Best BuddyPress Themes May 2013

BuddyPress is an open source social networking software package owned by Automattic – essentially, a plugin that can be installed on WordPress to transform it into a social network platform. If you are considering to up the ante on your blog by being more socially connected, here are some of the best BuddyPress themes you can check out:

Flix BuddyPress Ready Team Blogging

Flix is a powerful and flexible community blogging theme for WordPress. you can use to start your own community in no time. This theme includes BuddyPress and bbPress as part of the many superb features of this theme. It also includes a SmartTab system where you can put authors in the spotlight. Easily order the front page by posts from a specific author a specific category without reloading the page. The team blogging feature is perfect for both small and big blogs that have multiple contributors. This responsive theme is also whitelabel enabled which means you can easily customize the theme to suit your business brand.

OneCommunity BuddyPress Theme

OneCommunity theme is a responsive WPMU compatible theme integrated with a BuddyPress plugin. This plugin allows users to register on your site and start creating profiles, posting messages, making connections, creating and interacting in groups and much more. This theme is a social network in a box where you can build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community. The theme includes over 40 inner pages to manage profiles, activities, messages, group messages, invitations, subscriptions, and forums of both members and groups.

Razor

Razor is a responsive and clean, professional looking BuddyPress theme for WordPress. Built on a responsive layout structure and supporting Retina (HiDPI) enabled devices, this theme is packed with powerful modern features and the advanced controls such as Drag and Drop Layout Manager, Contact Form Builder, White Label Admin, Sidebar Manager and so much more. Building websites, communities, social networks is a breeze with this amazing looking theme. The possibilities are endless.

Social Buddy

Social Buddy is a responsive, flexible, BuddyPress and BBPress integrated community WordPress theme that is perfect for niche communities and social networks. Its fully fluid responsive design makes it work beautifully on mobile devices. This theme includes extensive documentation and an intuitive options panel making setup and customization a breeze. Theme support is excellent and top notch.

Best Corporate WordPress Themes May 2013

Here are a few of our current picks for awesome corporate themes for 2013:

Shift Flexibly Creative WP Theme

Time to make the big Shift from your cold and stiff corporate website into a highly creative, extremely customizable, responsive theme WordPress theme – Shift Premium WordPress Theme. This theme includes 12 homepage layouts to choose from. It’s drag & drop enabled feature also allows users to easily arrange, enable/disable sections according to their specific needs or tastes. Each section is customizable, with the option to change background colors, background images even the image position within each section. It is WooCommerce enabled, bbPress ready, retina ready, and fully responsive. This theme was built using the Bootstrap Framework.

Lounge

LOUNGE Premium WordPress Theme is a high quality professional WordPress theme for modern business or interactive creative use. Its clean and professional looking layout creates that sense of reliability and trustworthiness necessary in business. Amazing features include: 4 fluid AJAX animations (can be turned on or off), unlimited Parallax pages, unlimited sliders & slides to each page using two types of built-in sliders, fully responsive, modular shortcodes, and highly intuitive and friendly to use framework.

Co-Worker

CoWorker is a responsive flexible multi purpose theme built for a business, portfolio, corporate, agency or any other kind of website. Salient features include: fully responsive and retina ready design, 12 premium sliders, 30+ page templates, tons of shortcodes including a shortcode generator, 6 header options + menu styles, custom widgets, and many other features to help you redefine your website’s brand.

Moxie

Moxie Premium WordPress Theme is a blend of style, creativity and power. This powerful WordPress theme allows you to take control of your content and build the website you need with the content you want. Creating your own signature website is easy with features such as: Mega Menus, Dynamic animations with Slider Revolution, Drag and Drop feature using Visual Composer, Contact Form Builder, a built in Template System, and so much more.

Stark

Stark Premium WordPress Theme is a highly customizable multi purpose WordPress theme designed by 3 elite Themeforest authors (Damojo, Themepunch, Thunderbuddies) to give you a mega WordPress theme that leaves nothing else to be desired. Quality plugins such Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, Isotope Image Grid Plugin, and FancyBox 2 Lightbox plugin, are just some of the top-notch features included in the premium WordPress theme.

