ThemeForest Theme Sells Over 800 Copies In One Week

One WordPress theme, 7 days, 800 copies, $36,000 grand. A lot of WordPress authors and developers on Themeforest would love to achieve even a fraction of that and most of them are probably scratching their heads wondering why. This popular theme has even dislodged U-Design from its top spot for the past few weeks and to think it’s the only item in this author’s Themeforest portfolio. If you are wondering what theme achieved such a feat check out AVADA, a responsive multi purpose theme created by ThemeFusion.

Let’s dissect this theme a little bit further and try or simply attempt to figure out why the market is loving this theme.

Overall aesthetic

Avada’s layout can be classified as clean, straightforward, and professional-looking with very neutral colors and lots of white space. If you are familiar with real estate open houses, real estate professionals really spend a lot of time to “stage” a property before “opening” it up to the market. Care is taken to display only enough design elements to highlight the property’s unique and outstanding features, pulling back from adding unnecessary and distracting clutter. This deliberate “staging” is intended to give the potential buyer the room to imagine what he can do with it to meet his own needs. The focus is on its potential and what it can become. Avada is like that, a well-staged theme with lots of potential for all types of buyers. The demo is clear and easy to maneuver, giving customers a taste of all that it can be for whatever need they have.

Features & Functions

This premium theme is not just a pretty face. It has enough built in features and functions to create the website you need for yourself or for your clients. Everyone wants to create a website that is unique and representative of himself or his brand. Avada has a plethora of feature and function choices that, when mixed and matched together, with the client’s own images and content, can create a one of a kind and totally different website every time. Here are some of Avada’s easy to customize features that you can “play” with:

  • Homepage – 10 versions
  • Sliders – 6 styles
  • Headers – 5 versions
  • Page Templates
    • About Us – 2 versions
    • Services – 2 versions
    • Pricing Options
    • Meet the Team
    • Side Navigation
    • Contact Page – 2 versions
    • FAQ – 2 versions
    • Sidebars – Left and Right
    • Full-width page
    • 404 page
  • Portfolio – 6 layouts
  • Blog – 4 layouts
  • Custom Posts, Custom Widgets,
  • Shortcodes for Elements, Icons, Media, Pricing Tables & Typography
  • Responsive
  • Retina-ready

Support

Aside from the extensive, detailed documentation and easy to follow HD narrated video tutorials, Avada generously includes the entire set of PSDs (20+ files) for those who want to customize the theme even further. Buyers get 100% free support via their support forum. Customer feedback has been, overall, favorable so far. Providing WordPress theme support is not an easy task especially if you are servicing thousands of buyers. To receive favorable feedback regarding their theme support indicates that they have a support system that really works. This translates into higher buyer confidence which translates further into higher sales.

Avada has sold almost 15,000 copies to date and has received more than a thousand 5-star ratings which is something worth noting. Receiving a 5-star rating from 2 or more people can be easily dismissed but 1,000 or more satisfied customers can’t be ignored.

Fluke or luck? We think not. A good product with a lot of hard work backing it up sounds more like it. If this is the trend that the market is supporting as far as WordPress themes are concerned, then it is good sign that the market and the industry are headed for better days.

Get Avada Now!

ThemeGrade Gets A Facelift

ThemeGrade loyal subscribers will be delighted to hear the great news about their favorite review site. This great WordPress resource that started in 2009 just went through a design overhaul and what was already a great website has now become even better. In our previous article about ThemeGrade, we touched on the unique services this website offers the WordPress community. The information and reviews of different WordPress themes and WordPress providers have helped guide hundreds if not thousands of WordPress buyers and users in making informed WordPress purchase decisions saving them time and money in the process.

What’s great about the upgraded and updated ThemeGrade?

