WordPress Themes for Photographers – March 2014

Creating an online portfolio is no longer a challenge nowadays. There are hundreds of options for displaying photographs available to photographers today that give you that expensive professional look. Here are some of the latest WordPress photography themes you can use to show off your prized images:

PhotoReactive – Fullscreen Studio for WordPress

PhotoReactive Premium WordPress Theme is a full screen studio theme for WordPress that photographers will love. This premium theme gives photographers tons of creative options for them to showcase images and other multimedia content both on the homepage and also in the portfolio pages. Full screen slideshows options include touch swipe capability, captions (with or without), photo wall, YouTube and Vimeo videos, static image, and the popular Kenburns slideshow (with or without audio). This theme is also equipped with Ajax & normal portfolio showcases, WooCommerce functionality to help you set up your own photography shop and it is also WPML ready (includes .po .mo language files.)

Devendo Photography WordPress Theme

Devendo Premium WordPress Theme is a flat and modern portfolio theme suitable for photographers. This premium theme is built with Bootstrap 3, is 100% responsive and is also available in four color schemes that can be changed in the theme’s options panel. Key features include: smart overlay search function, integrated social sharing, responsive mega menus with Bootstrap grid inside dropdowns, full screen portfolio with direction aware hover effects, smooth scrolling AJAX-powered horizontal blog, among others.

Fidelity – Premium Photography WordPress Theme

Fidelity Premium WordPress Theme is a modern photography theme with a future-oriented design targeted primarily for photographers but can also be used by design agencies, architecture bureaus, etc. This premium theme takes a full advantage of the latest CSS3 hardware-accelerated transitions (with a fallback to jQuery animations) giving users incredible performance on diverse platforms like desktops, tablet PCs and smartphones. Some of the unique features include: the ability to set up narrow or full width page in a few clicks, the ability to show EXIF data in the portfolio posts, and the horizontal masonry style blog layout that gives you that high end magazine feel. You can also display unlimited slideshows and videos for your background.

The Gentleman – Photography & Portfolio Theme

The Gentleman WordPress Theme is a fully responsive multipurpose theme perfect for any photographer, designer, agency, or any business looking to show off their work. There are multiple homepage layouts, tons of portfolio styles to choose from, and a lot of other features allowing you to build your perfect photography/portfolio website. This theme includes features like: Price tables, team members, multiple blog layouts, preset flat and pattern styles, a powerful theme options panel, multiple sliders including the popular Revolution Slider, multiple portfolio options including the Magnific Responsive Lightbox, and so much more.

Camilla – Horizontal Fullscreen Photography Theme

Camilla Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, minimal, full screen horizontal canvas ideal for displaying your photographs the way you intended them to be seen. This theme’s minimalistic design shifts the focus to your work with the use of distraction-free full screen video-ready galleries . Some of this theme’s modern features include: one-page layout, horizontal scroll, vertical scroll sections in horizontal layout, and it is optimized for mobile devices with its swipe navigation feature for smartphones and tablets, etc.

WordPress Plugins For Video

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

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

Advanced Responsive Video Embedder

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

YouTube Plus

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

Video Embed

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

Video Thumbnails

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

JW Player for Flash & HTML5 Video

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

Top WordPress Plugins February 2014

Dynamic Featured Image

Dynamic Featured Image gives you multiple featured image (post thumbnail) functionality that enables you to have multiple featured images within a post or page. This is especially helpful when you use other plugins, post thumbnails or sliders that use featured images. Why be limited to just one featured image alone when you have the option to add more.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP will display Google Analytics data and statistics inside your WordPress Blog. This plugin displays detailed analytics info and statistics about: number of visits, number of visitors, bounce rates, organic searches, pages per visit directly on your Admin Dashboard. Authorized users can also view statistics like Views, UniqueViews and top searches, on frontend, at the end of each article. The analytics data is collected in a fast and secure manner because Google Analytics Dashboard uses OAuth2 protocol and Google Analytics API. Its real-time feature displays real-time visitors, real-time sources and per page real-time traffic details

Shareaholic

Shareaholic is an extremely useful tool to get readers to actually discover and submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites. This plugin adds an attractive social bookmarking menu and related content widget to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three for easy sharing. You can increase pageviews and engagement by highlighting relevant content from across your site to your readers who would not otherwise encounter them. Shareaholic reports all of your important actionable social media metrics including popular pages on your website, referral channels, and who are making referrals and spreading your webpages on the internet on your behalf bringing you back more traffic and new visitors.

Google Drive WP Media

This plugin turns Google Drive into your upload files hosting storage where you can upload and get direct access to your Google Drive so you can manage, upload, and share your files remotely from your WordPress blog. You also have the option to auto insert your Google Drive files into your WordPress Media Library, attach your Google Drive files to your posts, upload your files from your WordPress Administration to Google Drive, or create folders to store your files.

