Web and WordPress News Roundup for April 2014

Hello spring, farewell winter. Time to get out of the house, grab a comfy chair, watch the snow melt and catch up on the most interesting news on the web today. Here are some of the most interesting posts and articles buzzing right now in the big www.

Nick Roach’s Elegant Themes Review

Elegant Themes - Updated Review for 2014

Updated: April 12, 2021 – 2021 is nearing the middle of the year, and now is a good time to update one of our most popular articles here on Blogging Experiment. For several years we have been singing the praises of Elegant Themes, and 2014 is shaping up to be no different. In a day and age where companies and websites come and go, Elegant Themes has not only stood the test of time, they have continued to innovate by creating massive value for their over 250,000 customers! In the following article, we’d like to give you a detailed overview of just why we call Elegant Themes the Best Deal in WordPress!

After all, having the right WordPress Theme is crucial to your websites’ success. It’s kind of like the study that showed how people looking to buy a home can make up their mind within 8 seconds of walking in the door whether they like it or not – by not giving your visitors the right first impression (your design) – you’re literally inviting them to hit the back button.

The Dilemma

As a blogger your focus should be on content. Blog design is important, but when you think about it, do people go to Craigslist because it looks pretty? Absolutely not. They use it because they’re the best in the field.

Since we’re not all Craigslists, we must merge the design and content aspects together in as seamless a manner as possible. You want to have a nice looking design, but you most likely are not strong in design itself (much less coding that pretty design). You want a unique, impressive look that conveys professionalism and passion about your craft, but you’re probably not an expert at usability (how “usuable” your site is to visitors). And finally, you want to do all this in the cheapest, most cost effictive way possible (nothing wrong with that).

Elegant Themes

Have you ever spent any length of time browsing around countless free wordpress theme sites only to be left feeling unsatisfied? Does it seem like most of the free themes are … well … free for a reason? Where are all the best wordpress themes? After going through these motions for a period of time, I decided to take a look at some premium wordpress themes to see if they were really that much better than the free ones. Shortly thereafter, I discovered Nick Roach’s Elegant Themes, and that changed everything for me.

I knew I could hire a web designer to create a nice looking website as I’ve done countless times in the past. But at $800 to $3500/pop, designers can be expensive. I was interested in finding a nice looking design that I could learn to tweak and modify myself to make it more personalized and customized to my liking.

As a website and blog developer, I am frequently developing new sites, and aside from the content itself, I want each design to be unique and professional. Enter ElegantThemes.

Elegant Themes Premium WordPress Theme Club

Forget $200 to $500 like many other premium theme clubs, for $69…YES, $69 – members get unlimited access and unlimited use to all of Nicks’ premium WordPress Themes. To date there are 80+ elegant WordPress Themes.

I’m going to get out of the way and let Nick’s design speak for itself. As you will see, these are top notch designs that would normally run you several thousand dollars a piece (I’ve researched hiring a good WordPress theme designer, and that is the going rate – typically the floor of their going rate).

Without further ado, here are some of the premium WordPress themes from Elegant Themes:

Nexus WordPress Theme

Blogex image_nexus

Nexus Features:

  • Magazine style
  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the Nexus Theme (Showcase):

More Information On Nexus From Elegant Themes:

Demo Nexus

 

Vertex WordPress Theme

Blogex image_vertex

Vertex Features:

  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the Vertex Theme (Showcase):

  • Email us if you are using the Vertex Theme, and we’ll list you here.

More Information On Vertex From Elegant Themes:

Demo Vertex

 

Fable WordPress Theme

Blogex image_fable

Fable Features:

  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the Fable Theme (Showcase):

  • Email us if you are using the Fable Theme, and we’ll list you here.

More Information On Fable From Elegant Themes:

Demo Fable

 

Foxy WordPress Theme

Blogex image_foxy

Foxy Features:

  • eCommerce
  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the Foxy Theme (Showcase):

  • Email us if you are using the Foxy Theme, and we’ll list you here.

More Information On Foxy From Elegant Themes:

Demo Foxy

 

Explorable WordPress Theme

Blogex image_explorable

Explorable Features:

  • Location based directory
  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the Explorable Theme (Showcase):

  • Email us if you are using the Explorable Theme, and we’ll list you here.

