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.

WordPress Themes 2013: The Must-Have List

WordPress Themes are here to stay. Throughout the years, we’ve seen many different design styles and trends – some good, some not so good. With WordPress powering a colossal 1/5 of the entire Internet, WordPress Themes have become big business with many individual theme shops and developers pulling in millions every year.

Any way you slice it, WordPress is here to stay, and for that reason so are the free and premium themes we’ve all come to know and love. If you have spent any amount of time searching for the top WordPress Themes, you’ll notice that several names continue to appear at or close to the top of the list. Elegant Themes, Themeforest, and StudioPress to name some of the more popular ones.

In this article, we’d like to introduce you to some very creative and compelling WordPress Themes of 2013. Each and every one of these themes was released in 2013 so you can rest assured these are among the latest and greatest that WordPress has to offer.

Stay in the know with our list of the top overall WordPress Themes as well. Updated at least once per month, this article covers the best WordPress Themes in all the different categories including responsive, portfolio, magazine, business, and E-commerce just to name a few.

For the time being, here are a few of our absolute FAVORITE WordPress Themes for 2013.

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Turbo Charge your Website with WordPress Widgets

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems around. Not only is it powerful and feature laden, it is also has some of the most beautifully designed themes available out there. Even if you do compare other platforms, you can tell a WordPress site apart. The great part about building your site using WordPress is that you can make a great product even better. One way to do that is by adding widgets to your theme.

Widgets are a quick and easy solution to add a little more “oomph” to your website. These small pieces of content or tools can be placed in any of the widgetized areas of your WordPress theme. Widget areas are the predefined blocks or sections of your theme where you place widgets. These widgets can be added, removed, arranged, reordered any way you want in areas such as your sidebar, header, footer, the homepage, or any other defined area in the WordPress theme’s design.

Widgets can either be static or dynamic. Some of the default WordPress widgets include “meta” data, categories, popular posts, archives, and so many others. You can also add 3rd party widgets like subscriptions forms, advertisements, dynamic content such as RSS feeds and social networking feeds, custom code, Javascript, etc. to boost the functionalities and features of your theme. Some of these widgets may also come built-in with the theme you choose to install. Below is a sample of how the Widgets section appears in the admin panel of your WordPress theme.

The left side of the screen is where you have a listing of your available widgets. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping any widget you like into the sections on the right. These widgets will appear live on your site in as soon as you drop them in place. You can access your widgets from the Appearance ? Widgets screen in your Dashboard. From here you can: add, configure, remove, delete, enable accessibility mode, or troubleshoot your widgets if necessary.

Adding widgets require no coding skills at all. Even a WordPress beginner can do it. You don’t need to be an expert to install a widget. Sometimes, you may need to copy and paste scripts or codes from 3rd parties if you find a widget you really like. Otherwise it’s a very simple and easy way to improve user experience and the overall aesthetics of your WordPress theme.

Top 5 Widgets to Supercharge your WordPress Theme

Widgets are always plugins but not all plugins have widgets. Do you agree? Whether you agree or not, here are some great widgets you can use to supercharge your WordPress theme.

Freelancer Widgets Bundle

Freelancers will rejoice with this bundle. It’s got 7 great widgets: advertisement, biography, buy me a beer/coffee, contact widget, contact form widget, opening hours widget, and social links widget all in one big bundle. These widgets are highly customizable & can be modified easily. Freelancers like musicians, artists, designers, developers, creative professionals,etc. will find this widget a useful addition to their website.

Posts By Author Widget Pro for WordPress

If you’d like to provide your readers with an easy way to compile posts by a favorite author on your website, this powerful widget is what you need. Posts by author allows you to: compile, sort, show post excerpts, control number of posts to display, display thumbnails, in 15 configurable ways. This widget is especially useful for multi-author websites to help readers sort posts by their favorite authors.

Smart Navigation Widgets

User experience is key to getting repeat visits and one way to ensure that is to keep your navigation user friendly. Smart Navigation Widgets is a powerful widget ideal for websites with large archives. This Ajax-powered widgets allows the user to navigate deeper only when he needs to. Scouring and clicking thru long lists can get boring and make users bored waiting for content to load. This widget allows you to control the number of links displayed and speed up websites in the process.

M7 Easy Accordion Menus Widget for WordPress

This cool widget makes adding an accordion menu to your sidebar as easy as dragging and dropping. It’s a fresh way to combine menus on your sidebar. You can define: general settings, design and layout settings, thumb settings, excerpt settings, post settings, and the read more text settings to display the widgets you want to feature. Super cool and elegant space saving feature. It’s responsive too!

