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.

WordPress Theme Clubs: 2013 Edition

If you’ve been around the WordPress community for quite some time, you surely are familiar with WordPress theme clubs, popular or otherwise, and how they work. For those just getting their feet wet regarding everything WordPress, check out our previous article, What is a WordPress Theme Club for a quick run through on theme club basics.

For the WordPress newbie, here are some of the more popular and still active WordPress Theme Clubs to explore.

Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes is one of the most popular WordPress theme clubs, with over 170,000 customers. They currently have more than 81 themes, releasing new themes regularly. Elegant Themes offers its members access to a variety of themes that range from portfolio themes, to business themes, to blogging/news themes, to eCommerce themes, to personal themes. Their themes have a distinct style that combines aesthetic and function seamlessly. Elegant Themes offers 3 different membership packages: Personal, Developer and Lifetime options with access to more than 81 themes, shortcodes, and other benefits.

StudioPress

The Genesis Framework and child themes by StudioPress have been around for quite some time as well. Founded by Brian Gardner (Copyblogger), StudioPress has been churning high quality coded WordPress themes for years. StudioPress is different from Elegant Themes in that they sell themes individually in addition to the club membership. With over 86,000 members and 43 themes for a one-time fee of $349.95 which includes lifetime access to all of the current StudioPress themes, all future themes, and updates to all themes as they become available.

ThemesKingdom

Themes Kingdom offers all of their themes (currently 47 themes), plus 1 plugin (Scebo, for a customer support system) for $50 per year. Members can use the themes on an unlimited number of domains, including on client websites. Themes Kingdom members get access to attractive themes in a wide variety of categories, including portfolio themes, business themes, blog themes, news themes, and more.

Organic Themes

Organic Themes was founded in 2009 by David Morgan and Jeff Milone and was developed as an expression of their personal lifestyles. Their design approach lean towards the more professional look sans the excessive flashy effects, gradients, drop shadows and other bells and whistles commonly seen in the web design world. They are committed to clean code, with just the right amount of theme options which translate into faster load times, setup and customization. Organic Themes offers a variety of premium WordPress themes for artists, businesses and bloggers.

ThemesTown

ThemesTown is one of the new kids on the block that’s worth watching. If their impressive and creative website design is a gauge of what can be expected from them, then there is much to look forward to. Right now, they are building up their depository of homegrown exclusive premium themes but while you are waiting, you can also check out their huge list of the best free WordPress themes that have been culled from what’s out there. Membership rate is pegged at $55 one-time fee, with no monthly dues and no future charges.

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.

GPL Licensing and WordPress for Normal People

The average WordPress user probably starts off with a simple and very basic desire to set up his/her own website. There are many platforms out there but the platform that most users end up with or choose to use is WordPress. These users either attempt to set up their own website on their own and learn as they go while others hire someone to do it for them. Not many are familiar with the legal or technical aspects surrounding the use of this software but it does not remove the responsibility of finding out the software’s terms, conditions, and proper use. Let’s familiarize ourselves with some of these technical terms. Some of these terms are quoted verbatim to remain true to its original intent.

What is WordPress anyway?

WordPress is a free and open source publishing software and content management system (CMS) with a focus on ease of use, speed and a great user experience. “WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL.

What does free and open source mean?

Open source doesn’t just mean that you can view the source code — it has political and philosophical implications as well. Open source, or “Free Software”, means you are free to modify and redistribute the source code under certain conditions. Free doesn’t refer to the price, it refers to freedom. The difference between the two meanings of free is often characterized as “Free as in speech vs. free as in beer.” The GPL is free as in speech.

“Free software” does not mean “noncommercial”. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. You may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.

GPL or General Public License according to WordPress terms and conditions:

The GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software – to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software & to any other program whose authors commit to using it.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

The reasons for WordPress releasing under the GPL are both practical and idealistic. WordPress was born of the very freedom mentioned earlier. The predecessor to the WordPress project, b2/cafelog, was also an open source project.
(source: WordPress.org/gpl)

What does this mean to the average Joe?

According the GNU.org and its Free Software Definition, you have the freedom:

to run the software for any purpose or any kind of job
to study how the software works, change it and improve it
to redistribute copies in a manner that does not conflict with central freedoms
to redistribute copies of your modified version to benefit the whole community

Split Licenses, the GPL, the Marketplace and the WordPress Foundation

The GPL and WordPress conflict is not new. There have been several occasions before when conflicts of interest have risen between theme providers (ex. Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg) and the WordPress Foundation’s interpretation of how the GPL license is applied. The most recent debacle involving Jake Caputo, ThemeForest, and WordPress (resulting in Caputo’s banning from speaking at WordCamps) surfaced earlier this year. Envato and WordPress have been at odds because of the alleged violations of the GPL by the former. Envato claims to be GPL compliant while at the same time been implementing dual-license or split licensing particularly on WordPress themes and plugin. What’s wrong with that?

Here’s a simple analogy to illustrate this.

