Category: Wordpress

About Dessign Themes

Dessign Themes is a premium WordPress theme vendor established in 2010. In 7 years, they have released over 160 different themes, used by an approximate 97.000 users.

Dessign Themes aims to provide end users with modern and unique WordPress themes with a focus on creative professionals. Featured in many popular blogs, all themes are released under the terms of the GPLv2 license.

Let’s have a closer look to some of the most exciting themes from Dessign Themes. For more themes, check out their collection.

Vector

Vector Responsive WordPress is a theme suitable for any design agency and business site, with clean design, minimal layout, and scroll motion slider.
More info

Studio

Studio is a clean, minimal and responsive WordPress theme for creative designers, agencies and freelancers.
More info

Corporate

Corporate is a great theme for companies and businesses with a clean design, minimal layout, and scroll motion slider.
More info

How to enter the giveaway

Feeling lucky? In order to get a Dessign Themes lifetime subscription, just leave a comment below to let me know you’re in. In one week, 3 winners will be randomly chosen and will receive their prize directly from Dessign Themes.
Good luck!

About Dessign Themes

Dessign Themes is a premium WordPress theme vendor established in 2010. In 7 years, they have released over 160 different themes, used by an approximate 97.000 users.

Dessign Themes aims to provide end users with modern and unique WordPress themes with a focus on creative professionals. Featured in many popular blogs, all themes are released under the terms of the GPLv2 license.

Let’s have a closer look to some of the most exciting themes from Dessign Themes. For more themes, check out their collection.

Vector

Vector Responsive WordPress is a theme suitable for any design agency and business site, with clean design, minimal layout, and scroll motion slider.
More info

Studio

Studio is a clean, minimal and responsive WordPress theme for creative designers, agencies and freelancers.
More info

Corporate

Corporate is a great theme for companies and businesses with a clean design, minimal layout, and scroll motion slider.
More info

How to enter the giveaway

Feeling lucky? In order to get a Dessign Themes lifetime subscription, just leave a comment below to let me know you’re in. In one week, 3 winners will be randomly chosen and will receive their prize directly from Dessign Themes.
Good luck!

Wisdom plugin – What is it about?

Wisdom is a new WordPress plugin aimed at plugin authors and developers. It allows you to track and analyse who is using your plugin, what options they enable, and why they deactivate. It works by adding a small code snippet to your plugin then installing the main Wisdom plugin on your site. As soon as someone activates your plugin (and opts in to tracking) you’ll start receiving data.

The data you receive includes server and WordPress environments, information on theme and other plugins, and in-depth information about your plugin, including data about which plugin settings are being used and which are not. You also have the option to request site admins’ email addresses – allowing you to build relationships with your users and market your products more effectively.

Wisdom is fully compliant with the WordPress plugin directory guidelines on phoning home and requires user permission to start gathering data. If your plugin is not hosted on the directory, e.g. on Code Canyon or your own site, you can enable Wisdom by default.

Wisdom is the only WordPress plugin that allows developers to gain real insight into how their plugins are being used. You can find out which features are popular, decrease support requests, increase upscales, and generally remove the guesswork from plugin development. Need more info? Check out the plugin site.

How to enter the giveaway

Feeling lucky? Then enter our giveaway and try to grab one of the three licences to track one plugin, worth $49 each. Simply leave a comment on this post to let us know that you’re in. In one week, I will randomly pick three lucky winners who will receive their prize directly from Wisdom staff, by email.

Good luck everybody!

What will be given away?

Three superb WordPress themes of the top quality that are featured at the end of this blog post. You will be able to view their demos and specifications. Here they are:

Monstroid2 – Multipurpose WordPress Theme

Monstroid2 is a one-size-fits-all solution built for real life projects. It’s good for corporate websites, hotels, restaurants, creative websites, shop owners, personal blogs, online media portals and many more.

You don’t need any coding skills to make it work as expected: Monstroid2 comes with Power Builder plugin that helps to create unique and versatile page layouts in visual mode. It integrates all plugins supplied with the theme and gives you full control over your site content.

Demo – More Info

Bellaina – Real Estate Responsive WordPress Theme

A good real estate website should make customers search as easy as possible. Its design should be intuitively understandable, it should have a simple search box, showcase a wide range of the real estate items available, etc.

Bellaina comes with a free Cherry real estate plugin allowing to build your own real estate listings and real estate portals. Property front end submit form helps your site visitor post their properties to your site.

Demo – More Info

Kustrix – Fashion Blog Magazine WordPress Theme

Kustrix is a classy WordPress theme intended for personal, fashion and beauty blogs. Its stylish design includes beautiful handwritten fonts, gentle colors, and an abundance of social sharing buttons.

This theme is easy to install and maintain, so even a newbie will be able to build an outstanding blog in minutes.