Ebyline Payments

Ebyline Payments is a plugin that allows editors to pay blog contributors easily and safely, all within the WordPress Admin. This plugin is easy to install and setup. You can make payments via credit card to contributors directly in the WordPress interface. Contributors receive payments via PayPal. This plugin is totally tax compliant and the system generates 1099s for each freelancer you pay.

Thank Me Later

Thank Me Later sends ‘thank you’ emails to your commenters. Simply write a message saying thanks and it will be emailed after a time of your choice — 5 minutes, a day, a month, whenever. Thank Me Later attracts readers back to your blog and asks them to check for replies to their comments. Other uses of the plugin include: linking to your RSS feed to get more readers; linking to your Twitter or Facebook pages to get more followers or likes; or giving a discount for purchases.

Google Pagespeed Insights for WordPress

Google Pagespeed Insights is a tool that empowers you to make decisions that increase the performance of your website. Use Google Pagespeed Insights to increase your site’s performance, your search engine ranking, and your visitors browsing experience. This plugin features advanced data visualization, tagging, filtering, and snapshot technology. Report Summaries are a powerful and exclusive feature of Google Pagespeed Insights for WordPress. Summaries display your average Page Score, largest areas for improvement across ALL reports, as well as best and lowest performing pages. You can also configure Google Pagespeed Insights for WordPress to generate Desktop reports, Mobile reports, or both.

Creative WordPress Themes January 2014

Update your creative portfolio with a new look and a new WordPress theme. Check out these great looking portfolio styled WordPress themes to start the year fresh:

Horizontall

Horizontall Premium WordPress Theme is a unique, clean, and modern premium theme with excellent typographic aesthetics that allows for both horizontal navigation and vertical navigation all in one theme. Primarily suited for a creative portfolio with rich content, this theme is extremely customizable and flexible enough to fit all other types of websites. Portfolio images or plain text content can fit in any of the 9 schemes that come with the theme. You can customize sizes, colors, elements to display, and you can display 3 different sections of your site with different custom styles.

Scripts and styles are compressed and images are loaded with Lazyload for fast loading content. Content of individual articles are loaded dynamically into the home page or category page, while the address bar changes accordingly to what you are viewing. This way users can access the content without reloading the page, and share it or bookmark it to come back later.

Warhol

Warhol Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive portfolio theme built with clean design, smooth scroll and functionality to best present your creative work. It has different post types like: blog, service, gallery and testimonial posts. This premium theme is simple to use and its branding features give you numerous options to customize colors and fonts to create your own style. The multi layout option with 13 template pages gives you several choices to create your own unique look. You also have audio playing capabilities for photography sites that want to have audio playing in the background.

PortfolioRx

PortfolioRx Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and well-structured minimalistic Swiss-styled portfolio theme designed for creatives. The overall look and aesthetics coupled with typographic and media choices have a retro flair that will appeal to design agencies. PortfolioRx is perfect for artists from any discipline: web, graphic, motion, sound, print, art whether for an online portfolio or for personal use. It comes with a powerful admin panel, 4 different custom widgets, short codes generator, contact form 7 support, a smart scrollbar (can be enabled in the theme settings), and so much more.

Portal

Portal Premium WordPress Theme is a full screen portfolio template with tons of options for displaying your work. It comes with: 35 layouts for displaying content, a logo portfolio, architecture portfolio, web design portfolio, product portfolio, illustrations portfolio and software portfolio ready for you to insert your content. It also includes a unique horizontal scroll gallery and portfolio sections perfect for presenting your work in a full screen environment. You also have 5 different blog post versions, drag and drop page editing, Revolution Slider, tons of icons, and so many other features design agencies can use to set up their sites.

Dignity

Dignity Premium WordPress Theme is a dynamic multi layout portfolio theme that gives you a ton of layout possibilities for you or your client’s website. This simple & easily reusable One Page styled web template with an expanding portfolio feature is an effective way to present all your creative work all in one page. Featuring 12 home page variants, animated elements, parallax layers, retina ready & responsive layout, full screen BG images / BG video YouTube & Vimeo / Full screen Flickr Images BG, AJAX media portfolio, touch carousels and many more features.

Ebor

Ebor Premium WordPress Theme is an elegant and professional looking portfolio theme perfect for agencies, individuals, freelancers or bloggers looking to present an online portfolio without overdoing it. This simple and straight forward theme packs a lot of hidden power with lots of awesome features. Ebor uses a new custom field in the WordPress Customiser – a Google font selector – curating for you 10 perfectly crafted, hand picked fonts that are just right to create that professional aesthetic. Ebor comes with a built in Coming Soon Page, a built in Maintenance Page,full support for Contact Form 7, included plugins, Revolution Slider, a short code plugin, and many other well-thought out features without the bloat. This premium theme is designed to keep things simple for you without sacrificing design and function.