Announcements!

How would you like to manage your announcements and schedule them way, way, ahead of time? If you are handling an events website, an eCommerce site, or a business site that holds regular events, keep your users informed by scheduling your announcements automatically with this handy widget. Whether it’s a big sale, an important event, a greeting or any type of announcement you need, simply set it and forget it. This widget gives you 4 options for scheduling your announcements: weekly, annual, monthly, or using custom start and end dates.

Explore Your WordPress Settings for WP Beginners

Getting to know your WordPress Settings is like learning to drive a car. You don’t necessarily have to know how everything works under the hood but you do have to get to know all the knobs, dials, buttons, and controls that will make it start up and run before you can get anywhere. Exploring the different WordPress Settings and functions on the left hand side of your admin panel will help you direct and control the way you want to run your WordPress website and how far you can take it.

If you are a WordPress beginner eager to post and publish content you need to get to know the Settings Administration menu in the Admin Panel.

Here are the default options you will find when you click on the Settings menu.

General – This is the default screen and controls the most basic configuration settings for your site such as:

  • Site Title – the name of your site or blog
  • Tagline – a catch phrase or short description of your site
  • WordPress Address – the full url of the directory containing your WordPress core application
  • Site Address – the address you want people to use when searching for your website
  • Email address – the email address where you want communication sent
  • Membership (if you want to open registration to other users)
  • New User Default Role – the default status or position of new users
  • Timezone – choose the timezone of your location
  • Date format
  • Time Format
  • Week Starts on – choose your preferred day to start your week

Writing – control the way you write and publish your posts

  • how you add new posts
  • adjust the post box size
  • set your post format and how you want graphics like emoticons are displayed
  • set your default post category
  • set how you want “Press this”
  • set remote posting permissions – via email or mobile

Reading – this module allows you to:

  • set how the front page displays your posts
  • set a static page for the front page and the posts page
  • set how many blog pages to display
  • set how many posts to display on syndication feeds
  • show full text or excerpts of blog posts
  • set search engine visibility
  • preset email acknowledgments and replies to recent followers and commenters

Discussion – this module allows you to define

  • default article notification settings like pingbacks and trackbacks
  • moderate and manage comments, permissions, approval, blacklists
  • email notifications for comments
  • manage user avatars

Media – this module allows you to set by default how images, documents and other media files included in a post will be processed and organized. You can also preset the image dimensions (thumbnail, medium, large) in this section although you can still do further edit while adding a new post.

Privacy – this option has been moved to the Reading module in WordPress 3.5 under Search Engine Visibility.

Permalinks – are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn’t change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time). There are several third party plugins you can also install to customize the structure of your permalink to optimize your SEO visibility.

This list gets longer once you install new plugins or other third party functions included in other WordPress themes you choose to install. Once you have decided on how you want your site to function you can define and select all your parameters, save your Settings and enjoy publishing your content the way you want and as much as you want.

WordPress Admin Panel

Navigating your way around in the backend area of your WordPress website need not be complicated even if you are a beginner. The WordPress Admin Panel area found in the backend is a powerful and flexible area where you can manage your website content and other WordPress functions. It has continually evolved since 2003 and with the help of and contributions from the WordPress community has improved and become more and more beautiful and user friendly.

The Administration Panel provides access to the control features of your WordPress installation. Each Administration Panel is presented in sections:

The Header

The top portion of all Panels, the header, is featured in dark shading. The header shows the name of your blog as a link to your blog’s main page, comments awaiting moderation, +New to add new posts, pages, media, or users, a Search Engines Blocked message if you Privacy settings block search engines, a favorites menu, and links to your profile (shown as your user name), and Log Out. Just below the top shaded area are two hanging tabs, Screen Options and contextual Help, that can be clicked to expand them.

The Main Navigation

On the left side of the screen is the main navigation menu detailing each of the administrative functions you can perform. Two expand/collapse arrows just below the Dashboard and Comments allow the navigation menu to collapse to a set of icons, or expand (fly-out) to show an icon and description for each major administrative function. Within each major function, such as Posts, a pull-down arrow is presented upon hovering mouse hovers over the title area. A click of that arrow expands the menu to display each of the sub-menu choices. Clicking that arrow again collapses the sub-menu.

The Work Area

The large area in the middle of the screen is the work area. It is here where specific information relating to a particular navigation choice, such as adding a new post, is presented and collected.

