links to creating photoshop files for your theme as well as basic html/css knowledge for you to complete your task. The article also explains the structure and files of a typical WordPress theme.

Other Resources You can Check Out

These resources will definitely whet your appetite for theme building skills. There’s a ton of other resources available out there for your to refine your WordPress coding skills. As the WordPress mantra goes, “Code is Poetry.” Start writing your WordPress poems today.

When Is The Best Time To Sell WordPress Themes?

Like any other product, the demand for WordPress themes does have seasonality. In our observation, theme sales do well from January to March then slows down from April to May. Summer months are usually slow while sales pick up in the fall with a dip around Christmas time.

Seasonality in any product or service is determined mainly by socio-cultural factors in the marketplace. In most markets around the world, economic activity is dependent on holidays or the absence or presence of school. There is also the aspect of climate, where people tend to stay indoors more during the cold months.

In the case of theme sales, it can be said that this phenomenon is mainly driven by the level of activity a person has during a season. Great sales during the first quarter of the year may be attributed to more free time for buyers to stay online as the kids are still in school and most folks prefer to stay indoors during winter. This means people have more time to tinker with their websites during this time and spotting opportunities for improvement or change could mean upgrading to a newer WordPress theme or buying and installing a new plugin. The spring slowdown correlates to the physical activities associated with this season: spring cleaning, gardening, putting away winter stuff, etc. Sometimes the lure of the outdoors is greater than staying inside the house, what with the weather becoming more pleasant and warmer. When summer kicks in and as the kids are out of school, that’s when all the vacations, trips and out of town activities happen. People tend to relax a bit more and work on websites take a back burner during this time. As kids go back to school in the fall, sales gradually picks up as people find more time to focus on work before the next big holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, roll in. Spending patterns during Thanksgiving and Christmas usually turn towards gifts, gadgets, and other stuff to buy online unless WordPress authors take their cue from the season and create enticing special prices for WordPress theme packages or bundles.

Knowing these patterns, how do you align development and marketing activities for your themes? It would be wise to have your development activities lie heavily during the spring and summer months. That way, your resources do not have to compete with the demands of development and marketing at the same time. The best time to strengthen core technology, respond to emerging design trends, is during these lean months. As fall comes, resources can be shifted to marketing and after sales support as sales starts picking up. This is the right time to introduce new products and manage customer satisfaction as they adapt to your new themes.

Recognizing these consumer patterns may help you plan your annual business cycle as you make those critical decisions to save time, effort and money in your WordPress business.

Best WordPress Theme of All Time?

Have you ever stopped to consider what makes a theme the best WordPress theme of all time? Taking a look at some of the best themes of 2012 we have compiled, which one would be your choice? What qualities should a theme have in order for it to be ranked as the best WordPress theme ever? Here are a few attributes you can use to rate your theme choices:

  1. Flexible – A theme must have the ability to meet the needs of various users. You must be able to customize a theme for various applications. Ideally, the theme you use for your portfolio site, should work excellently on your wife’s personal blog site, your client’s e-commerce site, or any other website requirement you need. A multifunctional theme begets more users.
  2. Timeless – The best theme of all time should be ageless. It should demonstrate resilience in the midst of technology trends that come and go. The key to this is for code and other technical stuff under the hood to be easily upgradable and to be supported by a development team to keep it alive and updated. The theme’s aesthetic features should classic/timeless while being highly customizable to reflect emerging artistic theme movements or trends.
  3. Accessible – The theme has to be easily accessible to as many as possible. The pricing must be reasonable not only for 1st world countries but also in the emerging tech hubs of the developing world. Usage must be easy for persons of varied physical/mental abilities, age or educational background. How would the technically challenged or non-coders find using the theme? Is the theme available in many languages? Will the theme be accessible in varied devices of choice?
  4. Responsive – The theme has to should be responsive in every way. Mobile and handheld devices are changing the way we access information and creating websites that look good not only in traditional desktop computers but also on smartphones and tablets is the way of the future. If you want to create a website that responds to the needs of your clients, anywhere they are and everywhere they go – then being responsive is the way to go.
  5. Customer Support – The theme should have adequate support and provision for any WordPress updates. This is differentiates a good theme from a great theme. Customer support is paramount to any service oriented business and it will spell long-term success to anyone who puts that extra effort in.

