Bluehost Wins Best WordPress Hosting 2013

The Internet has given birth to many virtual businesses that exist without having an actual physical store, showroom, or office space to speak of. Glitches, downtime, hacks, and all other risks of online businesses can make or break any business, big or small. Time, money, transactions, and traffic can go down the drain in a matter of minutes once a website can’t be accessed. That’s why it is absolutely crucial to select a webhost that these businesses can absolutely rely on. One such web host that has a proven track record is Bluehost, winner of this year’s Best WordPress Hosting Award as awarded by WordPressHosting4U.com.

“This award is granted based on the reliability, security, WordPress page loading speed, WordPress knowledge of customer support team, and price value. Bluehost outperformed its competitors on the combination of all above areas, which makes it the best choice for bloggers, web developers, small- to medium size businesses.” – WordPressHosting4U.com editor team

Bluehost has been providing quality web hosting solutions to businesses and individuals since 1996 with the goal of providing outstanding services for the best possible price. Through constant innovation and service upgrades it has provided millions of website owners fast, efficient, affordable, and 100% WordPress compatible web hosting services throughout the years.

Whether you are an individual or a big business website owner, Bluehost has a complete web hosting solution for you. Features like unlimited disk storage, unlimited domain host, a drag and drop site builder, 24/7 US-based support, SSH Secure shell access, and so many other features such as CGI/Databases, Site Promotion efforts through search engine submissions, Free Website Scripts, eCommerce features including SSL secure server and various shopping cart options, Multimedia Features, and World Class Technology make Bluehost the top web host service provider that it is today.

Bluehost has an excellent overall uptime percentage of 99.99%.

Secure your website. Check out Bluehost.com today

What Makes Companies Great? Bad?

People go into business with the intention of being successful. No one puts up a company expecting to fold or to go bankrupt. The goal is to succeed and in the long run, eventually become great.

What Makes Companies Great? Here are some important factors shared during the Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 that contribute to a company’s success:

Great Leaders

Great leaders are: Fair. Calm. Inspirational. Mentors.

Competitive Advantage

Unfair advantages:

  • First mover.
  • Price.
  • U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition).
  • Selection.
  • Legal.

Measurement

  • Know your metrics. “What gets measured gets managed.””
  • Break even.
  • Cost to acquire a customer.
  • Product performance.
  • Employee performance (gross sales per employee).
  • Customer success.

Seek Opportunity

Where can we grow?

  • International.
  • Cross markets.
  • Line extensions (what else will your customer buy that you’re not selling?
  • Joint ventures.
  • Licensing.

Leverage

What can we leverage?

  • Other people’s money.
  • Other people’s idea.
  • Other people’s energy.
  • Other people’s trust.
  • Other people’s innovation.

Genuine Ethics

Who are you really?

  • Charitable giving.
  • Employee success.
  • Vendor success (the people you buy from need to make money, too).
  • Partner success.
  • Customer love.

Urgency And Commitment

How driven are you?

  • Commit or leave (nothing will ruin a good employee faster than them watching you tolerate a bad one).
  • Money loves speed.
  • Speed attracts talent.
  • Talent drives innovation.
  • Innovation drives value.

What Makes Companies Bad?

  • Lack of vision.
  • Lack of leadership.
  • Lack of commitment.
  • Lack of scalability.
  • Bad/no numbers.
  • Poor management.
  • Flawed business model.

Are You in No Man’s Land (Or Why Your Business Isn’t 20 Times Bigger Than It Is). Here are 4 Reasons Why You’re Likely Stuck:

Lack of marketing

  • #1 killer of small business growth. Marketing is the lifeblood of every growing business.

Lack of talent

  • Top people usually work for companies that are growing.

Lack of systems

  • This usually comes with good people (crucial to scale).

Lack of capital

  • To fund only growth after 1, 2, and 3 are addressed.

If you are a startup company or you are wondering how to take your company to the next level, use this list to assess where you are right now. Ask yourself if you are happy where you are or you would like to have a bigger slice of the pie and act accordingly.