Demo – More Info

How to enter the giveaway

Nothing difficult. Just register for PayPerDemo offer that allows you to use MotoCMS for free and you’ll be in the game. Three winners will be chosen randomly and will receive their prizes from TemplateMonster on March 7, 2017. Good luck!

About MotoCMS

Thanks to a huge number of dedicated designs, any person, be it an individual entrepreneur or a small business owner, can find a design that meets their requirements. MotoCMS offers responsive designs, which means they are already adapted to fit smaller screens of smartphones and tablets without losing in appearance quality and functionality features number. You can also add keywords to design elements to make a website rank higher in search engines when users type those keywords in a search field.

MotoCMS is aimed at the most of people who go online with their business or personal ideas. TemplateMonster team tried to create a product that will be easy to use for any person. Today most of people feel at home on the Internet and already have some basics of software managing. Nowadays everyone can update their smartphone or install apps, for example. But creating a website was considered a work for professionals for a long time. With MotoCMS any person gets a chance to create a website of their dream without any development knowledge.

Most of TemplateMonster’s customers are small or local businesses and individual professionals like photographers, designers, musicians, writers etc. The company also offers a great solution for web developers who create websites for multiple projects. They can customize company designs according to their client’s requirements and offer them fully responsive, unique design within a very short period of time. Since company team makes constant updates to the admin panel and offers code injection, this broadens MotoCMS functions and makes it more attractive for developers.

Last year, the company released a fully-rebuilt and improved MotoCMS 3.0 version. The team worked on it for a few years to make the new MotoCMS meet all the latest requirements for websites like responsiveness, SEO options, and social media integration. This new version really comes with the times and has everything the modern Web demands.

With this version users don’t need a Mobile editor. TemplateMonster’s templates are already made responsive, right out of the box. The company allows their MotoCMS 3 users to add code into header and footer of a template. They improved a Media library that now supports multiple file formats, has a convenient layout and lets to perform many functions.

They added a cool Color Picker to the admin panel that allows users change the entire color palette of a template in one click. In general, the Entire Design section was created to make the most changes in text styles, color palette, elements arrangement and layout across the entire website without the need to tweak each element separately.
But if the users want to change the text across the website except one page, for instance, it’s still possible.

The strongest points of MotoCMS 3 are multiple. They are mobile-friendliness, SEO-friendly settings or Color Picker, multi-language admin panel, and lightning-fast performance to name just a few. One of the most awesome things about MotoCMS is 24/7 free support a customer gets together with the demo registration. “Passive support” (tooltips) to the most elements inside the admin panel is also included.

MotoCMS price can also be considered its benefit. With most website builders you can get a template for free, but later you should pay to get access to more advanced features. Or you will be charged a monthly/yearly fee to keep your website up to date. With MotoCMS users pay only once – when they purchase a template with the admin panel. That’s it.

The developers are so confident that their product is decent that they offer you a free 14-day trial! So you don’t lose a cent registering for PayPerDemo, but look what you can win. The prizes are really worthy.

Photonify is a new marketplace for Photographers that sells a whole range of different Lightroom Presets and Photoshop actions all designed specifically for professional and amateur photographers. In this post we have gathered together all their top Preset collections, take a look below.

Ultimate Lightroom Preset Bundle

This is our most premium bundle available, It includes all of our Lightroom Presets and Photoshop Actions and is the cheapest way to get access to all our products for photographers – take your photography to the next level with the Photonify Ultimate Bundle.
More info: Ultimate Lightroom Bundle

Food Photography Lightroom Presets

If you need to create some tasty food photography, then this is the collection for you. Whether you are a food blogger or a photographer shooting food for a client to be used in print advertising, commercials or billboards these presets will allow you to enhance the end photo and also greatly speed up the post production process.
More info: Food Photography Presets

Portrait Collection Vol 1

This is Volume 1 of our Portrait Photography Lightroom Presets:A Collection of amazing presets to give your fashion, portrait and street photography different styles, tones and contrasts. Speed up the post processing process using our presets and offer your clients different options for their photos.
More info: Portrait Presets Vol 1

Portrait Collection Vol 2

This is Volume 2 of our Portrait Photography Lightroom Presets collection, an absolute must for portrait and fashion photographers who wish to adjust tones, improve colors and contrasts of their shots. You can use this collection to speed up the post processing process and give your shots some interesting styles.
More info: Portrait Presets Vol 2

Vintage Film Collection

Do you pine for the age of analog film photography? Rolls of Kodak, Fujicolor and Ilford? If so, this is the collection for you – we have put together a collection of presets for Lightroom which allow you to give your photos an aged look in one click – choose from many different vintage, aged and retro looks with a click of your mouse.
More info: Vintage Film Presets