Overall Design

ThemeGrade has switched from a dark theme design and opted for a more minimalist, white spaced design making it easier for users to find reviews of different WordPress Providers and WordPress Themes. Below are some of the design improvements implemented in ThemeGrade’s new look:

  • Clean and Minimalist Design
  • Simple, Easy, and User-Friendly Navigation
  • Streamlined, Organized, and Easy to Access Information
  • Easy to See Ratings
  • Improved Readability

Grading System

ThemeGrade provides an easy to understand grading system for both WordPress Themes and WordPress providers. WordPress themes are graded in 2 categories and are awarded a Bronze, Silver, or Gold award based on the combined score of both tests:

General Test – these tests focus more on coding and W3C compliance(HTML & CSS), browser compatibility, support from designer, post area tests, nested/threaded comments, sidebar link hierarchy, and other special effects.

SEO Test – these tests give you an idea how well a theme has been optimized for search engines. Tests are done for off-page and on-page optimization. Review scope includes coding and W3C compliance for SEO. SEO testing for home page heading, post and page heading, post and page title tag, and content code position.

WordPress Providers, on the other hand, are graded and are awarded Gold, Silver, or Bronze Awards based on the following:

Functionality and Usability – these tests focus more on the user’s experience regarding features of themes offered by the WordPress provider usually targeting usability, ease of use, and seamless integration to a theme design.

Graphic Design – these tests focus on the overall look and design of themes offered by the WordPress provider. Page design on header image, color, contrast, font and readability, and element placement are all taken into consideration in the review.

Coding – the General Test and SEO Test are also applied to the themes offered by the WordPress Provider. Test results are then added and averaged to arrive at an overall coding score of the theme provider.

Overall Best Score – The overall score of each developer is based on the sum of the providers’ score in each category. Theme providers with the highest overall score will be rated as the TOP WordPress Theme providers.

Search Functionality

ThemeGrade has made searching for WordPress reviews and ratings so much easier. These search filters are simple, easy to use and are categorized as follows:

Efficient Search Filters are grouped according to:

  • Theme Price
  • Theme Structure
  • Theme Category
  • Theme Ranking
  • Tags

ThemeGrade’s current facelift removes all the unnecessary clutter and information overload that distract from the more important information contained in the reviews. Finding the information users need is now more pleasant and user-friendly. With all these improvements implemented both on the design front and the functionality side, we give ThemeGrade an overall score of A+.

Check out the new look of ThemeGrade.

Free Designer Resources for your WordPress Theme: Icon Sets

Sometimes all it takes to add the finishing touch to a drab design is choosing the right design element. There are numerous resources available online but sometimes it gets too overwhelming to search for them. We’ve found a few design resources that you might be able to incorporate into your WordPress theme design:

Free Outline Icons from Vandelay

these minimalist, outline style icons designed by Grandiz for Vandelay Designs will go well with Swiss-style, white spaced WordPress themes.

Free Brands Icons from Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine is giving away Simple Icons by Dan Leech. This set contains 100 white icons that have transparent backgrounds and can be used for popular websites, apps and organisations.

Free WordPress Post Type Icons from Fribly

Add some style to your custom posts with these sticker type icons. Icons are transparent and in png format. They include: status, link, quote, video, audio, image, gallery and aside. May be used for both personal and commercial projects.

Social Media Icons from Harkable

These sharp and sleek social media icons will add polish to any WordPress theme. Add that extra wow to your website using these icons. (PSD and PNG format)

Clean and Colorful Social Media Icons for 2013 from Mascot Agency

These simple yet vibrantly colored icons have that Windows 8 graphic quality about them. More icons are included in the actual download.

Icons are a great way to add a signature look to your website when done the right way. Enjoy these free resources to add that signature look to your site.

The Panda Algorithm and Your Website


Kicked, slapped, penalized, pooped on – who would have thought that something as gentle as a panda could be so violent. In truth, Google Panda, the much dreaded update was actually named after one of Google’s engineers, Navneet Panda, the man who developed the technology behind the algorithm that has put everyone – SEO professionals, webmasters, and website owners alike, on their toes.

One Search Engine to Rule Them All

Many SEO people get flustered and panicky and a lot of them shake in their boots whenever a Google update looms on the horizon. That’s how much Google affects SEO professionals and webmasters. But believe it or not, there was a time when Google was just one of the many search engine players out there. How many of you remember Lycos, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, or MSN Search? Some of the older ones that you may be familiar with have already become inactive but a few others are still very much around like Baidu, Yandex, AOL Search, and the rebranded Yahoo! Search powered by Bing, the product of a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft. Check out this timeline on Wikipedia to see the rest of the search engines.