Commissioned Work or Commissioned Creative Vision?

Creative ownership has always been a controversial issue. Demarcation lines have been difficult to draw with the coming of the information or digital age. As far as WordPress themes go, a piece of work that emanates from the WordPress author, known as the creator or artist, and transferred to the recipient often identified as client, becomes an arduous task because the artist is oftentimes unable to remove or distance himself from the work of “art” even if it has long left his hands.

For example, a WordPress developer or professional, commissioned to work on a project and whose work has been accepted by the client has intrinsically turned over all rights to his design and has received remuneration for it. In essence, the client now owns the work. However, the designer is still credited to the public eye and both are at the mercy of the terms and stipulations of the legal contract between them.

The coming of the internet/digital age has birthed governing rules such as Creative Commons or GPL where artists openly share the rights to their work to the public under specific licenses or terms of use thus complicating further the very delineations that are supposed to protect the interest of the artist. But where do you draw the line? In the eyes of the WordPress author, the output can be treated as artistic and creative output while to the client, the full rights to the use of the output, specifically, the WordPress theme created, belong to the latter once money is exchanged.

Discussions continue to be controversial. Schools train and teach multi media students how to treat their work and how to avoid exploitation or unjust use of their artistic output. But this is not so in the “real world” marketplace where copying is a “generally accepted” practice. It is not uncommon for a best-selling WordPress theme to birth clones and spin-offs of some sort in a matter of days. How do we address the idealism of upcoming authors and developers who are scared that their designs might get ripped off? The exposure and professional experience of seasoned web developers have given them the wisdom and resilience to cope with these real world ripoff concerns. But this should not discourage those who are can add to the pool of creativity because of fear.

Thankfully, there are many mentors within the WordPress community who are willing to give back to the community and pay it forward to those who are just starting. The dialog is also always ongoing. This is perhaps what makes the whole WordPress community strong and what makes its members continue to thrive.

Pocket WordPress – Is It Truly Ready For The Mobile You?

Handheld devices are here to stay. Technology has dished out several tablet options prior to today’s mobile device centric generation but none of them broke through the desktop/laptop barrier until Apple’s revolutionary iPhone and iPad products gave a new lease on the “handy” handheld device. This set the trend for device manufacturers and software developers to rethink their game plans to face this inevitable direction.

Ever since the Blackberry became the corporate executive’s device of choice being able to do basic business tasks and office requirements while on the go, device manufacturers have taken it several notches higher. The average businessman now has management and administrative apps available for every type of task and need. From time management to finance to managing appointments and even vacations – there is an app for all that. Social networking also has never been easier. Connecting and networking are simply a login away. App authors have taken all the brainwork out so that users can enjoy the benefits of these apps straight away. Even the least tech savvy today is still miles ahead of the web guru a few years ago.

Where does the WordPress blogger fit into all these tech and app upgrades? Is the WordPress app up to the challenge of today’s mobile device dependent consumer? Are the same features and functionalities in the backend of every WordPress website as easy as using an iOs or Android app? Or is it just the frontend that’s responsive and ready? Are there themes available that not only make a WordPress website look and work beautifully both inside and out? Is the WordPress app capable of giving you the same experience you get from the desktop or laptop?

Mobile WordPress users who access and manage their websites on medium sized tablets and Android devices will still find things manageable and workable. The other demographic that needs to be considered is the smartphone and the smaller mobile devices that aren’t that easy to maneuver. Perhaps these queries are not only for the WordPress author or developer but maybe perhaps for those who contribute to the WordPress framework itself? Maybe future versions of WordPress will have more app-like versions today’s modern bloggers are more familiar with. Perhaps this version already exists or is in the works. Today’s young bloggers have no idea what a floppy disk is or the old storage devices of decades ago. This generation’s tech knowledge acceleration will continue and they will outgrow today’s latest smartphone in just a few years. Can WordPress keep up and be ready for the mobile you?