Landscapes Collection

If you would like to make your landscape photography come alive, this is the collection for you. We have crafted a set of Lightroom presets which will improve your landscape photos with a fine blend of enhancements which will create the sharpest and most beautiful landscape imagery. Bring dull photos to life with one click of your mouse.
More info: Landscape Presets

Wedding Collection

If you are a wedding photographer then you know how much time post production on a typical shoot can take, you can greatly speed up this process by using Lightroom Presets. We have put together this collection of presets for wedding photographers to help bring consistency and greater efficiency to your workflow – use it to quickly put together some sample styles for your clients to choose from or use it to batch process the entire shoot.
More info: Wedding Presets

Matte Collection

The “Matte” look is a very popular look with photography at the moment, achieved by using the tone curve in Lightroom. If you would like to utilize this style in your photography then this collection is for you – we have hand-crafted a number of lightroom presets so you can apply this to your images with a click of your mouse. We have included different types which will suit different photos.
More info: Matte Presets

Cinematic Collection

Add intensity and a dramatic look to your photos with our Cinematic Lightroom Presets collection. We have designed this set to make your photos more cinematic and emulate the look of cinematic effects used in movies and cinema. Add a dramatic, artist and stylized feel to your photos with one click – each preset will give you a different look.
More info: Cinematic Presets

Pastel Collection

If you would like to give your photos a beautiful soft pastel effect then this is the collection for you. Designed to add soft pastel tones and light glow to images, this set is perfect for weddings, newborns, portraits and stylized stock photography. Speed up your work flow and post processing with this set of presets – one click enhancements for perfect pastel toned imagery.
More info: Pastel Presets

HDR Collection

High Dynamic Range or HDR is a popular style of photography which is achieved by taking a number of photos of the same scene at different exposures and then combining them to create a striking image which shows off more information than a regular photo. We have created the HDR lightroom presets collection to help you recreate that look from just one photo in JPG or RAW format in Adobe Lightroom. These presets will create images with high contrasts bringing out hidden details in your photos.
More info: HDR Presets

Lomo Collection

The Lomography or “Lomo” style of photography is a photographic style which is characterized by oversaturated colors, distortions, unexpected prismatic effects shot by Lomography cameras. The style is unmistakable when you see it and you can now recreate the look using Lightroom and our Lomo Presets collection. We have crafted this collection with all different effects you can apply to your photos with vignetting, light leaks and other effects to accurately represent the Lomographic style.
More info: Lomo Presets

Newborn Collection

The Newborn Lightroom Presets collection has been designed to aid you in the post production of a photoshoot for babies, toddlers and children. We have included a number of different styles which are perfectly suited for newborn portraits by improving skin tones, softening the image and adding a dreamy quality with color or black and white.
More info: Newborn Presets

This is a guest post by Oliver Dale.

Why Umbrella JS?

jQuery is an amazing piece of code! Since its first release in 2006, jQuery has played a key role in shaping the web as we know it nowadays. Still, every now and then a new JavaScript library is released. One that caught my attention lately is Umbrella JS, a library heavily influenced by jQuery, but way more compact (3kb!) and limited to DOM manipulation, events and Ajax.

So what are the top advantages in using Umbrella JS?

• It’s super lightweight: Umbrella JS is only 3kb minified, which ensures a super fast loading even on mobile devices. Website loading speed is now an extremely important factor in search engine rankings and ease of use for mobile users, so this is indeed a great thing.
• It’s easy to use: Umbrella JS is heavily influenced by jQuery. If you know jQuery’s syntax, adapting to Umbrella JS will be very easy.
• It’s complete: Despite being small in size, Umbrella JS contains everything you need for DOM manipulation, events and Ajax.
• It’s free: Released under the terms of the MIT license, Umbrella JS can be used freely in all your projects.

Installation and usage

Installing Umbrella JS is easy. You can use JSdelivr CDN, or download the .js file and add it to your HTML document:

<script src="umbrella.min.js"></script>

If you want to test and experiment with Umbrella JS, you can do so in JS Fiddle.

A few snippets

Now let’s see what we can do with Umbrella JS. If you’re familiar with jQuery, you will get the syntax very easily. If you want more snippets and examples, check out the documentation.

Simple event

Handling a simple event: When the user clicks on a button, an alert is displayed.

u("button").on('click', function(){
  alert("Hello world");
});

Automatic target=”_blank” on links

A good example of the each() function, which is used to loop through all of the nodes and to execute a callback for each.

u('a').each(function(node, i){
  u(node).attr({ target: '_blank' });
});

Ajax

Performing ajax requests is even easier than with jQuery.

u('form').ajax(function(err, data){
  if (!err) alert('Done! Thanks, ' + data.name);
});

Scroll to an element

As seen on many websites, clicking on a link with the class team will scroll to the first <section> element with the class team:

u('a.team').on('click', function(e){
  e.preventDefault();
  u('section.team').scroll();
});

Auto-save a form every 10 seconds

Using the ajax() and trigger() functions, it only takes a few lines to create an auto-save function for any kind of form.

