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Using iThemes to Create Client Websites

May 6, 2008

Just saw this post on Using WordPress to Build Websites and Not Just Blogs by Tom Johnson, one of our customers, who purchased our Essence Theme Series.

I’m excited to see our customers finding our themes solutions to their problems — creating great looking websites with WordPress.

We have designed our themes to act and feel more like websites than blogs. In fact, right now, we don’t currently have a blog-only theme. (Although, we’ve released 9 free WordPress blog themes.)

And as Tom says, WordPress is a great, simple content management system.

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Join iThemes on Facebook

April 27, 2008

I’ve had a fan page on Facebook for quite some time … but just realized that I haven’t done a good job telling people about it.

Join us on Facebook …. and also here’s my personal profile. If you’re adding me as a friend, please note that you know me from iThemes, ESPECIALLY if you’re a customer.

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iThemes’ New Free WordPress Themes 8-Pack

April 21, 2008

iThemes and 1800blogger have partnered to release 8 brand-new free WordPress themes to the WP community. These themes are widget-ready, search engine optimized and ready for download now!

[DOWNLOAD ALL 8 FREE WORDPRESS THEMES HERE]

The 8 themes included are:

[DOWNLOAD ALL 8 FREE WORDPRESS THEMES HERE]

This is in addition to the free Web 2.0 WordPress themes we’ve released previously.

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The 5 Best Upgrades to WordPress 2.5

April 15, 2008

This is a guest post by Ryan Imel of Theme Playground.

WordPress 2.5 brings with it a very impressive and inspiring new visual administrative interface. While the overall upgrade is very noticeable, it may be the case that some have overlooked a few of the changes that lend for a better overall blogging experience. Hopefully this article will highlight some of these, bring them to your attention, and show how they might best be used in your blogging work flow.

1. Scrolling on the new post/page screen is no longer necessary.

Previously, in order to finalize and publish your work, it was necessary to scroll down to the bottom of the screen. This is because both the Publish and Cancel buttons were located at the bottom of the edit box, as most contribution forms like this are structured (think a comment section on a blog).

However, this upgrade takes away the need to scroll and gives you all you need right on the first screen you see. Now, scrolling is still necessary for adding any additional descriptions to the post (categories, tags, etc.) but the core functionality of writing and publishing can all take place with little to no scrolling at all.

2. Managing your photos on your blog just became a viable option.

WordPress has, the past, hardly been impressive when it came to file managing. It worked, but not in a way that was very exciting. Now, with the upgrade, managing photos, specifically, is a lot more fun. In fact, the new options and interface has been so inspiring that I’m actually moving away from the paid system Flickr to manage my photos in the open source environment that is my blog.

First of all, the editor now supports multiple file uploads. This is an absolute necessity when it comes to photo managing. Uploading one at a time is just not an option. Secondly, the ability to group photos into galleries and post them as complete sets is lots of fun. Honestly, more fun that posting images to Flickr.

In the end, we’re all going to be moving toward what we truly own and out of the silos. Flickr, for all of its great social networking capabilities, is still a silo network and bound to falter. The sooner we all prepare ourselves for managing our social networks in the most forward compatible way we can, the better.

All of this to say: start storing your photos using WordPress 2.5. It’s fun.

3. The XFN pushed forward in a real way in blogroll links.

The WordPress blogroll has for some time now given the ability to add in a rel to the outgoing link. Two point five goes one step further, giving every solid XFN rel option available, from friendship to geographical to romantic.

The XFN (or XHTML Friends Network) is, despite the terribly corny acronym, a very interesting and exciting way to communicate valuable information via the rel tag of outgoing links. For instance, adding rel=”met” to a link communicates that the page you are pointing at is representative of a person you have met. This information is then machine readable and can be used in all sorts of interesting ways. After all, once it is machine readable it means we can manipulate and play with it.

Anyone interested in learning more can follow this link to read about the XFN straight form the horse’s mouth.

4. Dashboard navigation is cleaner and leaner.

One of the easiest way to speed up the navigation of a page is to limit options. The old WordPress Dashboard sported a good number of main navigation links, each with at least a few sub navigation options underneath. With the upgrade the number of main navigation links shrinks to four: Write, Manage, Design, and Comments.

Anyone who is drawn to simplicity will love this. Screens like Settings and Plugins are still available from any screen of the Dashboard, but they are relegated to smaller links on the right side of the screen, a move that signifies the relative frequency of their being clicked versus the four main items.

Fewer options means fewer things you have to think about when you are dashing in to jot out a post. And that’s a good thing.

5. The improved visual editor makes writing more fun.

One of my biggest frustrations with WordPress used to be the visual editor, on by default when WordPress is installed. Before 2.5 I had every WordPress site I manage set so as I would use the HTML editor when writing posts, simply to avoid any sort of problems with the automatic formatting of posts.

With WordPress 2.5 comes an upgraded TinyMCE for the visual editor, and the changes are very noticeable. I have yet to have any additional code added in anywhere (like extra line breaks or empty paragraphs) and that makes for a very clean blogging experience. Especially when you are a code purist, like I am.

Closing Comments

WordPress isn’t perfect, but since it doesn’t claim to be this is just fine. There are a few things I’ve discovered while observing 2.5 where I believe WordPress could be improved upon. But that’s for my next post, where I cover the top five most important upgrades for WordPress as we look to the future.

