UPDATED April 12, 2021: 2021 is sure to be another great year for WordPress Theme development. Like the millions and millions of people using WordPress, we eagerly await the Themes and Plugins to be released this year, and you can …
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 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 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 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 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 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.
Features as plugins! That’s what’s in store in the latest WordPress iteration, version 3.8, now in its first beta version with the next target release dates set – WordPress 3.8 Beta 2 on November 27, code freeze on December 5th and a final release on December 12th. This latest beta version brings together several of the features as plugins projects which include: Admin Help Improvements, Media Library Grid View, Pages & Menus Merge, Better Signups, JSON REST API, among many feature developments being worked on.
The guys over at WordPress.org even made a haiku specifically for this release:
Alphabet soup of
Plugins as features galore
The future is here.
Several items that developers (if you are one) are being asked to test include:
Developers are also being asked to test as many plugins and themes with admin pages against the new features including how to make the admin interface fit the MP6 aesthetic better. For those who are certified WordPress geeks, you can have fun trying to break 3.8 and finding all the bugs and loopholes you can. If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Or, if you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything that has been fixed so far.
You may Download WordPress 3.8 Beta 1 (zip) or use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin to grab your copy.
WordPress fans will be pleased to know that the latest iteration of WordPress – WordPress 3.7 has been released. If you are a developer or simply a certified WordPress geek you might be interested to test the beta version. The scheduled release for the final version is October as they have decided to shorten the development cycle and focus on a few key improvements.
Here are some of the features that have been updated in this latest beta version that you can test out:
(source: WordPress News)
If you’d like to be more involved in the development and help test WordPress 3.7 beta, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin. Just make sure you don’t do it on a live site.
Technology has one of the fastest turnovers in terms of design and features. If you are into technology and the latest tech products out there, show them off on your website on an equally tech-savvy looking theme like these WordPress themes we’ve found:
Host Depot is a theme designed for modern hosting and server services. It has a built-in layer slider that allows you to do 170 3D and 2D hardware accelerated transitions to catch the eye of visitors. The theme also has a hassle-free and easy to use pricing table editor. Host Depot integrates well with WHMCS to give you seamless processing of your financial and logistic transactions. You can easily set-up forums on your site with the bbPress plugin. HostDepot is indeed a great solution for those in the web hosting business.
Elegant Hosting is a sleek WordPress theme designed for web hosting services. The main strength of this theme is the easy to manage hosting plan tables. This theme has a special feature to add hosting plans right at the admin panel. With the plans displayed side by side, comparison may conveniently be done by potential customers. You can customize the theme with shortcodes to create the look most appropriate to your marketing efforts. Theme also comes with a slider which will be useful in marketing.
Appland Premium Theme is a WordPress theme designed for promoting your hottest app. Built on the powerful Twitter Bootstrap, this theme is designed to work well on mobile devices incorporating touch gestures that works even on the Flexslider. Appland also has amazing eye-catching 3D parallax effects to help you keep visitors glued to your site. Customization is easy with the plethora of design options and features such as using the shortcode generator, available Google fonts, the quick uploader feature, awesome icons, and so much more. Appland is responsive fitting for a theme designed for mobile.
Mega Host Premium WordPress Theme is an impressive and modern theme designed for virtual hosting services. Although primarily designed for web hosting, this theme includes all the necessary features to build a corporate website as well. A notable feature of this theme is that it is built on twitter bootstrap, making it more mobile device friendly. Its advanced admin panel and its CSS design make it easy to customize. Mega Host is also built for retina-ready devices giving you sharp stunning images on these devices.
Create that interactive effect with this stunning WordPress Theme – Rocking Parallax a WordPress theme especially designed to showcase your iPhone apps. This theme makes a great one page solution to your marketing needs. This theme’s awesome parallax 3d effects will definitely make your apps shine. It features many design elements that allow you to create countless mix and match combinations and layouts that will match your design aesthetics. Rocking Parallax Premium WordPress Theme is the perfect tool for marketing and promoting your iPhone apps.