// Make the form to submit through ajax
u('form.edit').ajax();

// Submit it every 10s
setInterval(function(){
  u('form.edit').trigger('submit');
}, 10000);

Do you have any Umbrella JS experiences to share? Leave a comment below.

Layer Styles

Layer styles are one of the most useful tools ever created. No matter what kind of a graphic you are creating, layer styles will make your text much better. You simply create a text (or any other object) and apply the style to your layer one by one until you find the perfect fit. They instantly change any text into a much more professional-looking design.

Photoshop comes with about a dozen layer styles already installed, but the nice thing about layer styles is that you can find lots of them free online. There are thousands out there, downloadable and easy to install. You just put all of your layer styles into one folder and then you can upload them all at once. Also, you can export your entire collection of layer styles – you will then have everything you need in one small file even if you reinstall Photoshop.
More info: Photoshop layer styles

Shapes

Shapes are another great thing to download. Photoshop has some shapes already available, but unless you are okay with a circle, square and arrow shape, you should consider some more. This will allow you to choose from your entire collection of shapes whenever you need to create something that you would normally have to draw manually.

Shapes are also very easy to find online and download for free. To install them, download them somewhere on your hard drive, go into Photoshop and choose the custom shapes tool. After this click on the shape picker, press the little play button to the right and choose LOAD SHAPES when the dialogue box pops up. Finally, find your shape file and upload it.
More info: Brusheezy

Fonts

This may seem like an obvious one, but many people fail to download new fonts because they already have a few dozen to choose from as a part of Windows and they don’t think they need any more. But there are lots of cool fonts out there and you might be surprised at just how much better you can make a graphic if it has the right font.

One of the most popular places to get free fonts is 1001freefonts.com, which by now has tens of thousands instead. You can download them for free one at a time or the whole collection for a small fee. You should also be aware that some fonts cannot be used commercially so you might want to search for a commercially licensed free font for each new project you do.
More info: 1001 free fonts

Pixie

The last useful tool that we are going to discuss isn’t actually a Photoshop asset – it is simply a tool that makes working in Photoshop a lot easier. Pixie is a tool that tells you the exact Hexadecimal or RGB of any color that you place your mouse on.

This is extremely useful when you are trying to design a graphic that will match the look of your blog or website. You can manually set the RGB on the color picker and get the exact color that you are trying to match in Photoshop.
More info: Pixie

This is a guest post by Emily Miller.

Are you looking for an affordable solution to promote your business online? We’ve got top 10 WordPress themes for different online projects that may fit your needs.

So, what is here for you: a multipurpose theme, finance & accounting theme, style & fashion theme, news theme, barber shop theme, real estate theme, agricultural theme, fitness theme, and business theme.

All of them were developed for WordPress CMS, the most popular blogging platform in the world that powers millions of sites. WordPress is a number one choice for both beginners and mature web developers. It is easy to install a WordPress theme, customize it, maintain a WordPress website and expand it in future with the help of free plugins and extensions. The CMS is free and open source, which means that quite a number of nerds work on its perfection every day. You can find help with handling your WordPress theme on specialized forums and lots of other resources like Startup Hub and YouTube.

All of them were developed for WordPress CMS, the most popular blogging platform in the world that powers millions of sites. WordPress is a number one choice for both beginners and mature web developers. It is easy to install a WordPress theme, customize it, maintain a WordPress website and expand it in future with the help of free plugins and extensions. The CMS is free and open source, which means that quite a number of nerds work on its perfection every day. You can find help with handling your WordPress theme on specialized forums and lots of other resources like Startup Hub and YouTube.

It’s time to talk about the provider of the themes you see here. It’s utterly important to know everything about web design company you are buying a template from. These compilation is provided by TemplateMonster.com. This is a marketplace with nearly 15 years of experience in the field. Their team of experts produce templates of the highest quality. There are nearly 46 000 templates in TemplateMonster’s stock . They are designed for all most popular engines: WordPress, HTML5, Joomla, PrestaShop, Magento, WooCommerce, Moto CMS, and many others.

Millions of websites you see on the web today were built on the basis of TemplateMonster’s themes.
By the way, TemplateMonster provides the so-called PayPerDemo and try-before-you-buy services. They are available for Moto CMS project. This is very convenient as you don’t pay a cent for 14 days trial period while you study and understand if Moto CMS template is the best choice for you.

That’s it for now. It’s time to pass to browsing top 10 WordPress themes that are not only beautiful, but really feature-rich. Who knows, maybe these templates will save you lots of time, efforts, and money.
Have a nice time!