Angle

Angle Premium WordPress Theme is a multi-purpose, ultra-flexible, fully responsive WordPress theme sporting a flat design from another angle. The unique graphic and geometric aesthetics powered by Bootstrap functionality makes this theme extremely flexible. Key features include: Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Isotope, SVG PAge Section Decorations, WPML Ready, Font Awesome Icons, and a whole lot more. It also comes with several page templates like Product Launch Page, Shop Page, Blog Page, Pricing Page, 404 Page, Maintenance Mode Page, and several other pages useful to any online service or business.

Play With The Code Using These WordPress Code Editors

Majority of WordPress users hate messing with code. But, there are those, (developers, but certainly not limited to) who can’t get enough of it and consider spending countless hours of coding simply child’s play. Here are some of these code editing “toys” you can try to get your fill of code poetry heaven.

Shift Edit

This online editor allows you to: access files from various sources (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3), autocomplete code for HTML tags, CSS and PHP code assist, highlight syntax errors and automatically fix them, do live editing and see realtime updates as you tweak your code, step back to a previous version of the file, open and save files when using the chrome app.

“The online IDE is one of the final frontiers of apps ported to the web. I would like to be able to develop from any computer or operating system and have the same experience without having to install software or configure anything.” – Adam Jimenez (founder)

Codeanywhere

Codeanywhere is a code editor in a browser with an integrated ftp client, and all popular web formats are supported (HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and XML). It lets you code from anywhere, without the need to bring anything along with you. Just log on to Codeanywhere with any computer or smartphone, and all your servers (FTP, SFTP and Dropbox), files, everything is waiting for you, even the files you left open will be open when you login again. Key features include: syntax highlighting, code folding, smart indentation, full internationalization, displays line number, word wrap, code indention (Tab key), unlimited undo/redo, etc.

BluePen Editor

BluePen Editor is a PHP-powered CSS editor that can be installed to any static or dynamic website and makes live CSS editing possible. It’s an online visual CSS editor and a “must have” web developer tool which makes a difference in styling online content: it runs in a browser (it’s an online application), it makes you see the changes immediately (Real-time editing), it’s a stylesheet editing software (CSS styling).

Advanced Code Editor

Advanced Code Editor enables syntax highlighting in the integrated themes and plugins source code editors. This plugin supports PHP, HTML, CSS and JS. Effectively edit your themes or plugins when you only have access to a browser, by enabling syntax highlighting in WordPress integrated source code editors. Other features include: mixed language syntax highlighting, smart search, full screen editor, multiple undo and redo, ajax create/delete file, ajax create new directory, auto format and indenting code, and so much more.

WP Editor

WP Editor is a plugin for WordPress that replaces the default plugin and theme editors as well as the page/post editor. Using integrations with CodeMirror and FancyBox to create a feature rich environment, WP Editor completely reworks the default WordPress file editing capabilities. Using Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) to retrieve files and folders, WP Editor sets a new standard for speed and reliability in a web-based editing atmosphere.

Better File Editor

This plugin replaces the boring, clunky, and difficult to use theme and plugin editor with a full-featured code editor using the Ajax.org Cloud9 Editor. Adds line numbers, syntax highlighting, code folding, and lots more to the theme and plugin editors in the admin panel.

Popular WordPress Theme Features To Watch in 2014

WordPress theme designs come in all shapes and sizes packed with features that don’t get used at all. Here are some of the most popular features users look for in a WordPress theme and a few others that could be the next big theme feature in the future:

Drag and Drop

This feature is one of the most popular features users look for in a WordPress theme because of its ease of use especially for non-coders. Chris Lema defines drag and drop like this:

The end user can assemble the design of a web page by dragging and dropping key elements/components onto a “canvas” designing the layout/structure of the page.

For a more in depth analysis on drag and drop, check out Chris’ post: Design without coding: Comparing Drag and Drop WordPress themes.

Single Page with smooth scrolling

The single page smooth scrolling feature is where all of the content is on one page that the user can scroll up and down or side to side. More and more users are opting for this single or one page website design to contain all their content because it’s easy and simple enough to build and maintain yourself, as opposed to more complex multipage websites.