Share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

Web Design Tools for WordPress 2013

Learning is a never-ending journey. There’s always room to grow, things to improve, and ways to make things better, more efficient, and more effective. Here are some (premium and free) web design tools that can help WordPress authors and developers reduce work time, increase productivity and improve work quality:

Sail.js (Free)

Sails.js makes it easy to build custom, enterprise-grade Node.js apps. It is designed to resemble the MVC architecture from frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the more modern, data-oriented style of web app development. It’s especially good for building real time features like chat, it automatically builds a RESTful JSON API, and it supports HTTP and WebSockets. The Sails framework was developed by Mike McNeil with the support of Balderdash.

Backbone.js (Free)

Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions,views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.

Extra Strength Responsive Grids (Free)

Extra Strength Responsive Grids are percentage-based, for smooth, non-snappy width adjustments that enable you to take total control of your layout. ESRG deploys meaningful class names such as grid-half and grid-quarter to make life easier. ESRG is also SASS-enabled.

Easel Design without a Designer (From Free – $99 Subscription)

Easel is an in-browser, high-fidelity web design tool that lets you mockup, share and implement your ideas with ease. This WYSIWYG web design tool aims to make web design and development easier for teams who want to quickly get their ideas online without having to hire a designer. The app is a great resource for people who don’t have any coding experience but know what they want visually.

Responsive Nav (Free)

Responsive Nav is a tiny JavaScript plugin which weighs only 1.7 KB minified and Gzip’ed, and helps you to create a toggled navigation for small screens. It uses touch events and CSS3 transitions for the best possible performance. It also contains a “clever” workaround that makes it possible to transition from height: 0 to height: auto, which isn’t normally possible with CSS3 transitions.

WordPress Themes 2014? What Does the Future Hold?

Did you know that there are approximately 8 months and 2 weeks till January 2014? What?! 2014 already? You might think that’s still too far away but in reality, big businesses usually have 2-year, 3-year, and 5-year plans already pencilled in place. It’s not unusual for them to think beyond today and they probably already have activities and processes scheduled even beyond that time frame.

So what’s our fearless forecast for 2014? Is it too early to tell? Let’s take a few “wild” but calculated guesses on what we think is to come.

Mobile – The Handheld and Portable Desktop

This forecast is not new and developments in the past 2 years or so have all been pointing to this direction. Smartphones, tablets, androids, iOs devices are more and more in stiff competition with each other as people rely more and more on their devices to get everything done. As this trend continues, WordPress theme authors and developers need to think of ways, as early as now, not just adapt to the move but perhaps innovate something revolutionary that will inspire a fresh way of doing things. The move towards drag, drop, click one button, one size fits all types of themes is great but could always be better – more personalized, easier to customize and brand, and perhaps an easy to maneuver app-like admin panel – especially on a tiny 3.5” inch display using a tiny unwieldy touch keyboard.

Retina Display

Manufacturers of LCD, LED, HD and all the other display devices are probably well into production already filled with orders for the Christmas season and early next year and we bet that retina display is high up in one of their specs somewhere. What to do? WordPress authors and developers need to update, create, and optimize themes in anticipation of that. Apple is already set to require retina display in their iOS apps which means all current apps need to be updated and all future apps need to be designed with this in mind. Android phones are probably not too far behind. Mobile versions of WordPress themes need to anticipate this as well.

User Friendly Analytics

As Google continues to purge the SERPS from “spammy” and over “optimized” websites, perhaps more simple and built-in tools to help provide the average WordPress user the statistics needed to analyze and improve key aspects of his or her website. There are numerous plugins that add functionalities like performance and analytics to determine site speed, word frequencies, user interactivity, analytics and all those wonderful tools but it would be nice to have all these capabilities, in simple user friendly format, already built into the theme to reduce risks of compatibility issues.

Design

Simple and minimalistic designs will continue on till the next year with designs becoming more and more intuitive eliminating a lot of code fear and analysis on the part of the user. Features will still be consumer driven but will eventually be trimmed down to the essentials as more and more WordPress users become more educated and less “awed” by multiple sliders and 1000+ ways to change colors and backgrounds.