More Information On Explorable From Elegant Themes:

Demo Explorable

 

StyleShop WordPress Theme

Blogex image_styleshop

StyleShop Features:

  • eCommerce
  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the StyleShop Theme (Showcase):

  • Email us if you are using the StyleShop Theme, and we’ll list you here.

More Information On StyleShop From Elegant Themes:

Demo StyleShop

 

Fusion WordPress Theme

Fusion Theme from ElegantThemes.com

Fusion Features:

  • Responsive design
  • Unlimited color schemes
  • Secure and valid code
  • Complete localization
  • Browser compatibility
  • Perpetual updates
  • Unparalleled support
  • ADVANCED: ePanel theme options
  • ADVANCED: shortcode collection
  • ADVANCED: page templates

Example Site(s) using the Fusion Theme (Showcase):

  • Email us if you are using the Fusion Theme, and we’ll list you here.

More Information On Fusion From Elegant Themes:

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WordPress dot Org Plugins You Might Have Missed

WordPress dot org has some powerful plugins that you might not have discovered yet. Check out these cool plugins that just might be the solutions you have been looking for. Some of these plugins are still in the draft or development stage as of this writing.

Admin Color Schemes

The Admin Color Schemes plugin brings some personality to your WordPress site with 8 new extra admin color schemes. If you want to add some fun and pizzazz to your WordPress backend for that not so formal look, check out this cool plugin to create the color scheme that matches your personality.

WordPress Importer

The WordPress Importer plugin will import the following content from a WordPress export file: posts, pages and other custom post types, comments, custom fields and post meta, categories, tags and terms from custom taxonomies, authors, etc. The importer also has a couple of filters to allow you to completely enable/block certain features. Take note though that if your exported file is very large, the import script may run into your host’s configured memory limit for PHP.

Debug Bar

The Debug Bar plugin adds a debug menu to the admin bar that shows query, cache, and other helpful debugging information. This plugin is a must for WordPress developers. This plugin tracks PHP Warnings and Notices to make them easier to find when WP_DEBUG is enabled, and mysql queries are tracked and displayed when SAVEQUERIES is enabled. This plugin is extremely helpful for theme and plugin developers, just make sure that plugin is installed correctly.

WordPress Front-end Editor

The WordPress Front Editor plugin is a simple and easy to use plugin that allows you to navigate between the front and back end where you can access more advanced options such as custom fields, edit content, etc. This plugin is still in the development stage.

WordPress Front Editor

The WordPress Front Editor plugin is a simple and easy to use plugin that allows you to navigate between the front and back end where you can access more advanced options such as custom fields, edit content, etc. This plugin is still in the development stage.

Tumblr Importer

The Tumblr Importer plugin allows you to import posts, drafts, and pages including media side loading (for audio, video, and image posts) from a Tumblr blog into a WordPress blog. It correctly handles, post formats, does background importing, and will not create duplicate imported posts.

Blogger Importer

The Blogger Importer plugin allows you to import posts (published, scheduled, and draft, comments, and categories (blogger tags) from a Blogger blog then migrates authors to WordPress users.

WordPress Design For A Global Market

Design is subjective. There are generally accepted design principles that govern the design community and serve as guides to evaluating “correct” design. However, not all of them are totally applicable to specific clients especially when Western taste buds meet Eastern culture. But when and where shall the ‘twain ever meet if beauty and design aesthetics are wrapped deeply in mores and culture?

This is the cross cultural challenge that web designers need to face in order to remain competitive in today’s global market place.

West, Meet East

Before the West was, the East was. Two of the world’s oldest civilizations, China and India, are also two of the fastest and most robust economies today. According to Census.gov, as of 2014, China and India ranked as the top two countries with the highest population in the world. China ranked first with 1.3B (population) with an approximate 42.3% Internet penetration, followed by India with 1.2B (population) with an approximate 81% Internet penetration. Approximately 1 billion internet users from these 2 (right to left, top-to-bottom reading) countries alone. And if theme developers do the math, even if at 1% of a billion internet users, that’s still a lot of WordPress themes right there. Too many to ignore.

Global Market Local User Design

We’ve talked about defining your target market and directing your business to reaching your specific demographic. Once you have that down pat, it’s probably time to think of expansion and consider widening your net a little further. To go a little more granular and target the local user.