The Footer

Finally, in the footer, at the bottom of each Administration Panel in dark shading, are links to WordPress, Documentation, and Feedback. In addition, the version of WordPress you have installed is shown. Just below the menu tab section, if your version is NOT the latest version, you will see the message An updated version of WordPress is available. Please update now. Click on the provided link to navigate to the Updates SubPanel.

Below is a list of the submenu items you will find in your default WordPress Admin Panel main navigation menu. Some of them may or may not be included depending on the WordPress version you have installed.

Dashboard

The Dashboard tells you about recent activity both at your site and in the WordPress community at large and provide access to updating WordPress, plugins, and themes.

WordPress Updates

This sub panel gives you an easy method to update WordPress, plugins, and themes. Note not all hosts will allow the automatic update process to work successfully and will require you to manually upgrade by following the Upgrading WordPress instructions.

Posts

This sub panel is where you can publish writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, and, yes, even rantings, of a blog owner and contributors. Here you can write new Posts, create new Categories, new Tags, and new Custom Fields. In addition, any Media (pictures, video, recordings, files) can be uploaded and inserted into the Posts.

Media

This sub panel allows you to upload new media to later use with posts and pages. A Flash Uploader is provided and the ability to use a Browser Uploader is supplied if the Flash Uploader does not work.

Pages

A good example of a Page is the information contained in About or Contact Pages. A Page should not be confused with the time-oriented objects called Posts, nor should a WordPress Page be confused with the word page referring to any web page or HTML document on the Web. In this Sub Panel you can select the Page to edit or delete. Multiple Pages can be selected for deletion and for editing. As with Posts, a powerful bulk edit tool allows certain fields to be edited for a whole group of Pages. A handy in-line edit tool, called Quick Edit, allows you to update many fields for an individual Page. Various search and filtering options allow you to find the Pages you want to edit or delete.

Comments/Reader Feedbacks

Comments are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to Posts. In this sub panel you can edit and delete as well as mark comments as spam. Comments that are awaiting moderation can be marked as approved or previously approved comments can be unapproved. Multiple comments can be selected and approved, marked as spam, unapproved, or deleted. A section at the top of the Comments SubPanel displays the number of comments awaiting moderation and the number of approved comments. A search box allows you to find specific comments.

Appearance

From the Presentation Administration Panel you can control how the content of your blog is displayed. WordPress allows you to easily style your site by either installing and activating new Themes or changing existing Themes. This sub panel includes customization controls for Themes, Widgets, Menus, Background, Header, and Theme Editor.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to add new features to your WordPress blog that don’t come standard with the default installation. This sub panel allows you to view the plugins you’ve downloaded, add new plugins, modify the plugins and choose which plugins you want activated on your site.

Users

Every WordPress site probably has at least two users: the admin, the account initially set up by WordPress, and the user account you, as the author/owner of the blog. This sub panel allows you to set up all of the user accounts you need, change user information, assign roles, or delete users.

Tools

WordPress Tools provide you the ability to speed up WordPress for your local machine, import content from other sources, export your content, or to upgrade your WordPress software to a new release. This includes the Import, Export, and Press This functions.

Settings

The Settings Administration Panel contains all of the settings that define your website as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site. This sub panel includes control settings for: General (basic configuration settings), Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Privacy, and Permalinks
(source: WordPress codex)

The backend or Admin Panel may vary from theme to theme. The look and appearance may vary depending on the customizations and tweaks done by authors and developers. Nevertheless, no matter how Admin Panel is tweaked, these basic functions are standard and generally remain the same no matter what WordPress theme you install.

The WordPress Dashboard for WP Beginners

According to the WordPress,

The Dashboard is a tool to quickly access the most used areas of your blog’s Administration and to provide glimpses into other areas of the WordPress community. The Dashboard Screen presents information in blocks called modules. WordPress delivers eight modules: Right Now, Recent Comments, Incoming Links, Plugins,QuickPress, Recent Drafts, WordPress Blog, and Other WordPress News.

The first screen you see when you log into the administration area of your blog is your Dashboard. The main idea of the dashboard is to give you a place where you can get an at-a-glance overview of what’s happening with your blog. You can catch up on news, view your draft posts, see who’s linking to you or how popular your content’s been, quickly put out a no-frills post, or check out and moderate your latest comments.

The Dashboard acts like a cockpit with all the controls and switches you need to help your website function the way you want it to. This might seem basic to those who have been using WordPress for quite some time now but there are still quite a few out there who are still struggling to figure out how to find their way through the backend, scared to death lest they “break” their website beyond repair.