It was around 2000 when Google’s search engine rose to the top of the heap with its efficient, relevant, and lightning speed search results largely due to its patented algorithm called Pagerank. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Today, Google Search is the most used search engine indexing billions of pages and processing several billion queries each day leading the core search market in January 2013, according to Comscore, with a 67% market share. No wonder SEOs tremble. Of course, you could try other browsers like Bing and join the SEO Wars watercooler discussion between Google and Bing and add your two cents worth.

The Goal of Search

Larry Page, co-founder and Google CEO, once described the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” “…our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to find the information you need and get the things you need to do done.”

The relevance of the search results that a search engine returns dictates how useful it is to its users. Google Web Search, one of the many Google products and not to be mistaken with Google, Inc., a web search engine or a software code designed to search for information on the Internet has proven to be the most relevant search engine out there. By web crawling, indexing, searching, and returning authoritative results as seen in Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs, it has risen to the top of its game. Google crawls through millions of web pages for a particular word or phrase queried to provide the most relevant or popular results first and in what order or ranking the results should be shown in the SERPs. Of course, the most coveted spot is the top result on the first page. It’s the goal of every website owner. That’s also the reason why SEO exists.

The Business of Search

Businesses and even individuals invest heavily in SEO just to improve their rankings hoping to land in the first few pages of Google’s Search Engine Results Page. Black hat, grey hat, white hat – you name it – it’s all been tried in the quest for that number one spot on Google. Why do people want to top Google’s SERP? Studies show that users spend more time on the number one website imputing a level of authority and credibility to it, knowingly or unknowingly. This translates into higher click thru rate which translates into higher traffic, which further translates into higher income potential, especially if you are an eCommerce website. There is money in search thus the need for SEO in business. Enter the SEO professional.

The Race to the Top – Gaming the System

The race to the top of Google’s results page has become critical to many businesses to the extent that many have resorted to tactics and tricks to game Google’s search algorithm. There are many highly reputable SEO firms that follow Google’s best practices for Search Engine Optimization. Unfortunately, there have been a lot and there still are many who abuse the system to try to get ahead of the rest. Whatever color you want to call these techniques used to manipulate the search engine results, redirect users to false links or shortchange users on real content, the results are definitely short term and the risk of being penalized hangs like a guillotine waiting to drop on your head.

Google’s Response

Google Panda rolled out in February 2011 cracking down on: websites with thin, duplicate content, spammy sites, sites with excessive linking, parked pages filled with ads or keywords and no real content, content farms, and sites, generally in violation of Google’s Best Practices guidelines. Consequently, a lot of websites plunged from their top positions and even after two years since the update, several of them have yet to recover. These sites that got hit suffered loss of traffic, loss of income, and a whole lot more. Legitimate sites also suffered a lot of collateral damage much like those who got hit by Hurricane Sandy. The latest Panda update to hit happened in January 2013.
Embracing the Mighty Panda?

Obviously, these changes have shaken what is shakeable in order for the unshakeable to remain. As more and more people are bringing their businesses online, this means more websites will be created and the virtual highway will definitely be clogged with cyber traffic sooner than we think. The mobile web is already bursting at the seams with billions of people accessing the web through their handheld devices.The question is, is your site ready for all that traffic? will they find you or have you been stricken off the radar already? Out of sight and out of mind.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Although it is not the only search engine out there, Google currently dominates the search engine market. As a company, its goals, objectives, and activities will always be in pursuit and in line with their corporate mission. Knowing this, their updates to improve and innovate their products and services will always be part of the landscape and shouldn’t surprise anyone anymore. A Panda, a Penguin, a Poodle, or any update using any name is to be expected. The algorithms and the parameters may change but the push towards fulfilling their corporate vision remains. Who says you have to live up to Google’s standards? You don’t actually have to. There ARE other search engines out there. If, however, you decide to stay, then the best thing that you can probably do for your website is to “think like Google” to know and anticipate what Google wants.