21 Steps Sales Letter – A Sales Presentation Formula by Perry Belcher

Perry Belcher is a well-known Internet marketing speaker, author of several books, and a recognized sales guru. He was a guest speaker in the Traffic and Conversion Summit held earlier this year where he shared his famous 21 Steps Sales Letter originally based on David Frey’s 12-step foolproof sales letter formula. Below is the list of secrets shared during the conference. Perry recommends that these steps be followed in sequence because sequence is critical.

According to Perry, “poor copy in sequence is better than good copy out of sequence”.

The 21 Steps Sales Letter Formula:

1. Call out to your audience

Address your audience (Attention: insert your audience here) at the top of your sales letter.

2. Get their attention

Grab the attention of your reader with a big promise headline. (example: Everything You’ve Learned About ____ is a Lie!)

3. Backup the big promise headline with a quick explanation (sub-headline).

Support the headline to give it believability. Write out 100 or more headlines and trim it down to your best 5. (example: How To + insert benefit here)

4. Identify the problem.

Identify the audience (who they are, how they feel) or tell a story about a problem, a struggle, or a challenge.

5. Provide the solution

Reveal a solution to their problem and prove that this solution is the best option out there.

6. Show pain of and cost of development

Let your audience know the pain and cost you and others went through to develop the solution to the problem. Establish empathy and affinity with your audience.

7. Explain ease-of-use

Let them know how easy the solution is to use.

8. Show speed to results

Give them an idea how fast it is to achieve results.

9. Futurecast

Explain how their life will improve or be better because of your solution.

10. Show your credentials

Establish your credibility and demonstrate your expertise.

11. Detail the benefits

Use bullet points to enumerate benefits. Tip: Describe the feature, then use the words “…so that” to describe and emphasize the benefit.

12. Get social proof

Use outside authority or third party validation (example: research statistics, quotes from credible or authoritative sources, etc.)

13. Make your offer

Tell them exactly what they are getting.

14. Add bonuses

Bonuses need not be relevant to the offer. People only need to want them.

15. Build up your value

Build up the value of your offer. Tell them how much everything is worth.

16. Reveal your price (pop by button)

Add prices together to calculate value, then reveal price that’s much cheaper. Explain why the price is what it is and why it is such a great value.

17. Inject scarcity (if any)

Offers that don’t have scarcity don’t sell as well, but it needs to be genuine or you’ll destroy your business. (example: change the price, limited time, take away a bonus, etc.)

18. Give guarantee

Remove, eliminate, reverse, take out perceived risks. Longer guarantee = less returns.

19. Call to action

The call to action is a command. Be specific and tell them exactly what to do. Use visuals, screenshots, and other tools to guide them to do the next steps until completed.

20. Give a warning

Warn them against the consequence or what’s going to happen if they don’t buy.

21. Close with a reminder

Recap the whole offer and remind them what they are getting. Summarize the problem, the solution, the offer, the guarantee, and the benefits and consequences they will be experiencing.

If you’re stumped as to how to begin writing your own sales letter, try these simple steps, apply them, and give them a try. It’s a great way to jumpstart your writing technique. If you do, let us know whatever the results are. We’d love to hear from you.

Awesome New Themes for June 2013

Orange Core

If you’re looking for a theme that can do a lot to meet what a host of clients need then you definitely want to check out Orange Core. This multi-purpose theme is great for business and corporate sites although it does have excellent portfolio capabilities too. Awesome presentations may be done using the panoramic full-width homepage slider. Built in pricing tables, service pages, column variations and other page templates included are great tools necessary in building business and corporate sites. Orange core can be a great way for potential customers to get information about your business using these features. Orange Core is optimized for mobile and touch screen devices and is built on twitter bootstrap.

Vernum

Vernum is a clean, modern and powerful One Page Parallax theme that can virtually be what you want it to be. This theme has a drag and drop page builder to help you create the pages you want. Vernum also uses the parallax effect for added drama as you scroll down the page. In addition to these, Vernum uses retina ready graphics, is responsive, has great blog and portfolio capabilities, and uses CSS3 animations. It is flexible enough to meet the demands of websites of different kinds.