Getting to know your WordPress Dashboard

If you are a WordPress beginner, the Admin Section or backend can be quite intimidating at first, but once you become familiar with the different sections, everything will make sense. What do you see after you successfully login to your WordPress website? Here’s what you can expect.

The Dashboard contains the following default modules. These modules can be dragged, dropped, repositioned, or toggled on and off according to your preferences.

Right Now

This module, at its basic, gives you a concise overview of your what’s going on with your site. It contains information and stats about your content (posts, pages, categories, tags), discussions (approved, pending, or spam comments), the name of your WordPress theme and the number of active widgets you are using, users online, and the WordPress version installed. More information can be included in this module depending on any additional plugins you install. You can also customize your Privacy Settings if you wish to keep your site private.

QuickPress

This module is the best and quickest way you can create a simple post. You can add a title, content, media files, custom forms, tags, and save your post as a draft or publish immediately. It’s a great tool for capturing and publishing ideas without going through the “Add New Post” module.

Recent Comments

If you allow comments on your website, this module helps you moderate the discussions on your posts. You can approve (unapprove), edit, reply, mark as spam, or delete comments right on the dashboard.

Recent Drafts

This module displays saved drafts of posts and pages that you are working on which still needs to be edited or published.

Incoming Links

This module reveals the urls of other websites that has linked to your WordPress website. You may or may not find this module useful as it does not always include all the websites that link to you. You can also configure incoming links you allow by editing the RSS feed information ( url, number of items to display, item date).

What’s Hot

This module displays recent posts from the official WordPress Blog, Other WordPress News, Popular or Latest Posts from around WordPress. This keeps you updated on the latest WordPress related news such as version announcements, security notices, and general WordPress community posts and updates.

Plugins

This module lists the Most Popular, Newest, and Recently Updated plugins available. If you are adventurous and you want to experiment with how different plugins work on your site, this is the perfect resource to find plugins to play with.

Site Stats

This module is probably the one you need to pay most attention to. It shows you a graph of your website’s activities – views, visitors, traffic – per day, week, or month. It’s a great tool to find out how many visits you get, what your top posts are, top searches on your website, and overall statistics to help you improve, maintain, and optimize your site even further.

Knowing the functions of each of these modules will help you learn how to use them to manage your website. Take some time to go through each one of these modules and familiarize yourself with each of them. You’ll soon be mastering all of them and it’ll be instinctive later on.

WordPress Theme Support – The Awful or Awesome Truth

So you’ve finally uploaded your shiny new premium WordPress theme but it looks nothing like the theme you loved so much in the demo and now you’re wondering if you just wasted your money on a lemon. You fiddle and you tweak but the errors just keep piling up. Not all premium WordPress themes include free support so it can be a bit perplexing especially if you are setting up a website for a client. Frustrating, is a mild word. Where do you go and what do you do?

Here are some of things to look for, support-wise, before, during, and after purchasing a premium WordPress theme. Some theme providers have all of them while some don’t so use your own discretion and judgment before you make your final decision and click that “Confirm purchase” button.

Documentation (Theme or Plugin guides – online or offline)

Check if the theme includes extensive and detailed documentation and a troubleshooting guide if available. Find out whether installation and setup guides are available online and offline as access to these guides serve as your reference documents as you setup your WordPress theme.

XML file or demo content

Most of the time we get attracted to a particular theme because of the demo. The demo gives us an idea on what is possible for our own individual projects. Unfortunately, recreating the same demo can be challenging if the elements used in the demo are not included. Some authors do not include the demo file but there is a growing trend among a lot of authors where they include the XML file or demo content as a bonus.

Photoshop files (layered)

Trying to recreate the WordPress theme in the demo can be much easier if the author includes all the allowable files used. Photoshop files make it easier for you to duplicate or customize the theme’s design elements without having to start from scratch.

Detailed tutorials (video or text)

Text based tutorials are great but video tutorials are best because the author can demonstrate and guide you on exactly what to do when setting up or modifying your WordPress theme. Video tutorials save you a lot of time, and, mistakes are reduced because of misinterpretation. Simply pause and play when you need to go back to a certain instruction.

Screenshots

In the absence of video tutorials, screenshots are also great because they serve as visual guides to help you install and get your WordPress theme up and running. Visuals are always effective as it gives you a clear picture of what you are supposed to do. You can always go back and refer to these screenshots if you get lost along the way.