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An Ecommerce Template for Your Online Store

April 11, 2008

In case you haven’t subscribed to the New Themes Feed or our email newsletter, we just released Ecommerce Theme, a web theme designed to help you create and manage an online store to sell your products.

You can get more details in the announcement post, but we’ve also created a new division at iThemes called EcommerceThemes.com, where we will be launching more ecommerce-specific themes in the future. Stay tuned!

ecommerce theme

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iThemes at Dallas WordCamp 2008

March 24, 2008

WordCamp DallasThere will be a number of people associated with iThemes at the Dallas WordCamp this weekend. If you’re going, we’d love to know so we can meet you in person.

As far as I know it’s not too late to register (just $20 a person, so it’s a bargain). My wife and I will be there celebrating our 5-year wedding anniversary. It’s pretty special when your wife says it’s OK to go to a conference on a big date like that (Thanks, honey!).

Matt M. will be there to talk about WordPress 2.5 and beyond, something we’re excited to see released based on some screenshots we’ve seen showing what the new Dashboard will be like. It’ll be a great time! See you there.

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Our First Premium Theme Giveaway Contest

March 17, 2008

We’re sponsoring a contest by Ian Stewart of Theme Shaper to design the next default WordPress theme.

Ian’s idea is a great one …. try to encourage people to design the next WordPress theme that is installed with WordPress (there are two by default).

Although, as Ian says, the themes are great (particularly Kubrick), I hope this encourages some great participation in and enthusiasm for the WordPress community.

If you need some help with the development, check out our tutorial for WordPress developers!
See contest details here.

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Who is iThemes?

March 12, 2008

cory millerIt occurred to me that aside from our About page, we don’t have much information about who we are - iThemes — so I’d thought I’d take a moment and introduce you to the PEOPLE behind iThemes — the actual human beings that keep it all going … who are producing the premium WordPress themes for freelancers, small businesses and bloggers you see here!

I’ll introduce myself first … I’m Cory Miller.

I’m the main monkey pushing all the buttons and pulling all the levels at iThemes. I reside in Oklahoma City (yes, the international headquarters for iThemes), am married to my beautiful bride Jennifer, and have been using WordPress since November 2006 … and have been developing WordPress themes since March 2007.

I love WP because it’s so incredibly easy to use … it’s amazing for helping people find you on the search engines … and it just continues to get better.

I’ll be at the Dallas WordCamp March 29-30 …. would love to meet up with you if you’ll be there!

THE CODERS/DEVELOPERS

Right now, there are two main developers of the WordPress themes we have rolled out at iThemes: Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice.

I count Brian (Chicago) and Nathan (one of the Carolinas) as two of my very best friends online. They are outstanding WP developers and continue to amaze me as they produce more and more features that show the WordPress CMS muscle.

Brian is now more of a consultant to iThemes, but helped us launch our first series — Essence — for our Grand Opening in January 2008.

Nathan, who is getting married this summer, is now one of the primary iThemes developers here, helping us roll out Deep Order, Grunge, Business Card and there’s more on the way!

THE DESIGNERS

We have two primary designers at iThemes: Kyle Stauffer (Tulsa, Okla.) and Brian White (Lawrence, Kan.).

Both these guys are Photoshop gurus! I continue to be amazed when I get a new mockup for an upcoming theme series.

I’ve known Kyle (Tulsa, Okla.) for a couple of years, having droolled on his shoulder as we produced an interactive CD project together. And I’m getting to know Brian more and more each phone call and my respect continues to grow for his creative genius! (Thanks Von for the referral! Oh, by the way, Von designed the iThemes logo.)

THE FORUM MODERATOR

Jesse Petersen serves as our current user-to-user support forum moderator, helping out with theme questions. I’m so thankful to have Jesse swarming the boards to help out those with questions and encourage user to help users with their questions.

THE CUSTOM SERVICES PROVIDER

Because iThemes is really a one-man show (full-time, that is), we’ve established a great relationship with Terrell Sanders of Main Street Enterprises (Oklahoma City, with me). Terrell and Main Street provide all the Add-On Services we offer. The influx of custom requests and modifications was too much to handle. With Main Street, we’re able to help more people. They’ve been doing this for a number of years and I’m pumped to be able to offer our customers quality and professional WP custom services.

WHAT ELSE?

You might have questions about iThemes and the people who run it. If so, send us an email and we’d be glad to answer it!

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Custom WordPress Theme Services

March 7, 2008

In the WordPress development world, there’s really a wide void (read: opportunity) of quality and dependable WP designers.

Because we get inundated with custom design requests outside of our premium theme business, we have established a relationship with a preferred service vendor — Main Street Enterprises — who will now be handling all those custom requests.

Developing premium WP themes is a full-time business that we want to devote our primary focus on … and Main Street has the capacity to fill this important service void for us and more importantly our clients and customers.

I’ve known Terrell Sanders for over two years now. He and his group are great at what they do …. so if you haven’t checked out our Add-On Services page, go see some new rates and packages there.

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Three Keys to Effective Internet Marketing with Blogs

March 6, 2008

This is a guest post by Ryan Imel of Theme Playground.

Key #1: Be Original

Blogs are no long a brand new trend. Anymore they are expected. So, if you’re late to the boat, you better swim hard to catch up.

Since blogs aren’t new, the one thing readers don’t have much tolerance for anymore is repetition and un-originality. That time is past. Now you have to be bold, you have to be new, and most importantly you have to provide something useful to the reader. If you can do those things, then you can start to feed a brand to them and they won’t even begin to complain.

Read more

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