Monstroid2 – New Generation Multipurpose WordPress Theme

Monstroid2 is one-size-fits-all solution. It comes with 9+ pre-built websites for most popular business niches. 7 customizable header styles and 4 customizable blog styles will make each page of your website unique.

Details |  Demo

Accounting WordPress Theme

This bluish theme is equipped with drag-and-drop page builder. It allows you build pages easily without touching a single line of code. Take advantage of more than 25+ modules, library of presets, and drag-and-drop functionality.

Details | Demo

Style & Fashion Blog WordPress Theme

The theme is easy to use due to a variety of features, shortcodes, and customization options. It is delivered with the leading frontend page builder and intuitive GUI for page and theme options, which will make any website development enjoyable. Quick and easy launch of any project is also taken into account.

Details | Demo

News GPL WordPress Template

This theme for a magazine, newspaper, or news blog is shipped with Live Customizer that lets you make changes and see the results on the fly. It is responsive, SEO friendly, and has a clean valid code. The theme is 100% GPL which gives you almost unlimited freedom in terms of websites number.

Details | Demo

WordPress Theme for Barber Shop

The theme gives you an opportunity to choose from a large set of layout options and experiment with your pages structure. Speed up your building process by saving your favourite layouts in a built-in library. Use them whenever you need to create a new page.

Details | Demo

Real Estate Responsive WordPress Theme

Bellaina will help you turn your website into a true Real Estate monster. Add properties to your site and let your clients find exactly what they need. Filter the search results by required categories and see where exactly the property is located on a map with preview markers.

Details | Demo

Agricultural WordPress Theme

Parallax effect gives your visitors the feel of true immersion, an illusion of depth in 2D environments of your site. You can choose between multiple slider plugins when crafting your pages, including Cherry Simple Slider and Premium MotoPress Slider coming with the template. They allow you to assemble professional-looking slides of text, images and videos, spicing them up with various transition effects.

Details | Demo

Fitness Responsive Website Template

Content modules included into theme’s package allow you to add multiple content types to your page. This includes buttons, images, pricing tables, contact forms, sliders, and many more. Each of them has an extended set of options that you can tweak to match the style of your website.

Details | Demo

Business Services WordPress Template

This theme in black and white colours will surely grab users’ attention. It is retina ready, which means that your website will perform and look awesome even on displays with high pixel density. This way, your website will be up to date for years to come.

Details | Demo

Financial Advice WordPress Theme

Enjoy the sleek, modern design of your theme. Each element of design is carefully crafted and corresponds with the latest web design trends. Take advantage of theme’s custom widgets that enrich your theme with advanced functionality.

Details | Demo

This is a guest post by Andrew Litvin.

WPEngine: 30% Off

WPEngine are one of the largest and longest established hosts that specialize only in WordPress, they have lots of features aimed at WordPress site owners such as automatic update of WordPress core, themes, and plugins. They include daily backups of your site to keep it safe, free malware scans, a Firewall, SSL ready, CDN-ready, and some of the fastest loading speeds of any hosting company.

Use this coupon code for WPEngine to get 30% off any plan.

InMotion Hosting: 40% Off

InMotion Hosting are a long established host who have been going for many years. Their hosting is ultra-reliable, with great uptime, but the best thing about InMotion is their customer support. From their support area you can phone, email or chat online with support – their live chat is specifically good, with most problems being solved within minutes.

Use this coupon code for InMotion to get 40% off any plan.

DreamHost: 40% Off

DreamHost are a rock-solid web hosting company that have been around for many years, winning numerous awards such as “Best Web Hosting Service” 3 years in a row. They offer a range of different hosting plans to suit all budgets and have just recently entered the “Managed WordPress Hosting” space with their DreamPress hosting offer.

Use this coupon code for DreamHost which gives you a free domain name and 40% discount on their plans.

Bluehost: 65% Off

Bluehost are one of the largest providers of web hosting in the world – you can be assured your site is in good hands if you choose them for hosting. They currently offer excellent features for WordPress websites such as a one-click installation of WP, backups, amazing customer support, cPanel to manage the site and a lot more.

You can use this exclusive Bluehost coupon code to get 65% off a WordPress hosting plan which includes a free domain name.

Flywheel: 20% Off

Flywheel are one of the very best hosts for WordPress as they only offer hosting for WordPress websites, their whole hosting environment is tweaked to be optimized for WP sites, meaning they are faster, more secure and their customer support are experts of WordPress sites. Plans start at just $15 per month which is a good deal when compared to other managed WordPress hosting providers.

Use this coupon code for Flywheel to get 20% off any plan.

Liquidweb: 33% Off

Liquid Web offer a range of hosting and now specialize in offering Managed WordPress hosting and provide incredibly fast page request responses and reduced load times through server-side caching. They have built their Managed WordPress servers with all the PHP performance optimizations necessary to provide you unmatched PHP execution speeds. They also take WordPress security into account with their own team of security professionals who ensure all security best practices are in place, from their data centers networks to your server configurations.