With WordPress powering over 21% of the Internet and being one of the most user friendly and reliable CMS systems existing today, aside from the fact that it is free, more and more Internet users are looking to it as their platform of choice.

With that, the popularity of WordPress has crossed over into multi language markets despite having been around for only a decade and catering mainly to users of modern languages which are generally left to right in direction. Hence, the increase in demand for WordPress themes with RTL or WPML features or WP plugins that provide this functionality.

The diversity of WordPress users from all across the globe is becoming an important factor in developing themes that are relevant culturally and technically suited to these users local needs. As responsive once was a premium feature that has now become a standard feature in all WordPress themes, so shall the multi language and RTL feature become.

The Design Approach

The WordPress theme development marketplace has grown considerably with designers coming up with better and more user friendly designs that match the general needs of WordPress users. There is a huge pool of WordPress themes available for, generally, almost every type of website need out there. But there is still room to grow for more cross-cultural friendly options.

Below are some design elements that designers need to consider when creating themes that are responsive to culturally diverse user groups. (Notes culled from W3.org and Sitepoint.com)

  • Language
    – Languages don’t have a direction. Scripts have a writing direction, and so languages written in a particular script, will be written with the direction of that script. Languages can be written in more than one script.
  • Typography – fonts and characters
    – Typography can look “busier” to Western eyes than to Asian readers because many Asian scripts don’t have separate upper and lower cases. Some languages have scripts that are not alphabetic at all, but which express an idea rather than a sound. Occasionally, it’s necessary for an author to provide readers with pronunciation help for especially rare or awkward characters, usually with an alternative script in small writing above the ambiguous character.
  • Content presentation
  • Styling
  • Usability
  • Navigation
  • Mirror layout
  • Scripts (Left to Right, Right to Left, Top to Bottom)
    – Text direction is another thing that should not be confused with language. In some scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, displayed text is read predominantly from right to left, although within that flow, numbers and text from other scripts are displayed from left to right. Knowing the directionality of text, based on the script(s) to be used, is important to web designers and authors, because right-to-left text can be more complicated (for beginners) to work with and the organization and directionality of the page layout are affected. Therefore, knowing the writing direction can be relevant to estimating the work involved to create web pages in a new language.
  • Images and animations
  • Forms
    – Designing forms for an Asian market can have pitfalls for Western developers. For example, it’s common to require both given name and family name and give an error if both are not completed. Many Asian languages write names with family names first and given names afterwards while some have only one name. Also, do not limit the amount of characters in Address fields.
  • Mobile
  • Propriety
  • Color palettes
    – While choosing your colors for your design, keep in mind that certain colors have different connotations across cultures. For example, red is lucky for Chinese people. On the other hand, Thai people will be offended if you print their name in red — it’s the color that monks employ to write names on coffins, so to write someone’s name in red is to “wish them dead”.
  • Symbols and metaphors

For web designers, W3.org International’s tagline sums it up quite well: “Making the World Wide Web Worldwide.” Let’s!

Portfolio WordPress Themes for December 2013

Gear up for the year-end and display your holiday photos or your best creative work with these flexible and dynamic portfolio WordPress themes for you or your clients. Check these out:

Sonnet – One Page Parallax Multipurpose Portfolio

Sonnet Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and streamlined One page Parallax Responsive Business Template built with Bootstrap 3.0.2, HTM5 & CSS3. This flat, easy to customize theme with its well-placed content blocks boasts of professional coding as its core power. Also included are Visual Composer – the most popular & powerful drag and drop layout builder for WordPress, a powerful section editor, responsive grid portfolio plugin – Megafolio, Zilla Shortcode, a Pricing Table manager among others. This premium theme supports Automated Plugin management and even includes a demo content importer which will let you build the site with dummy content in a second.

Mocha Flat Bold WordPress Portfolio Theme

Mocha Premium WordPress Theme is a unique and bold portfolio WordPress that is aesthetically clean, flat, minimalist in design ideal for any design agency, creative professional, freelance designer, photographer, or anyone in the creative industry wanting to make a good impression on clients. It’s very flexible and is powered with Bootstrap framework. This premium WordPress theme has advanced theme options with unlimited styling options, unlimited colors, 500+ Google Fonts, a Visual Shortcode manager, and tons of other features to help you fully customize your website. This premium theme is WordPress 3.6 and 3.7 compliant.