Mobile apps are one of the hottest ways to make it big in the market. The influx of free and paid apps flooding the market is an indicator of what people are interested in nowadays. Apley Mobile WordPress Page is a clean and modern theme designed to showcase mobile apps. The elegant black, minimalist features suggests the theme’s affinity to most mobile devices. It has an easy to use WordPress customizer to help you tweak the theme according to your preferences. Apley also has a fully working blog, a custom homepage, a custom subscribe form, a shortcodes plugin to help you customize in minutes, and many more features.
Cloud Hoster is a professional looking WordPress theme designed to promote your web hosting and server services. This theme is equipped with the popular Revolution Slider so you can create stunning slideshows with different and customizable transitions to grab the attention of casual visitors. Cloud Hoster also has a unique two color blog which can be configured at the backend. Shortcodes give you the power to customize and stylize this theme with ease.
This responsive theme is also built on twitter bootstrap with advanced API features to help your site look good on mobile devices and ensure a pleasant browsing experience for your users.
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 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 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 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 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.
You often hear people talking about PPC, CPC, conversion and all those familiar jargon once you start immersing yourself more and more online. Affiliate marketers are quite familiar with these terms and these have become part of their normal lingo. But what if you are just starting out and you have no clue as to how all these acronyms work and if they have any real value to you at all. Let’s take a closer look at these Internet marketing tools to help you maximize them vis-a-vis traffic flowing through your website.
In recent articles, we have pointed out the enormous traffic potential that you can tap into by following some simple traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit. Let’s say you’ve done your homework and you’re starting to see a spike in the number of visitors that come to your site. What next? Having a lot of visitors does not automatically translate into earnings for you. You need to give something to gain something in return. This is where these tools come in. Let’s break it down.
According to Webopedia,
Pay Per Click or PPC is an Internet marketing formula used to price online advertisements. In PPC programs the online advertisers will pay Internet Publishers the agreed upon PPC rate when an ad is clicked on, regardless if a sale is made or not.
With pay per click in search engine advertising, the advertiser would typically bid on a keyword so the PPC rate changes. On single website — or network of content websites — the site publisher would usually set a fixed pay per click rate.
How you earn from PPC now depends on which side of the table you are at. You can either be an online advertiser, an Internet publisher, or even both. An online advertiser is someone who pays a publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad he has placed is clicked whether the click resulted in a sale or not. This advertisement cost on the part of the online advertiser translates into several marketing objectives set for the business he is promoting. A few of these goals are: to introduce a product or service, to send the person who clicked to his money site, to encourage subscribers via email opt-in or other sign up strategies, and yes, to make a sale. It’s the advertiser’s tool to earn. Now whether these goals are met or not, the advertiser still has to pay the publisher based on the PPC rate agreed upon between them. This then also translates as earnings on the part of the publisher – similar to how sales commissions work without the sales. It is merely based on the earnings per number of clicks made on a particular ad.
There are several PPC models out there which you can study to find out which one works best for you. You can adopt the Flat Rate PPC model or the Bid Based PPC.
From Wikipedia,
In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher has a rate card that lists the cost per click (CPC) within different areas of their website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors.
In the bid based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot. Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower.[8] This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.
There are several reputable Pay Per Click websites that will make money online for you as you look into monetizing your website. Do your research before you sign up and make sure these PPC sites are legit. It will take more than one website to really make a difference in your income stream so study the market and get into the forums. You’ll find a lot of useful information and real life experiences you can learn from. Once you sign up with the legit ones, refer others and continue to grow your networking cycle. The world wide web is actually getting smaller as more people get interconnected.
If you’ve just started your website, accepting ads from online advertisers is a great way to start making passive income online. Just make sure you agree on the terms and that expectations and results are clear.