Flat, simple and then some

Flat has a long way to go yet, and so the main changes I think we’ll see in the next year are more fun, but faddish, trends like long shadows and the like. In similar fashion I think we’ll see some more depth, layering, graduations, and other visual distinctions making their way back in, but in a more refined and subtle way than the old days. – Collis Ta’eed, Envato CEO

Clean and Standards compliant code

Adherence to proper coding protocols (PHP, HTML, CSS, privacy, security). Clean and quality code is the backbone of a quality website and ensures that it is easier to maintain and flexible enough to run with other properly coded scripts. Clean code also contributes to speed and loading time.

eCommerce option

The eCommerce feature is as the responsive feature was – it is becoming more and more a staple feature included in WordPress themes.

All in One Design bundles

WordPress theme designers are expanding themes to include a variety of add-ons to provide a complete design package. These extras can include: letterhead, business cards, social media branding package (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), newsletters that work with external email clients, etc., aside from the WordPress theme itself so that all brand materials are consistent. Bundles are popular because they present a complete brand package and include everything you need to get a site launched and promoted.

User Friendly and Mobile Friendly Menu/Navigation System

The era of a website having traditional navigation is quickly ending. Users are now used to on demand menus, sticky navigation and fixed headers that follow you as you scroll. These new tools allow for cleaner, simpler web design.

These are just a few of the most popular WordPress features that we think will continue to evolve and improve in 2014. Exciting times ahead!

Events and Entertainment WordPress Themes – December 2013

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

POLARIS – Responsive WordPress Theme

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

Clubix – Nightlife, Music & Events WordPress Theme

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

Flycase – Complete Music Solution for WordPress

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

Amplify WordPress Theme

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

Applause – One-Page Responsive Music & DJ WP Theme

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

Tools to Help You Manage Multiple WordPress Sites

Owning more than one website is not uncommon. But how do you keep track of which ones to update and which ones to archive? What about plugin updates, backups, multi language sites, multiple locations, multiple passwords, platform or software updates? Managing multiple websites can be challenging especially if you are a WordPress professional handling several clients. Below are some of the tools you can use to manage multiple WordPress sites:

ManageWP – Manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard.

  • run updates
  • backups
  • update plugins
  • optimize databases
  • run security tests
  • manage analytics
  • manage comments
  • manage SEO
  • update themes

WP Remote – Manage multiple WP sites (free and Premium versions)

  • Monitor unlimited sites for free (free)
  • Easily update WordPress Core, plugins & themes with one click (free)
  • Download a snapshot of your site (free)
  • Automatic backups to our servers, your own S3 or Dropbox (premium)
  • Automatic Plugin, Theme and Core updates (premium)
  • Daily notification emails of all available updates (premium)
  • Keep a record of site activity (premium)
  • Manage and install Plugins and Themes right from within WP Remote (premium)

WP Site Stack – create Multiple WordPress Sites from one Installation of WordPress. For people that have more than one WordPress site or for consultants that host WordPress sites for their clients. (multi sites)

  • Use one installation of WordPress to install as many sites as you’d like
  • Use the same Plugin and Theme installation on all sites
  • Allows multiple multi sites.
  • Quick & easy backups | Quick & easy updates (updating one/updates all)
  • One database (never worry about database limits)
  • Installs on virtually any hosting account (no VPS required)

qTranslate – For multilingual sites. This plugin makes creation of multilingual content as easy as working with a single language.

  • qTranslate Services – Professional human translation with two clicks
  • One-Click-Switching between the languages
  • Language customizations without changing the .mo files – Use Quick-Tags instead for easy localization
  • Multilingual dates out of the box – Translates dates and time for you
  • Comes several languages – English, German, Simplified Chinese etc.
  • qTranslate will download .mo files automatically for you
  • One language for each URL – No mixing of multilingual content (user and SEO friendly)

LastPass – Password management tool to help you create secure logins for your accounts. Supports multiple operating systems and browsers.

xMarkPro – contains full WordPress management, allowing you to easily manage all aspects of your blogs from the one centralized administration panel. This includes mass posting to multiple blogs, drip feeds, theme & plugin installation, auto-upgrading, categories, blogroll links, widgets, users, and much more.

  • Mass Post to Blogs
  • Post Repository
  • Plugin & Theme Repository
  • Manage blogrolls, categories, users, widgets, posts, pages
  • SpinTax Integration & Thesaurus
  • Drip Feeds
  • Media Manager
  • Link Tracker
  • Authority Links

WordPress 3.8 Beta 1 Released!

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:

  • The new admin design, especially the responsive aspect of it. Try it out on different devices and browsers, see how it goes, especially the more complex pages like widgets or seldom-looked-at-places like Press This. Color schemes, which you can change on your profile, have also been spruced up.
  • The dashboard homepage has been refreshed, poke and prod it.
  • Choosing themes under Appearance is completely different, try to break it however possible.
  • A new default theme, Twenty Fourteen.
  • Over 250 issues have been closed already.

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.