Basic support services for installation, setup, guidance, bug fixing and general support for basic WordPress issues and concerns

For non-WordPress savvy users, authors and developers provide basic WordPress theme setup and installation. The extent of this service varies from author to author although generally this service includes simple adjustments and tweaks that do not fall under their customization services.

Support or Community Forum

WordPress authors and developers who have been around long enough in the business are most likely to have a dedicated support forum or community support group to help each other out. Access is generally limited to members or customers who have purchased themes sold by these authors. Make sure to register in these forums and be active in the community to learn hacks, tips and tricks that don’t normally come with the documentation and tutorials.

Help desk, live chat, or available hours for technical support

Some WordPress authors or theme providers might even have the legroom to provide a dedicated support system which includes a help desk or ticket based support system, live chat, and dedicated technical support crew. Be sure to note the time or hours support is available as some of these teams live in different time zones.

Update and Upgrade Support

WordPress updates its software from time to time and problems arise when the WordPress theme you purchased is no longer compatible with these updates. Same thing goes with plugins and other elements like short codes, etc. Make sure that your WordPress theme author or developer has provision for updates and upgrades that will affect the theme and if there are any additional charges related to it.

Author/Developer Contact info

Find out and store the author or developer’s contact information online and offline. Request for an email address, a business phone number, or any other means to get in touch with the author if he does not have a dedicated support forum. Leaving comments on the WordPress theme’s product preview page does not guarantee your concerns will be attended to in real time.

Finding the perfect WordPress theme that matches your dream website is more than just appearances. Make sure you know what you are getting when you pay for that pretty theme you’ve been eyeing. It pays to know what’s in the fine print…or what’s not in it.

Voyage: Travel WordPress Theme 2013

We all love an adventure. Who doesn’t dream of traveling or going on that dream vacation? According to the Global Online Travel Report for 2012, some of the key findings and statistics featured in their report listed below are:

  • The trend of booking trips online is expected to grow further in 2012, especially in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil.
  • In 2012, the “Online Travel Segment” is forecast to represent almost a third of the total global travel market value.
  • Online travel sales in the US are forecasted to increase by more than +10% in 2012 compared to 2011.
  • The UK is projected to remain the largest share of Europe’s online travel market in 2013, followed by Germany and France.
  • Gross bookings on the Asia Pacific online leisure/ unmanaged business travel market are expected to increase by more than +30% in 2012 compared to 2010.

Meanwhile, according to US Travel.org,

“Activities with the greatest level of interest among U.S. adults are, in order, visiting friends and relatives, sightseeing, beaches/waterfronts, visiting zoos/aquariums/science museums, national parks, visiting a state park, going on a cruise, theme parks, visiting a city and visiting a mountain area. Interest in the engaging in the activities varies by generation, household income, gender and most other demographic characteristics of leisure travelers.”

Based on these statistics and findings, barring local and international security issues and safety, people WILL travel. Perhaps it is also safe to say that the travel industry, at present, is definitely a viable industry. It may be also safe to say that the internet has contributed a great part to making travel reachable and accessible to a lot of people all around the globe. Access to online airline e-ticketing, booking and reservations, destination packages, hotel reviews and ratings have made people bolder in making travel decisions. Even if only a fraction of the 7 billion world population have the means to travel, travel agencies have not fully saturated this market. So, if you are considering putting up your own online travel agency, this is great news. The next step is to setup your own website and what better way to do it than through WordPress and with a theme that’s specifically tailored for travel agencies.

Voyage Travel WordPress Theme is a gorgeous feature packed premium WordPress theme built for this specific niche. The responsive theme’s highlights include an extremely powerful search and filter option that clients can use to find the travel package of their choice. The theme also includes lots of pages for showcasing a variety of holidays, special prices and latest promos, packages according to destinations, and a whole lot more. It also comes bundled with a Blog and Contact Page and tons of shortcodes you can use to customize or tweak the theme according to your needs. A lot of these powerful functionalities are based on one of Themefuse’s best and most complex theme, Homequest. Another great thing about Voyage is that you can actually play with it for 14 days, using Themefuse’s test labs feature, before you decide to purchase.

Features:

  • Responsive
  • One click auto install
  • Best for a travel agency website
  • Powerful search and filter options
  • Dynamic Sidebar Widget Creation
  • jQuery Image / Video Light box

Voyage Premium WordPress Theme includes video tutorials, theme documentation, and access to an AfterCare Forum for theme issues, questions, and support.

Voyage: $49 | Demo & Download