So you’ve finally uploaded your shiny new premium WordPress theme but it looks nothing like the theme you loved so much in the demo and now you’re wondering if you just wasted your money on a lemon. You fiddle and you tweak but the errors just keep piling up. Not all premium WordPress themes include free support so it can be a bit perplexing especially if you are setting up a website for a client. Frustrating, is a mild word. Where do you go and what do you do?
Here are some of things to look for, support-wise, before, during, and after purchasing a premium WordPress theme. Some theme providers have all of them while some don’t so use your own discretion and judgment before you make your final decision and click that “Confirm purchase” button.
Check if the theme includes extensive and detailed documentation and a troubleshooting guide if available. Find out whether installation and setup guides are available online and offline as access to these guides serve as your reference documents as you setup your WordPress theme.
Most of the time we get attracted to a particular theme because of the demo. The demo gives us an idea on what is possible for our own individual projects. Unfortunately, recreating the same demo can be challenging if the elements used in the demo are not included. Some authors do not include the demo file but there is a growing trend among a lot of authors where they include the XML file or demo content as a bonus.
Trying to recreate the WordPress theme in the demo can be much easier if the author includes all the allowable files used. Photoshop files make it easier for you to duplicate or customize the theme’s design elements without having to start from scratch.
Text based tutorials are great but video tutorials are best because the author can demonstrate and guide you on exactly what to do when setting up or modifying your WordPress theme. Video tutorials save you a lot of time, and, mistakes are reduced because of misinterpretation. Simply pause and play when you need to go back to a certain instruction.
In the absence of video tutorials, screenshots are also great because they serve as visual guides to help you install and get your WordPress theme up and running. Visuals are always effective as it gives you a clear picture of what you are supposed to do. You can always go back and refer to these screenshots if you get lost along the way.
For non-WordPress savvy users, authors and developers provide basic WordPress theme setup and installation. The extent of this service varies from author to author although generally this service includes simple adjustments and tweaks that do not fall under their customization services.
WordPress authors and developers who have been around long enough in the business are most likely to have a dedicated support forum or community support group to help each other out. Access is generally limited to members or customers who have purchased themes sold by these authors. Make sure to register in these forums and be active in the community to learn hacks, tips and tricks that don’t normally come with the documentation and tutorials.
Some WordPress authors or theme providers might even have the legroom to provide a dedicated support system which includes a help desk or ticket based support system, live chat, and dedicated technical support crew. Be sure to note the time or hours support is available as some of these teams live in different time zones.
WordPress updates its software from time to time and problems arise when the WordPress theme you purchased is no longer compatible with these updates. Same thing goes with plugins and other elements like short codes, etc. Make sure that your WordPress theme author or developer has provision for updates and upgrades that will affect the theme and if there are any additional charges related to it.
Find out and store the author or developer’s contact information online and offline. Request for an email address, a business phone number, or any other means to get in touch with the author if he does not have a dedicated support forum. Leaving comments on the WordPress theme’s product preview page does not guarantee your concerns will be attended to in real time.
Finding the perfect WordPress theme that matches your dream website is more than just appearances. Make sure you know what you are getting when you pay for that pretty theme you’ve been eyeing. It pays to know what’s in the fine print…or what’s not in it.
Some people believe that genius is something intrinsic, something inherent within a man and genius cannot be taught. You cannot be trained to become a genius. For e.g. you cannot be trained to paint like Da Vinci. Although this notion is true but some people take it far too seriously. Some students skip classes because they think that traditional education will tamper with their natural instincts. Others try to start a business without reading a single business book. Of course these people are flawed in their thinking. Albert Einstein once said – “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” So you see success has two parts. One is learning the rules of the game and the other one is playing better than others. This former aspect, learning the rules of your trade, can be trained and taught.
Below I have collected 30 artworks for those artists who want to learn the rules of art. These artworks are not genre specific. They vary from the children’s comic character The Incredible Hulk to the portrait of a simple innocent girl, from the picture of a super hero to Ibn Tulun Mosque. So scroll down and enjoy.