WP Education

WP Education is a premium theme designed for schools and educational institutions. Many educational institutions suffer from unimpressive websites. WP Education is a viable solution to add that professional air to any academic institution. Aside from the normal blog and gallery capabilities, schools can use this theme as an administrative and organizational tool to publish available courses, their descriptions and comments, and even process applications from prospective students.

Universfolio

Universfolio is a responsive multipurpose theme you can use for business or for pleasure. Whether it’s a corporate website, a personal blog or a creative portfolio, Universfolio has something for you. The theme uses the popular and powerful Revolution Slider to give you stunning slide transitions and layered 3d effects. This allows you to present eye catching slideshows to make casual visitors stay on your site longer. The theme also has awesome portfolio and blog page templates to showcase your work and keep visitors up to date with what’s going on. Universfolio is WooCommerce ready giving your site extra ecommerce capabilities.

JP Animated vCard Theme

JP is a cool and modern vCard WordPress theme for the creative professional. It’s got everything you need to create a good first impression on visitors, current clients, and potential clients. It’s simple and clean menu system allows you to navigate through the whole site without much fuss. It includes a great portfolio that allows you to showcase images, videos and other media projects on your site for interested parties to look at. You also have a blog page so visitors can get an insight on how you approach projects and tasks. This theme also has a Services Page and a Contact Page for those interested in hiring your services.

Lambo Photography Theme

If you are a photographer wanting to setup your own website or wanting to revitalize your existing one, check out Lambo. Lambo Premium WordPress Theme gives you special ways of showcasing your photos and images. This theme is perfect for the photographer or graphic artist who wants his/her work presented to potential clients artistically. The theme’s homepage slider is designed so that the graphic gives you the semblance that you are looking through a lens. The full screen slider presents your works in a choice of sliders including one with the popular Ken Burns effect.

Realia

Realia Premium WordPress Theme is a real estate and property rental theme ideal for real estate agents, brokers and professionals. This theme allows you to manage properties for sale or for rent so that potential buyers can go to your site and look for the property they desire and easily find it. This google map integrated theme allows visitors to search according to location based on defined filters like: number of baths, price, whether for sale or for rent. This theme has a dedicated page for each property with a description, an image gallery and a google map indicating its location. An inquiry form is conveniently located on the sidebar to facilitate contact with a broker. Property owners can submit their properties for sale. Theme supports IDX infrastructure trusted by professionals in the real estate industry.

ThemeFuse: A Closer Look

About

“We Create Premium WordPress Themes. The Original Kind!” This tagline encapsulates everything ThemeFuse is about. ThemeFuse is a commercial WordPress Themes Shop co-founded by four guys from Bucharest, Romania: Bogdan Condurache (Art Director and Motion Graphics Designer) and Dimi Baitanciuc (co-founder) both of whom take care of the creative side, together with Alexandru Luncashu and Sergiu Bagrin (After Care Support) who, on the other hand are in charge of development and programming. ThemeFuse focuses on providing original high quality niche WordPress theme designs coupled with top aftercare support designed to meet the exact needs of customers in specific industries.

History

Dimi Baitanciuc and Bogdan Condurache started out selling HTML/CSS templates on ThemeForest in November 2009. They soon realized the huge potential in WordPress and started implementing their designs into the CMS. They were joined by Alex and Sergiu later on. After another 4-5 months on ThemeForest they decided to put up their own and the ThemeFuse WordPress theme club was birthed in 2010. The theme club includes 28+ themes (averaging a new theme every month) available to download which range from portfolio themes through to magazine themes for sports and fashion sites.

Product

The ThemeFuse WordPress theme club currently includes over 28 themes that cover a wide range of themes that include portfolio themes, magazine themes, blog themes, business themes, etc. that cover niche industries such as sports, fashion, travel, events, food, art, corporate, and so much more. The club membership is a subscription based product ($17 per month) where you get access to all themes (current and future) including PSD files. This is automatically renewed each month based on the date you signed up. The membership price includes a one-time only $199 sign up fee. If you decide to cancel your subscription, you will not be able to download the themes anymore. Themefuse enforces a no refund policy applicable to club members as well. Should you decide to reactivate your club membership and sign up again you need to pay the one time signup fee again. Themes are also sold individually to non-members.