Mercury Responsive Portfolio Photography Theme

Mercury Premium WordPress Theme is a clean, minimalist parallax style portfolio theme that can be used for any portfolio, photography or business website. Features include responsive design which adapts to mobile devices (iPhone, iPad) and can be deactivated with one click in your backend, it is retina ready for ultra-sharp high resolution graphics, sticky main menu navigation, off-canvas mobile navigation, drag & drop content builder, 20 gallery templates, 6 portfolio templates, filterable portfolios, instant AJAX search, Music support for gallery pages, Password Protected Gallery Support, Image Gallery Comments Support, Fullscreen Youtube and Vimeo video support, and a whole lot more.

Upward: Experimental Portfolio & Blog

Upward Premium WordPress Theme is a unique experimental responsive, retina-ready WordPress theme using pseudo-elements to create a distinct presentation style on original browsers (Firefox and Chrome) unlike any other theme. Usually, non-original browsers (like Safari for Windows) do not support anti-aliasing of pseudo-elements. Also, not all browsers support CSS3 animation completely, thus some part of animation isn’t available in IE8-9, Safari and Opera. Other than that, this premium theme includes important features like: light and dark skins, post/page options, powerful visual shortcodes, unlimited sidebars, unlimited fonts, and so much more.

Nervaq – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme

Nervaq Premium WordPress Theme is a fully responsive Ajax-powered, parallax one page portfolio template with a modern, clean and minimalistic design ideal for creative agencies, designers, freelance creatives, and those in the creative industry. This premium theme is highly optimized for both mobile and desktop platforms, it uses lazy-loading of images assets and compression of all required scripts. Other features include: Drag and drop gallery management, localization ready, and is built on a full OOP , modular, load-on-demand, WordPress framework.

Grido: Responsive and Multipurpose Grid Portfolio

Grido Premium WordPress Theme is a minimalistic theme ideal for creative professionals that love flat and clean design. Its stunning design and layout capabilities with excellent color (ten preset) and typographic choices will give your portfolio the attention that it deserves. This premium responsive theme is highly customizable using the dedicated control panel and is a highly flexible and widgetized theme, packed with WordPress features such as post-formats, page templates, custom widgets, shortcodes, including important features specifically designed for it. It is also Themelovin plugins compatible: Themelovin Dribbble, Themelovin Portfolio, Themelovin Shortcodes, Themelovin Team, Themelovin TwitterIt.

Dirty Saloon – A Rugged One Page WordPress Theme

Dirty Saloon Premium WordPress Theme is a Cowboy Western-inspired premium responsive Theme that will surely make you hold your horses. This unique, flexible, and freshly designed theme features innovative AJAX loading of Posts and Portfolio items which can be turned on and off on demand with one click in Page Builder. It features a premium Aqua Page Builder for easy creation of new pages for your site.The theme also comes with a Revolution Slider, a convenient Administration panel, and many more.

Cool Blogging WordPress Theme From Elegant Themes

We all have a story to tell. Simple, funny, sad, challenging, happy – everyone has an opinion, a point of view, a story. That’s why blogging will always be here to stay and that’s why people secure their own dot coms as an avenue to voice their stories. As such blogs, need to visually reflect the author’s persona giving him or her the platform to share and present text and media content effectively to visitors who are drawn to our site.

Fable Premium WordPress Theme is a theme conceptualized to help us tell our story to a worldwide audience. An important method employed in this theme is the use of post variation, allowing visitors to distinguish one post after another. The theme is also designed for easy reading as it employs a full width, long format style turning your scrolling into a pleasurable journey. Subtle emphasis on your content is achieved by using bold types giving your content a non-overpowering full screen attention.

Fable comes with an options panel for convenient and powerful customization features. You also have the option to use shortcodes for more complicated customization. Ready page templates are also available for those who’d like to put the theme up and running in no time. Fable is responsive and adjusts to the smaller displays of mobile devices.

Features:

  • Responsive Design
  • Theme Options
  • Shortcodes
  • Page Templates
  • Perpetual Updates
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Complete Localization
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Unparalleled Support

Fable Premium WordPress Theme includes perpetual updates, unparalleled support, and access more than 80+ high quality WordPress themes included in every Elegant Themes membership.