How to Think Like Google

The answer is not a secret and it is actually quite easy to find. Google lists ten things that they believe in as a company. You may or may not agree with all of them and your methodologies and policies may differ from theirs. But, you can probably focus on three major areas you have in common in which, whether you like or not, Google affects and has a “say” in. These areas include:

  • The content on your website
  • The internal linking structure of your site.
  • The “user experience” on your site.

Creating a high-quality site that complies with the best web practices guidelines will benefit your website and more importantly, your users, in the long-term. As Google integrates more evaluations by real live users into their iterations, actual user experience will bear much weight as your website is evaluated. Users who enjoy your content and the overall experience of interacting with your website are your best weapons to help spread the word about you and help you rise to that most coveted top spot of Google’s search engine results page.

Pandas and Penguins – SEOlogy According to Google

You either love them or hate them. Who would have thought that these cute and cuddly creatures would be the object of so much debate and controversy and even dread in the land of SEO. Because of Google’s recent and ongoing algorithm updates, it has given the gentle panda and the prim penguin new personas. These powerful updates have sent SEO heads spinning and scrambling to regain lost rankings, search engine visibility, web traffic and revenue. But what’s the buzz really all about? Let’s go back to the source.

The Goal and Philosophy Behind the Panda / Penguin Updates

According to Google,

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

What animal is that?

The Panda Update – It’s all about your content

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. (Note: Panda Update 24 – Jan 2013)

The Penguin Update – It’s all about your credibility

This update is an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. (Note: Penguin Update 3 – Oct 2012)

What should you avoid?

  • Unnatural links – spammy links
  • Using techniques outside of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
  • Thin, duplicate content
  • Overuse and abuse of keywords (keyword density)
  • Spelling, stylistic, or factual errors
  • Sloppy, overspun, unhelpful, poor quality or nonsensical content
  • Dubious link building and black hat SEO strategies
  • Over optimization of content, internal links, backlinks, and anchor texts

What’s the Penalty? the Reward?

Of course nothing escapes the eyes of big brother, Google, and people who have been gaming the system have been severely hit. On the other hand, legitimate quality sites and small businesses have not been spared either.

It only takes a few poor quality, or duplicate content, pages to hold down traffic on an otherwise solid site. Google recommends either removing those pages, blocking them from being indexed by Google, or re-writing them.

However, Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer (that’s the head of the Webspam team for Google, warns that re-writing duplicate content so that it is original may not be enough to recover from Panda — the re-writes must be of sufficient high quality. High quality content brings “additional value” to the web. Content that is general, non-specific, and not substantially different from what is already out there should not be expected to rank well: “Those other sites are not bringing additional value. While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table.”

Theoretically, these updates reward well-designed and carefully thought of websites that provide an optimal user experience with high rankings. Failing to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and best practices for content creation, site design, and link development will definitely affect a site’s ranking and SEO chances. Conventional SEO tactics will no longer cut it. Efforts should be directed towards using clean Code, publishing quality Content, and establishing site Credibility instead of black hat or grey hat techniques. The marriage of white hat search engine optimization techniques, exceptional web design, coupled with effective marketing practices won’t hurt any company wanting to be on Google’s good side. But more Google updates are still anticipated so the results remains to be seen.

More on this next week.

50 Amazing Pencil Portrait drawings for Inspiration

“I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed“. This quote by the American writer Gertrude Stein has a lot to teach us. Looking at a portrait or a picture of someone or something always imparts us with more details than what even the best writers can’t supply through their writings. A picture gives you the “complete whole” of a thing and you can look for any detail that you like in it. A writer, due to limits of space, will always have to skimp on some things. True it is and always will be – A picture is worth a thousand words.

Colored portraits, pencil sketches, digital photographs, all have their own distinct qualities and different people prefer different photographic methods to suit their needs and requirements. Although in this time and age more and more people go for digital photography but hand made portraits and sketches still have their place. Perhaps the strongest reason is that portraits have been raised to the level of royalty because of the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Rafael. Portraits are considered more “classy” than digital pictures and perhaps this is the reason why people belonging to the royalty still prefer to get themselves portrayed.