Member Benefits

Aside from gaining access to the entire Themefuse theme collection, members get VIP Priority treatment in their Support Forum, members get access to a beautiful Member’s Area, members can also give input and suggestions on future themes. Aside from these, members also have the opportunity to earn via their improved affiliate program.

Income Opportunities

ThemeFuse’s affiliate program allows you to earn in several ways. Once you become an affiliate, all you need to do is put your affiliate link on a banner on your website or use ThemeFuse’s WP referral plugin. Once a person clicks on the link and makes a purchase on their website you earn 30% of the sale, every time. Their affiliate software sets a 60-day cookie that keeps tab of users who visit their website from one of your links. This means you still get a 30% cut on every purchase the user makes, even if the customer comes back at a later time. In addition, if the user joins our club you’ll also get 10% of every recurring payment he makes every month. Themefuse pays its affiliate partners once a month via PayPal. Affiliates can expect to receive their affiliate shares between 1st and 10th of the following month.

Recent Developments

ThemeFuse recently partnered with WebHostingBuzz to provide a new service targeted at WP beginners. The goal of the partnership is to deliver a hands-off service, where every client can get their WordPress site installed by a team of professionals on a quality hosting account, along with a well-designed WordPress theme. This service means that customers can pick a theme from ThemeFuse’s gallery and have it installed by their team, on an optimized hosting platform, and under a new domain (of your choosing).

The main strength of this new service is the no-supervision-required approach presented by both companies (ThemeFuse and WebHostingBuzz). All the client needs to do is pick a theme from the official theme gallery at ThemeFuse.com, choose the hosting pack (domain name included) at checkout and that’s it. All within a single checkout process.

For the client, the package includes: the domain (optional), the hosting, the website (WordPress theme), AND all the necessary installs will be taken care of by ThemeFuse. ThemeFuse also provides a dedicated support forum to handle the chosen theme’s issues as well as troubleshooting any problems that may come up.

Future Plans

According to Dimi Baitanciuc,

Talking about the longer term, we plan to release a brand new website as part of our ThemeFuse family, which will not be related to WordPress themes, but to web and graphic design in general. We have been collaborating with high-class designers from around the world the past few months and I think we’ve come up with awesome results.

Visit ThemeFuse today.

Conversion Hacks: Increasing Opt-In Rates

How many of you have tried several email campaigns but have wondered why they aren’t so effective? How many of you are actually clueless as to how to maximize the power of email marketing and how you can use it to your advantage? Let’s take at the look at the ways you can increase your email list using these tips and tricks on increasing your Opt-In rates. Check out these terms – Opt-In, Confirmed Opt-In, Double Opt-In, and Opt-Out:

Opt-in:

Sometimes referred to as “single opt-in,” basically means that people are only added to an email list if they actually fill out a registration form. They are given the “option” to receive email with their permission. Otherwise, the unsolicited email is referred to as spam.

Confirmed Opt-in:

This is similar to the opt-in method, but after someone signs up for your email list, you’d send them a “thank you” confirmation email that contains a link to unsubscribe from your list (just in case they were signed up by someone else without their permission).

Double Opt-in:

Someone signs up for your email list. You send a confirmation email with a link that they must click before they’re added to your list. If they don’t click the link, they don’t get added to the list. When users confirm that they want on your list, you should store their IP address, and confirmation date and time in your records. Some say this is the best way to handle your email list.

Opt-out:

This is an old-fashioned way of building your email list where you’d typically have some form for people to fill out but with a hidden or not so obvious pre-checked box at the bottom, with something like, “Yes, please sign me up for your email newsletter!”

Tips and Tricks:

The headline, call to action (CTA) and opt-in box must have good headline. Write 100 headlines and pick the best one.