Use this Liquid Web coupon code to get 33% off any plans.

Media Temple: 20% Off

Media Temple are large and well established hosting company that offer a range of different hosting products to suit all types of websites. They now offer Managed WordPress hosting with the following features – easy site migration & setup, WordPress-certified 24/7 support, DDoS & intrusion protection, Automatic WP core updates, 30-day backup & restore, site staging and cloning, Git, WP-CLI, SSH/sFTP and PhpMyAdmin access. Their managed hosting plans start at $20 per month which includes 30GB SSD storage, 400,000 monthly visitors, and up to 2 sites.

Use this Media Temple coupon code to get 20% Off any WP/Grid/DV (Levels 1 & 2) hosting plans.

Engine Themes: 15% Off

EngineThemes produce some amazing quality app themes for creating different types of WordPress websites. They currently have 15 different themes for creating job sites, directories, hotel websites, forums and more. They also offer an impressive array of extensions for each theme and they also offer complete packages which include all the themes in their collection.

Use this Engine Themes coupon for 15% off all purchases.

TeslaThemes: 20% Off

TeslaThemes create beautiful premium WordPress themes, currently have around 60 themes in their collection, and cater to many different niches. They have business themes, personal blog themes, portfolio themes, WooCommerce themes and more. You can grab a single theme for $48 or access to the complete collection from $59 per year.

Use this coupon for TeslaThemes to get 20% Discount off any purchase.

CSSIgniter: 30% Off

CSSIgniter are one of the best premium WordPress theme companies around, they have created over 78 great looking themes which have been sold to over 55,000 happy customers. They have a range of themes for most purposes such as blogging, business, music, hotel, WooCommerce and so on – everything you’d expect from a top theme company. You can purchase individual themes for $49 each but their $79 bundle makes the most sense as it includes all their themes, plugins, customer support and updates for one year.

Take 30% Off All Purchases with this CSSIgniter coupon code.

ThemeIsle: 20% Off

ThemeIsle are a new WordPress theme company which provide a number of good quality themes. Prices start at $55 for a single theme, you can join the club for $85 which gives you access to every theme on the site. Their most popular theme is Zerif Lite and Zerif Pro – one of the most popular WordPress themes. There is quite a wide variety of niche WordPress themes you can download such as a kindergarten theme, book review theme, lawyer theme, builder theme, band theme along with the usual blog themes and business themes. They also produce some free themes so you can test them out and some WordPress plugins which you can get included in their top club membership which is $145 per year.

Use this ThemeIsle coupon code for 20% off.

TemplateMonster: 20% Off

Template Monster are one of the longest established providers of templates and themes for different CMSs, they started in 2002 and now boast a collection of over 46,000 items for sale. Their WordPress section has thousands of different themes for many types of niche, you are sure to find a suitable theme within their collection.

Use this Template Monster coupon code to get 20% off purchases.

This is a guest post by Oliver Dale.

Keywords

Using keywords is imperative to get more traffic. Finding out what the most effective keywords are is something you should research thoroughly, as you’re going to want to prioritize them.

Take advantage of websites like “Yahoo!” or “Google’s Keyword Tool.” Find words that people have typed the most often. KEY POINT – Try not to stuff these words, but instead, use a selected amount and implement them naturally.

Social Media

Social networking is an enormous tool that bloggers everywhere can use to help more visitors access their site. The main two you’re going to want to use are Twitter and Facebook. It may take some time and extra effort to develop a good following on these sites, but if the followers start increasing, don’t make the mistake of becoming a spammer.

Create a genuine community around your niche and interact with people on a daily basis. You can post links to your articles and create conversations with people about them or even just propose interesting topics to generate a discussion.

Quality Content

This is where many bloggers fall short of their potential to make their content engaging. They’ve spent so much time researching keywords that they base all of their content solely around this!

Don’t get me wrong, the keywords are crucial, but if the articles aren’t for readers, then your efforts with SEO have been wasted. Connecting with your readers on a more down-to-earth basis will be one of the key factors in whether your blog prospers or sinks.

Backlinks

Backlinking is where your website link is posted somewhere else. Readers from other sites may check your blog out, especially if it’s within the same niche as where the link was advertised. Posting the links can be tricky, and you want to avoid appearing as spam because you could be frowned upon by others.

Instead, propose to various bloggers about the benefits for both parties if backlinks are posted on both sites – this would be effective amongst the smaller bloggers who are all trying to get things moving just like you. Look at your competition more as allies who are all trying to get a wider audience. Interact with them and maybe you could help each other out.

Domain

Having one effective domain link to your website is pivotal. Domains, which have been in existence for a long time, are ranked higher; therefore, you may benefit more in the long-run by purchasing a URL that has been used previously.