More Social

Social networking through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and other similar websites have made it so simple for people to connect with each other. WordPress themes need features like these that make it as simple and as easy for the website owner to encourage more user interactivity within his website and his other social media networks. The flow from website to social networks needs to be seamless and streamlined to encourage more interconnectivity, engagement, and exchange. It’s part of the high quality ranking site Google equation.

Of course, nothing is carved in stone and anything can happen between now and then. These are fearless or fearful forecasts, you might say. It does help to understand how businesses move – whether they are aggressive or conservative in their strategies, and to keep abreast of what is going on in the whole web design industry in general. That way, your efforts as a WordPress professional will be more strategic and more deliberate.

WordPress 3.6 Beta 1 Now Available

WordPress enthusiasts can start playing with the latest beta version (3.6. Beta 1) recently released. This new version is recommended to be run only on a test site and not in actual sites just yet. WordPress 3.5 was released a few months back and this new version has been in the development stage for the past 3 months. WordPress plugin or theme developers, authors, and host providers should start testing this new version before the official and stable version is released to make sure existing plugins and themes are compatible.

Here’s a summary of what’s new in WordPress 3.6:

Post Formats: Post Formats now have their own UI, and theme authors have access to templating functions to access the structured data.

Twenty Thirteen: We’re shipping this year’s default theme in our first release of the year. Twenty Thirteen is an opinionated, color-rich, blog-centric theme that makes full use of the new Post Formats support.

Audio/Video: You can embed audio and video files into your posts without relying on a plugin or a third party media hosting service.

Autosave: Posts are now autosaved locally. If your browser crashes, your computer dies, or the server goes offline as you’re saving, you won’t lose the your post.

Post Locking: See when someone is currently editing a post, and kick them out of it if they fall asleep at the keyboard.

Nav Menus: Nav menus have been simplified with an accordion-based UI, and a separate tab for bulk-assigning menus to locations.

Revisions: The all-new revisions UI features avatars, a slider that “scrubs” through history, and two-slider range comparisons.

Here’s a treat for the absolutely curious, the demo version of Twenty Thirteen! If you would like to participate, become a contributor, be a bug hunter, or a theme fixer, you are more than welcome to provide feedback to those awesome WordPress dev guys. Time to play!

How To Improve Performance On Your WordPress Site

Great content is at the mercy of site speed. No matter how wonderful your content is, taking more than 4 seconds to load can mean significant loss of traffic and loss of potential income for your website. Why? People hate slow websites. The slower it takes for your page to load, the faster people leave it. Patience is not a virtue when it comes to the internet. That is why site speed is important.

Google is obsessed with site speed and has incorporated it as one of the signals for determining search rankings. In a previous article on determining a website’s quality score , we learned that user experience is now a major element and part of the equation in determining and improving your site’s ranking. A fast site creates satisfied users, improves user experience, and improves overall site quality and performance.

If your website is taking longer to load than necessary, it’s time to take stock and audit the elements causing the delay. Here’s a checklist of some of the things you need to consider as you work on improving your site’s performance:

  • Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to load heavy scripts and images and to lighten the load on your server.
  • Optimize caching – Browser caching stores cached versions of static resources. This speeds up page speed tremendously and reduces server lag.
  • Remove/Reduce/Compress large images, videos, and other content. Resize and optimize images for web use. Specify image dimensions and use the right image format.
  • Minify JavaScript and remove unused CSS files. Reduce HTTP loading requests for CSS style sheets, scripts, images, and HTML
  • Remove/Reduce/Deactivate unnecessary or unused widgets or plugins. Plugins and widgets are bandwidth thieves. Try deactivating all of your plugins to test your speed. Activate a widget or a plugin one at a time to see which one is the speed culprit.
  • Check the loading time of your ads or affiliate codes to see how they affect page speed.
  • Check your WordPress theme for compatibility issues with your WordPress version or your browsers.
  • Choose a good web host or switch to a better one with a proven uptime track record if necessary.