There are many more attributes that can be added to this list. Feel free to share your thoughts and your choices. We’d really love to know which WordPress Theme you think is THE BEST WordPress Theme of ALL time.

Freemium: Is This The Best Model For Selling WordPress Themes?

In a previous article we discussed the merits and disadvantages of free vs. premium WordPress themes. Which themes are better? The answer really lies on what type of user you are. Are you a newbie or are you maintaining a professional website? We have to admit though, that if you’re after great looks and superb functionality, nothing usually beats Premium themes. You’ll probably relate to the experience spending hours scouring the web for free alternatives to Premiums. We usually strike gold when we find freemium themes.

We often encounter freemium products/services in our daily lives. When you open your mailbox, you might find a 30-day trial disc of the latest creative software mailed to you. Think of all the free apps (full or lite versions) you download, test and enjoy everyday. Free versions of expense management applications are available for download on Google Play or App Store with limited capabilities enough to get you started. Gamers also encounter Freemiums often. Big name services like Skype, Dropbox and Gmail have freemium services that open the door to paid subscriptions later on.

What exactly are freemiums? These are limited versions of premium products or services offered at no cost. What makes the Freemium model unique is that it gives users a sufficient functional experience to acquire their loyalty to that particular product/service. In offering these products, developers make it easier for users to convert to premium versions as the need arises. In some cases, developers give away a service for free so it becomes a standard creating a demand for premium service among business clients later on.

The advantage of freemium themes is that it gives users the chance to test drive themes with real content. This helps them decide if the theme they try is really appropriate for their website. As you get more familiar with the theme, you can easily convert to a premium theme via upgrade buttons in the admin panel. The upgrade can be sold easier to an otherwise pre-converted user.

From a marketing standpoint, freemium themes gives a win-win solution for both users and developer. Even if users don’t upgrade a trial/lite theme, future products will be better and easier to sell because of the experience users gain from these specific developers.

Twenty Twelve WordPress Theme – Get It Here!

Twenty Twelve WordPress Theme

If you haven’t already heard, Automattic is set to release the Twenty Twelve WordPress Theme with their 3.5 update. There has been some anticipation for a while as to when the fine folks at WordPress would release their Theme for 2012 since the year is quickly ending. Well…while it’s not “officially” released yet, we are pleased to present you with a download of the Twenty Twelve Theme.

Twenty Twelve Theme

There are a lot of really slick features, and if you are a fan of clean and minimal lines — we think you’ll really enjoy this Theme. More details are sure to be coming soon from WordPress. If you’d like to start messing with the Theme, we’ve made it available here. Keep in mind that WordPress may change one or two things before their official release of Twenty Twelve, but for those of you who simply can’t wait you can download it here – all 78K of it 🙂

 

CSSIgniter Goes After Elegant Themes

In September 2010, CSSIgniter started churning out Premium WordPress themes for the WordPress community. What was intended to be a side project to augment the founders’ day jobs didn’t bring in the cash they were hoping for.

Early this year, CSSIgniter put some focus and resources to keep its creative engines running consistently. In the last 7 months, this developer has released 16 new themes, half of its existing inventory of 29. A closer look at their last 7 releases show how they have significantly up their game by joining the responsive bandwagon and now this dynamic development team of 4 is now cooking up their 2nd responsive e-commerce theme.

CSSIgniter offers members a year’s access to its catalogue of themes for the price of $39. This brings them in direct competition with Elegant Themes who offers similar access to its members at the same price. What differentiates CSSIgniter is its willingness to give out PSD files to all its members. Elegant Themes gives out these files to its Developer members who pay $89 annually. While Elegant Themes continues to create stunning, highly functional, easy to use themes, CSSIgniter isn’t far behind. Considering the bold shifts in pace and design the Greek quartet have taken in the last few months, it would not be surprising to find their products standing toe to toe with Elegant Themes in the very near future. Their Aegean Resort Theme now offers visuals which can be developed to generate the stunning effect of Elegant’s Gleam.

CSSIgniter still has to master how to showcase their work on their website. A casual visitor, would probably find their Theme descriptions too concise in comparison the level of detail one finds on Elegant Theme’s website. To offset this, CSSIgniter may consider including video introductions as part of the live demo similar to the video introduction on their blog post to introduce Femme.

CSSIgniter appears to be beyond the stage of ignition and is now beginning to burn up really bright. We looking forward to the next releases of this rising star among the current WordPress premium theme providers community.

Check Out CSSIgniter