You’re putting yourself a step ahead in being recognized by Google. If you get all the other four pointers right, an established domain will boost the visitors even further!

(Use the digital marketing agency, Seoanalytics.pro to help engage with your target market if you’re struggling to zone in on your niche group).

This is a guest post by Maria Fedco.

Create a direct “Add to cart” link

Sometimes you just need to let the user add a product in the cart by clicking on a link. It’s really easy to do, just add ?add-to-cart=974 at the end of any link.

In this example, 974 is the product id, and should be replaced by the id of the product you want to add to cart.

http://yoursite.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=974

Source: Nicola Mustone

Remove address fields in checkout

If you’re selling digital goods, you don’t necessarily need to ask the buyer for his address. In order to remove the address fields from the checkout, insert the following code into your theme functions.php file:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_checkout_fields' , 'custom_override_checkout_fields' );
 
function custom_override_checkout_fields( $fields ) {
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_first_name']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_last_name']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_company']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_address_1']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_address_2']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_city']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_postcode']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_country']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_state']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_phone']);
    unset($fields['order']['order_comments']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_address_2']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_postcode']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_company']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_last_name']);
    unset($fields['billing']['billing_city']);
    return $fields;
}

Source: WP Mayor

Define the number of products displayed per page

A simple but effective way to define how many products should be displayed per page. On this example, return 25 means that 25 products will be shown, update this value with the desired number of products and append this line you your theme’s functions.php file.

add_filter( 'loop_shop_per_page', create_function( '$cols', 'return 25;' ), 20 );

Source: James Koster

Add a message above the login / register form

Here’s a simple way to automatically add a custom message above the login/registration form. This code should be inserted into your functions.php file.

add_action( 'woocommerce_before_customer_login_form', 'jk_login_message' );
function jk_login_message() {
    if ( get_option( 'woocommerce_enable_myaccount_registration' ) == 'yes' ) {
	?>
		<div class="woocommerce-info">
			<p><?php _e( 'Returning customers login. New users register for next time so you can:' ); ?></p>
			<ul>
				<li><?php _e( 'View your order history' ); ?></li>
				<li><?php _e( 'Check on your orders' ); ?></li>
				<li><?php _e( 'Edit your addresses' ); ?></li>
				<li><?php _e( 'Change your password' ); ?></li>
			</ul>
		</div>
	<?php
	}
}

Source: James Koster

Remove the breadcrumbs

If you don’t think the breadcrumbs are useful, you can remove them easily by adding the code below into your theme’s functions.php file.

add_action( 'init', 'jk_remove_wc_breadcrumbs' );

function jk_remove_wc_breadcrumbs() {
    remove_action( 'woocommerce_before_main_content', 'woocommerce_breadcrumb', 20, 0 );
}

Source: James Koster

Redirect add to cart button to the checkout page

A very interesting hack which allows you to automatically redirect users to the checkout page once a product has been added to the cart. As many other hacks from this article, this code should go to your functions.php file.

function add_to_cart_checkout_redirect() {
    wp_safe_redirect( get_permalink( get_option( 'woocommerce_checkout_page_id' ) ) );
    die();
}

add_action( 'woocommerce_add_to_cart', 'add_to_cart_checkout_redirect', 16 );

Source: Kloon

Replace “out of stock” by “sold”

If you’re selling unique objects, it makes much more sense to display “sold” instead of the default “out of stock” label. To do so, you simply have to paste this code in your functions.php file.

add_filter('woocommerce_get_availability', 'availability_filter_func');

function availability_filter_func($availability) {
	$availability['availability'] = str_ireplace('Out of stock', 'Sold', $availability['availability']);
	return $availability;
}

Source: WP Explorer

Restrict shipping to selected countries

If you’re only willing to ship goods to specific countries, you can use the code below to do it. Countries can be added on the array on line 6. Code has to be in your functions.php file to work.

function woo_override_checkout_fields( $fields ) { 

	$fields['shipping']['shipping_country'] = array(
		'type'      => 'select',
		'label'     => __('My New Country List', 'woocommerce'),
		'options' 	=> array('AU' => 'Australia')
	);

	return $fields; 
} 
add_filter( 'woocommerce_checkout_fields' , 'woo_override_checkout_fields' );

Source: WP Explorer

Display “product already in cart” instead of “add to cart” button

If a visitor has already added a specific product to his cart, it can be a great thing to notify them if an attempt to add the same product occurs.