Here are some of the tools you can use to help you analyze your site’s performance:

Page Speed

Page Speed evaluates performance from the client point of view, typically measured as the page load time. This is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser.

Yahoo! YSlow

Firefox/Firebug Add-on that analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance, based on a set of rules for high performance web pages.

Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast

Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and page views.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom offers cost-effective and reliable server, network and website monitoring. They use a global network of servers to monitor customers’ sites 24/7, all year long. The service includes statistics for uptime and response time, and can send out alerts via SMS, email, and more.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is designed to improve user experience and page speed of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

In conclusion, as far as website essentials go, the adage “less is more” is best. Sticking to only what’s necessary and throwing away what is not needed will help your website float to the top. The faster your website loads, the better your site performs and the experience your users have will be more pleasant, favorable, and hopefully more memorable, making them want to come back for more.

ThemeForest Theme Sells Over 800 Copies In One Week

One WordPress theme, 7 days, 800 copies, $36,000 grand. A lot of WordPress authors and developers on Themeforest would love to achieve even a fraction of that and most of them are probably scratching their heads wondering why. This popular theme has even dislodged U-Design from its top spot for the past few weeks and to think it’s the only item in this author’s Themeforest portfolio. If you are wondering what theme achieved such a feat check out AVADA, a responsive multi purpose theme created by ThemeFusion.

Let’s dissect this theme a little bit further and try or simply attempt to figure out why the market is loving this theme.

Overall aesthetic

Avada’s layout can be classified as clean, straightforward, and professional-looking with very neutral colors and lots of white space. If you are familiar with real estate open houses, real estate professionals really spend a lot of time to “stage” a property before “opening” it up to the market. Care is taken to display only enough design elements to highlight the property’s unique and outstanding features, pulling back from adding unnecessary and distracting clutter. This deliberate “staging” is intended to give the potential buyer the room to imagine what he can do with it to meet his own needs. The focus is on its potential and what it can become. Avada is like that, a well-staged theme with lots of potential for all types of buyers. The demo is clear and easy to maneuver, giving customers a taste of all that it can be for whatever need they have.

Features & Functions

This premium theme is not just a pretty face. It has enough built in features and functions to create the website you need for yourself or for your clients. Everyone wants to create a website that is unique and representative of himself or his brand. Avada has a plethora of feature and function choices that, when mixed and matched together, with the client’s own images and content, can create a one of a kind and totally different website every time. Here are some of Avada’s easy to customize features that you can “play” with:

  • Homepage – 10 versions
  • Sliders – 6 styles
  • Headers – 5 versions
  • Page Templates
    • About Us – 2 versions
    • Services – 2 versions
    • Pricing Options
    • Meet the Team
    • Side Navigation
    • Contact Page – 2 versions
    • FAQ – 2 versions
    • Sidebars – Left and Right
    • Full-width page
    • 404 page
  • Portfolio – 6 layouts
  • Blog – 4 layouts
  • Custom Posts, Custom Widgets,
  • Shortcodes for Elements, Icons, Media, Pricing Tables & Typography
  • Responsive
  • Retina-ready

Support

Aside from the extensive, detailed documentation and easy to follow HD narrated video tutorials, Avada generously includes the entire set of PSDs (20+ files) for those who want to customize the theme even further. Buyers get 100% free support via their support forum. Customer feedback has been, overall, favorable so far. Providing WordPress theme support is not an easy task especially if you are servicing thousands of buyers. To receive favorable feedback regarding their theme support indicates that they have a support system that really works. This translates into higher buyer confidence which translates further into higher sales.

Avada has sold almost 15,000 copies to date and has received more than a thousand 5-star ratings which is something worth noting. Receiving a 5-star rating from 2 or more people can be easily dismissed but 1,000 or more satisfied customers can’t be ignored.

Fluke or luck? We think not. A good product with a lot of hard work backing it up sounds more like it. If this is the trend that the market is supporting as far as WordPress themes are concerned, then it is good sign that the market and the industry are headed for better days.

Get Avada Now!