Choosing a publishing platform is like choosing a car brand. You have several choices: Chevy, Cadillac, a Benz, or a Toyota. Whichever you choose, the technology to create it, the patents, the materials used, and all the basic components like the framework, the engine, the wheels, and everything that makes it run to take you anywhere you want are already built into its system, subject to the manufacturer’s warranty. When it transfers to you, the car manufacturers have no control with what you do with it – use it for business, donate, repaint, etc.

As far as publishing platforms are concerned, you have WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla as the vehicle of your content. In the case of WordPress, the HTML code, the PHP and everything under hood that makes it run are built in and are 100% GPL. When it is transferred to your possession, free or otherwise, you have the freedom to modify, change, sell, copy, distribute, and do whatever you want under the GPL license provided that it retains all those freedoms that you enjoyed when you first got it.

The conflict between Envato and WordPress arose because of the licensing policies of the former, that were not, in the eyes of WordPress, GPL compliant. As far as WordPress is concerned, if your theme is “riding” on the WordPress framework and cannot run independently apart from it, then it inherits and is subject to all the GPL attributes as well.

On the other hand, Envato’s split license states that:

Envato’s marketplace license for themes or plugins sold on the marketplaces covers all the components of these items, except for the specific components covered by the GPL. This is why it’s called a split license: because different license terms can cover individual components that make up a single item.
The PHP component and integrated HTML are covered by the GPL. The rest of the components created by the author (such as the CSS, images, graphics, design, photos, etc) are covered by the marketplace license.

As explained earlier, our license also allows for specific components of an item, which inherit the GPL from the platform they’re built for, to be licensed under the GPL. Using this split license complies with the GPL’s requirements, while still providing protection of the author’s copyright on assets they’ve created.

There are valid points on both sides. Proprietary licensing violates the spirit of the GPL while on the other hand, piracy on the creative output of theme authors are also valid concerns. Conflicts arise to reveal gray areas that need to be dealt with or addressed. Striking a balance between GPL compliance and protecting the creative or intellectual output of theme authors is a tough juggling act. We believe the conversation will still continue.

Update as of February 2013

Envato did a survey about licensing among their users and published the results specifically relating to GPL. They have announced that a 100% GPL option is now available for authors on ThemeForest. Jake Caputo has also posted that he has again been invited to participate in WordCamps.

Useful Articles to Read:

Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress
WordPress, GPL, and Copyright Case Law
Matt Mullenweg – Q&A – WordPress & GPL
Themes are GPL too

Reinventing Traditional Media

Traditional Media is dead, Long Live New Media! Well, not entirely so. In fact, the “marriage” of both could result in a more powerful tool to reaching a specific target market IF Traditional Media “reinvents” itself.

Young and adventurous entpreneurs capitalizing on technological skill and savvy have been at the forefront of the digital landscape taking up virtual territories and planting their stakes wherever they set their feet on. Many of them started out as “newbies” but are now the digital brands to beat and conquer. They have upstaged the traditional name brands and have become household names all around the globe. Who does not know Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr? But the traditional big brands aren’t to be dismissed just yet. They might have a little bit of catching up to do but they can still capitalize on the years they have invested in establishing their brands and their name. The good thing that these brands have going for them is the hard-earned trust together with the existing essential structure and framework needed to service their traditional market which can be restructured to adapt to the needs of consumers in this digital age.

The challenge of traditional media is to bridge the great divide between the physical and the digital realm and rethink the way they reach their audiences. The challenge of new media, on the other hand, is to offer more than just content to their users by offering something more substantial, something tangible. In short, physical products or stuff consumers want or need are part of a strategy to retain their audience and increase their reach even more. Yes, “Content is king” but in the marketplace, the “Consumer is king”.

For both traditional and new media, addressing the needs of today’s consumer, evolving as it is because of technology and the way networking has changed the way we relate to each other, is the way to go. What needs should be addressed? For today’s consumer, it is all about Content, Community, and Commerce. New media that is focused on content alone will find it challenging to sustain its audience especially if the same content is readily available elsewhere. Traditional media needs to understand the psyche of the tech savvy consumer and find new ways to encourage customer loyalty from these click-happy butterfly-esque customers. For both media types, it’s about addressing that basic need, the content or information that led them to your website in the first place. Next is connection or community. And finally, delivering this need into the hands of the consumer – the exchange of goods or Commerce.

Businesses who take advantage of today’s digital technologies like audio/visual tools, social networking channels, video streaming, mobile-enablement, and eCommerce empowered facilities, integrating them with all the best known methods in traditional media will stand a greater chance of surviving in today’s digital market.

Check Out Our Favorite WordPress Themes for 2013

We play favorites. Surprise, surprise! Yes, we do. Especially if we know that what we find is really great and we want to share them with as many as we can. We’ve seen how many of you have benefited from our Best WordPress Themes for 2012 post and we hear you. Finding the best WordPress themes in the marketplace can sometimes be overwhelming, what with all the amazing graphics and all the features packed (sometimes bloated) into these themes. But not all these themes are created equal so we’d like to give you a push in the right direction with our comprehensive list of what to look for in WordPress themes.