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25 Basic Adobe Lightroom Tutorials for Learners

The phrase “photo editing” has become synonymous with “Adobe Photoshop”. Photoshop is the industry leader when it comes to editing images. But one drawback of Photoshop is that a designer needs a good amount of coaching before he can use Photoshop properly. A coaching center near my house promises to teach Photoshop in 2 months to the layman. Not everybody will be willing to invest two months to learn a photo editing software, especially when one does not intend to choose photo designing as a career.

Understanding this problem, Adobe has designed another software named Adobe Lightroom to help even the general public to easily edit images. To quote Adobe’s website – “Lightroom includes all the tools you need for most digital photography tasks in one intuitive solution. Lightroom helps photographers work faster and more efficiently with one image, a set of images, or a large image library.”

When I stated that Lightroom can be used for the general public I don’t mean that one can begin using it merely after installing it. Obviously you need to have some guidance to use the software properly. Therefore, in this blog post, I have collected a list of 25 excellent tutorials on how to use Lightroom properly and get desired results.

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Specialty: Clean Business WordPress Theme

The main purpose of a business theme is to create awareness, generate interest, and convert casual visitors to engaged followers/clients/customers. For a business theme to be effective, it has to have the following elements:

  • Great SEO capabilities.
  • Great design recall.
  • Readable, well organized text and multimedia content.
  • Effective interactive feedback system.

WP Business Bundle just released Specialty, a responsive premium WordPress theme designed to present your business or your company in a clear and concise manner. Overall, the theme is clean, modern and generous with whitespace. It has a great, sizeable slider that can really grab attention of casual visitors. Visitors are given control over slider transitions which gives each slide the appropriate airtime based on visitor preference.

Content is definitely readable on this theme. Font size and spacing between text boxes are great, giving visitors an uncluttered, relaxed reading experience. Images are displayed in a clean, well organized portfolio grid style which can also be sorted according to category. There’s also the option to use a jQuery masonry layout for those who want that Pinterest look. Thumbnails are slightly bigger that typical portfolio pages giving visitors a better overview of the work. Pages containing detailed narratives include large images of the work. This theme can also handle video and it includes a large section where you can showcase a special video or image right on the homepage.

Specialty does have a responsive design giving visitors the chance to appreciate the site’s content on smartphones and tablets. Specialty includes a basic contact form, custom post types, an easy to use custom panel, and just the right amount of widgets and features to get your site up and running without much fuss.

More Features:

  • Import/Export Functionality for Theme Options
  • Seven Pre-Defined Color Schemes
  • Breadcrumb Navigation
  • Adjustable Footer Widget Area (1-4 Columns)
  • Custom Post Types: Slider | Portfolio |Testimonial
  • Engaging Portfolio Layout with jQuery Masonry
  • HTML5 Markup | CSS3 Effects

Specialty Premium WordPress Theme is part of a bundle of themes and business-tailored plugins at WP Business Bundle available starting from $79. This theme includes documentation, future updates. For an additional $9 per month, you also get the PSD files, XML files, and access to the theme’s support forum.

Join WP Business Bundle Now

30 Inspirational Non-Profit WordPress Themes 2013

Amongst all the civilized life of shopping malls and movie lexes we must not forget that there are parts in this world whose inhabitants don’t get even the basic necessities of life like food and water. Innocents get killed everyday in calamities like bomb blasts, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. Children are out of schools as their parents cannot pay for their education. People die even from minor curable diseases merely because they didn’t have the money to see a doctor. The situation is far more serious than what I can describe in a few sentences. The statement that I wish to make is that we should care about others and should donate generously to non-profit organizations that are trying to help those in need.

Perhaps the following collection of 30 WordPress themes, designed especially for the non-profits may make a small contribution in making the world a better place.

Of course different niches have different site design requirements. A social networking site should look and behave in a completely different way than what a gaming site should look like. Special care and attention was devoted to the following templates so that they craft out into a good and clean look, which is what is required for non-profit organizations.

Some of the templates below are without charge but due to certain restrictions we can’t just giveaway everything absolutely free, although we would have loved to. Hence we have charged a nominal amount in the remaining templates. Scroll down and take a look.

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