If you’re using a photo of a person in your landing page, have person looking at opt-in area

Simple plain flat book cover or graphic + opt-in box converts well

Other things that can make a big impact:

  • Have live chat on your site. You can outsource for approximately $300. 1 in 3 chatters buy. Set up a special follow up series for chatters because they are engaged prospects
  • Your best affiliate is your customer service. They know the your customers the best. Turn customer service people into sales people. Give customer service reps affiliate link. Create an email signature for customer service emails with what you’re promoting.
  • Use an Upsell formula
  • Make a “bucket offer”. Offer them more of what they bought at a greatly discounted price. (ex. Buying an apple for $1, then being offer 10 apples for $3)
  • Don’t worry about profit. Try to break even.
  • Send buyers additional offers via Direct mailing buyers additional offers. If someone buys from you but doesn’t buy upsell, direct mail a sales letter for the upsell
  • Telephone follow-up – Calling webinar attendees after webinar can increase your sales if you call your webinar attendees and ask them why they didn’t buy.
  • Ditching the progress bar on checkout process can cut cart abandonments in half

Keep testing your landing pages and keep tab of people’s responses to your marketing strategies to find out which method works best for your company. As you continue to understand your target market’s behavior the better you will be able increase your Opt-in rates and eventually your sales.

Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC) How Does it Work?

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.

What is Pay Per Click?

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.

Easy and Consistent WordPress Backup Helpers

You know you should but you sometimes don’t. And just when you are about to, something goes wrong and it’s already a little too late. It gets a little more complicated when you are handling more than one website, maintaining several eCommerce sites, or handling sites with years and years of content. You could rely on your webhost to do it for you, but, that’s a little too risky for comfort. It’s what every website owner, webmaster, web host should do. Backup. Consistently. Why?

If these statements sound familiar,

“My site got hacked.”
“I accidentally deleted some code and it wiped out all my data.”
“I changed my theme and it messed up all my content.”
“I activated a plugin but it wasn’t compatible and it corrupted a whole bunch of my files.”

you know that you could have avoided the consequences of procrastination if you had kept a backup file before implementing any changes. On a larger scale, systems can shut down, natural disasters can hit, web hosting companies can go bankrupt or close shop. Without your own personal backup system, you could lose themes, plugins, content, images, widgets, customization and a whole lot more. It just makes sense to be ready all the time.

Here are some highly recommended backup options for your peace of mind:

myRepono WordPress Backup Plugin

myRepono WordPress Backup Plugin is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin which automates the myRepono API setup process, enabling you to setup automated WordPress backups in a matter of minutes. myRepono is an online website backup service which enables you to securely backup your WordPress web site files and mySQL database tables using an online and web-based management system. The myRepono online website backup service allows you to automate the process of backing up your entire WordPress website and database, including all post, comments and user data, and your WordPress PHP, template and plugin files.

WordPress Backup to Dropbox

WordPress Backup to Dropbox is a free plugin that keeps your website backed up to Dropbox regularly. The plugin’s simple interface lets you setup your backup cycle in minutes giving you peace of mind that your precious blog posts, media files and template changes are backed up. Simply choose a day, time, & frequency for your backup to be performed. In order to use the plugin you will need a Dropbox account.

BackWPup

BackWPup is a free plugin that creates flexible, scheduled WordPress backups to any location. The backup files can be used to save your whole installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup Service, if you don’t want to save the backups on the same server. With the single backup .zip file you are able to restore an installation. You can also purchase the pro version that has additional backup features.

VaultPress

VaultPress provides realtime, continuous backup and synchronization of every post, comment, media file, revision and dash­board setting across at least two separate cloud services in addition to the Automattic grid, ensuring no loss of content. Using WordPress hooks to receive alerts when information changes on your site, VaultPress immediately syncs all of your changes with their servers.

Snapshot

Make a quick and easy backup of all of your content, without fiddling with the server or signing up for an expensive backup solution, restore backups with one easy click, t backup all your regular WordPress stuff (posts, pages, comments, taxonomies etc.) and also every table of your database, for every plugin and theme you have with Snapshot, a premium plugin from WPMU Dev. With Snapshot you can create as many ‘Time Machine’ snapshots of your entire database (or individual tables) as you want, automatically schedule backups, save to Dropbox, Amazon S3 or by SFTP, and so much more.

The time, money and effort you exert in backing up your files is nothing compared to the price of losing all your website content, files, traffic and income, and the effort to recover (if possible) all of them. In this case, an ounce of prevention is indeed better than a pound of cure.

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