We’ve updated our Best WordPress Themes for 2012 list and come up with an updated version – Best WordPress Themes for 2013. What’s great about our updated list is that not only have we’ve broken down these themes by categories making it easier for you to find what you need, the great news is that we will also be updating this post several times each month all year round. If you’ve been wanting a one-stop shop for the most updated themes in the marketplace, make sure to bookmark this page. We will be updating WordPress themes according to theme categories such as: Responsive, Portfolio, Magazine, Business, eCommerce, BuddyPress, Frameworks, HTML5, Real Estate, Free, and Premium. Yup, the list includes the best Free themes too. All these themes have made it into our list of favorites for good reason.

If you’ve been wanting to update your own website or you are searching for a great theme to use for your clients, head on out and check our post – Best WordPress Themes for 2013. You might find just what you are looking for. While you’re there leave us a comment on what else you want us to add to our list. We’d love to hear from you.

Index.php, The Loop and your WordPress Content

We have already discussed the header and the menu in our previous articles. In continuation of our series, we will now take a look at the Content section of the WordPress theme or the index.php. Here’s a recap of what we wrote:

Content Column (index.php)

The content container in WordPress plays the most important role. It holds the WordPress Loop which dictates the generation of content on the page depending upon the request by the user.

Content, on the other hand, consists of text, images, or other information shared in posts. This is separate from the structural design of a web site, which provides a framework into which the content is inserted, and the presentation of a site, which involves graphic design.

Now, let’s take a look at what a Loop is. According to the WordPress Codex:

“The Loop” is the main process of WordPress. You use The Loop in your template files to show posts to visitors. You could make templates without The Loop, but you could only display data from one post. The Loop should be placed in index.php and in any other Templates used to display post information.

The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post.

Before The Loop goes into action, WordPress verifies that all the files it needs are present. Then it collects the default settings, as defined by the blog administrator, from the database. This includes the number of posts to display per page, whether commenting is enabled, and more. Once these defaults are established, WordPress checks to see what the user asked for. This information is used to determine which posts to fetch from the database.

If the user didn’t ask for a specific post, category, page, or date, WordPress uses the previously collected default values to determine which posts to prepare for the user.

After all this is done, WordPress connects to the database, retrieves the specified information, and stores the results in a variable. The Loop uses this variable’s value for display in your templates.

Below is a visual of how all these php files and templates work together. It shows which template files are called to generate a WordPress page based on the WordPress Template hierarchy.

And here’s a sample code of a simple index page:

<?php
get_header();
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) :
the_post();
the_content();
endwhile;
endif;
get_sidebar();
get_footer();
?>

For beginners out there, it’s like telling WordPress to do certain functions based on a set of defined parameters – an “if”-“then” scenario. “IF” (parameter A) is true, “THEN” (execute this action). “IF” (parameter A) is false, “THEN” (execute this action instead).

For the more advanced and those who would like to sink their teeth into something more “meaty”, here are some excellent references and tutorials you can check out:

WordPress Theme Deconstructed

Last week we touched on the basic components of a typical WordPress theme. Below is a visual example of how the layout looks like.

The components are as follows:

The Header (header.php)

The header is the structure that traditionally sits at the top of a web page. It contains the title of the website. It may also be referred to as the masthead, head, title, and banner. In all WordPress Themes, the header is found within the header.php template file.

Most themes have a header image that displays at the top of the page. This image is generated by a graphic defined either in the CSS value for the property that represents the header area or through the use of a custom header feature in WordPress. In themes that don’t have the custom header image feature, you can easily define a background image for the header image using CSS. (source: CSS for Dummies)

Menu (navigation) – usually found within or above the header

There are two ways to display a nav menu. One is by calling wp_nav_menu() within a theme template file. The other is by using the Navigation Menu widget. Most themes will call a menu from their header.php template, but menus can be placed anywhere. (source: Justin Tadlock)

The Sidebar (sidebar.php)

In general, the WordPress sidebar features titles of the various sections within a list, with the section items in a nested list below the title.
According to the WordPress Codex and in terms of design,
a sidebar is:
“… a narrow vertical column often jam-packed with lots of information about a website. Found on most WordPress sites, the sidebar is usually placed on the right or left-hand side of the web page, though in some cases, a site will feature two sidebars, one on each side of the main content where your posts are found.”

(You can also check out our previous article “Adding Sidebars to WordPress” to read more about sidebars.)

The Content Column (index.php)

The content container in WordPress plays the most important role. It holds the WordPress Loop which dictates the generation of content on the page depending upon the request by the user.

Content consists of text, images, or other information shared in posts. This is separate from the structural design of a web site, which provides a framework into which the content is inserted, and the presentation of a site, which involves graphic design.

The Footer (footer.php)

The footer is found within the footer.php template file. Footers are more than just a place to put copyright information. The footer in a web design is the bottom of the page. It indicates the end of the page. The footer includes navigational links to move the reader into your blog’s content, but it does so much more. It’s the last thing some visitors see after they finish reading your blog post and comments and should encourage people to stay a little longer on your site. (Source: lorelle.wordpress.com).

More next week!