Get 86+ WordPress Themes For $39!

MultiMedia WordPress Themes August 2013

Today’s multimedia audience has been bombarded with multi sensory stimuli that engage and entertain like never before. Competing in such an environment is pretty challenging and demands a lot of creativity especially when it comes to web design. Here are some innovative WordPress themes that offer you more than your usual WordPress fare:

Fuji Full Screen WordPress Theme

Fuji Premium WordPress Theme is an innovative theme with design aesthetics that are far from your typical WordPress theme design. Its modern and clean design is visually refreshing in every aspect. All the best trends in web development have been implemented in this theme: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations are just some of the features of this theme. It also includes features such as: 9 different page types (Home, Standard Page, Column Page, Full Page, Half Page, Collection, Gallery, Video and Blog), Unlimited Galleries, Unlimited Collections (Portfolio) and Unlimited Audio Tracks, and so much more to fit any type of web application you need.

Acid Unique Horizontal Blog and Portfolio Theme

Why scroll downwards when you can scroll or swipe sideways? Acid Premium WordPress Theme combines the best design features you adore in Metro and One-Page and brings it all together into this one theme. Choose from Colorful Hipster, Serious Black, and Retro Grandma to create the website you need in the style that you want. This theme includes the following key features: unique portfolio layout, unlimited color options, mini parallax, unlimited scroll, One-Page horizontal layout with the option to choose and use the Metro Style blog and portfolio or a combination of both.

Anthe WordPress Theme

If creativity is your passion then up the ante and create a website that reflects just that with Anthe Premium WordPress Theme – a reliable, fast and responsive WordPress theme designed to promote small design agencies or big creative minds. This fresh and creative premium theme gives you four page styles and two page layout options. It’s a 2 in 1 theme – multi-page & single-page solution – all in one package. You can combine your WP pages to create incredible single pages with only a few clicks.

WildHorn Full Screen WordPress Theme

Wildhorn Premium WordPress theme is a full screen theme designed to put your multimedia content (images, videos, and audio) in the spotlight. Equipped with the bests trends in web development such as: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations. This theme also comes with an embedded music player (can be turned on or off) to add that something extra to the whole web experience.

Wave WordPress Theme for Artists

If you are an artist looking for a theme to house your art on the web check out Wave Premium WordPress theme – a responsive WordPress theme made for artists that can also be used as a portfolio cum blog by anyone needs a theme to showcase images and galleries and a blog as well. It is designed on a 1180px grid with 16 columns which can be quite flexible for showcasing art in different sizes or dimensions. This premium theme is also WooCommerce ready which opens up opportunities for artists to sell their artwork online right on the spot.

Nexus WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes

Stories are an important part of our identity as humans and as a society. More often than not, we go through magazines and newspapers looking for stories to inspire us, inform us and the like. It is easier for us to appreciate a situation if we read the experiences of people involved and see pictures as opposed to a detached report with just facts and figures. This gives the user a more concrete appreciation of what really transpired. Websites must be able to present content as stories that engage users to interact more. There must be a good balance between text and media content to achieve this. At the same time, the website design needs have the flexibility to be able to arrange content in such a way as to effectively create a synergy between text and media content.

Nexus Premium WordPress Theme is a theme created to give you the power to organize content and maximize your capability to tell your stories in an engaging manner. The theme’s homepage builder allows you to set-up content modules and arrange and organize them in such a way as to create an effective narration of your content. The theme’s overall design approach using a strict grid together with a typographical hierarchy and a clean layout gives your elements the ample space to breathe. This gives your visitors a pleasant and enjoyable experience browsing through readable, accessible content.

This premium theme is quite easy to customize according to personal specs and preferences using the theme’s ePanel. There are also tons of shortcodes and widgets available to expand the the look and function of your site. Nexus is built on HTML5 and CSS3 for fast, efficient loading of your website. The theme is also responsive allowing your site to look good on both mobile and desktop devices.

Features:

  • Perpetual Updates
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Complete Localization
  • Advertisement Areas
  • Homepage Builder
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Custom Widgets

Nexus Premium WordPress Theme includes perpetual updates, unparalleled support, and access more than 80+ high quality WordPress themes included in every Elegant Themes membership.

Get 85 WordPress Themes For $39!