Here’s a simple code snippet to do that. Just add it to your functions.php file.

add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_single_add_to_cart_text', 'woo_custom_cart_button_text' );
function woo_custom_cart_button_text() {
	global $woocommerce;
	foreach($woocommerce->cart->get_cart() as $cart_item_key => $values ) {
		$_product = $values['data'];
 
		if( get_the_ID() == $_product->id ) {
			return __('Already in cart - Add Again?', 'woocommerce');
		}
	}
	return __('Add to cart', 'woocommerce');
}
 
add_filter( 'add_to_cart_text', 'woo_archive_custom_cart_button_text' );
function woo_archive_custom_cart_button_text() {
	global $woocommerce;
	foreach($woocommerce->cart->get_cart() as $cart_item_key => $values ) {
		$_product = $values['data'];
		if( get_the_ID() == $_product->id ) {
			return __('Already in cart', 'woocommerce');
		}
	}
	return __('Add to cart', 'woocommerce');
}

Source: Tribal Cafe

Add custom page navigation to WooCommerce

WooCommerce, like WordPress, doesn’t use page navigation by default. This can be changed easily on WordPress with the WP PageNavi plugin. When using WooCommerce, it requires a little hack to work.

The first thing to do is to install the WP PageNavi plugin. Once done, simply open your functions.php file and paste the following code in it.

remove_action('woocommerce_pagination', 'woocommerce_pagination', 10);
function woocommerce_pagination() {
		wp_pagenavi(); 		
	}
add_action( 'woocommerce_pagination', 'woocommerce_pagination', 10);

Source: WP Snacks

It starts with a great design

The purpose of a WordPress theme is to display your content in a pleasant way for your readers. So obviously, a great theme starts with a great, clean and usable design.

Decide your theme purpose – will it be a magazine theme, a blogging theme, or an online shop? Once you have made up your mind, check out what popular theme vendors like ElegantThemes or Themeforest have in stock, and take also a look at what kind of themes popular blogs and sites are using.

Looking for 2017 design trends? I’ve listed some in this article.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

WordPress is an open source software distributed under the terms of the GPL license. It ensures that users can freely re-use and adapt any part of the software. Most WordPress themes are distributed under the same GPL license (which is the right thing to do) so you can totally take parts of an existing theme and use it in your own project.

Although most themes aren’t made for being used as a starting point for a new project, some are developed with that purpose in mind. My favorite starter themes are underscores.me, Bootstrap Basic and UnderStrap (which I’ve used to create the current CatsWhoCode.com theme)

Code according to WordPress standards

Like most softwares, WordPress has its own coding standards. Why? Because hundreds of developers are working on the project, so standards ensure code readability. Using the correct coding standards when creating a theme intended for public distribution is definitely a good thing since it will make customization easier for users.

WordPress coding standards for PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be found on this page.

Stay updated

When coding your theme, always make sure that your code is up to date with the current release of WordPress. Check for PHP deprecated functions, have a look at the Codex for deprecated WordPress functions, and make use of the latest WP improvements.

Less is more

In recent years, most commercial themes are released with tons of features, most of them being useless to 90% of users.

Feel free to provide quality features, but don’t bloat your theme with too many options that will end up slowing down the theme for little or no use.

Ensure compatibility with popular plugins

WordPress is made to be extended by the use of plugins, some of which are very popular among users.

Making sure that your theme is compatible with the most loved plugins (Woocommerce, WPML…) will definitely increase its success.

Make your theme translation ready

As the most popular CMS, WordPress is translated into over 50 languages. But in order to be compatible with translations, you have to take care of a few things.

Our friends at WPMUDev have a complete article about localizing WordPress themes. Check it out!

Get ready to support users

If you plan to release your theme commercially, user support is something you need to keep in mind. Many users aren’t familiar with WordPress themes or would need customization services. This can represent a tremendous amount of time, but it’s also how most theme vendors are making big money.

Releasing your theme for free? Then don’t hesitate to provide it “as is”, as most free WordPress themes are.

Quality check

Your theme is probably good right now, but what about striving for perfection? Make sure your theme is speed-optimized to ensure fast loading, and responsive for correct display on mobile devices.

Once done, check your code for valid HTML5 and CSS. To do so, the good old W3C Validator is the best tool.

Make a great demo site

Done with coding? Checked your theme speed? Your code is valid? Awesome! Now, what you need to do is to create a demo site that will allow users to see your theme in use. Build a great demo and install it on a quality server like WP Engine, Hostgator, Vidahost or KickAssd.

If you have carefully followed each step of this guide, I have no doubt that your theme will be a success, whether you release it for free or commercially.

It hardly matters if you are a novice, an expert or somebody who just wants to learn about WordPress for good; this CMS is ever-welcoming for all. People can have their own reasons – some might want to design their own websites, some might be wanting to take it up as a profession and others might be just curious. The fix here is the available resources for learning more and more about WordPress.

If you are looking to explore skills, learn to code, looking for a testing platform, create a blog website – WordPress is your answer. Since the CMS rocked its way through the past year, let’s learn about the 10 resources that one can utilize in the new year; so, that 2017 starts and ends on a good note for all WordPress users.

The Rulebook: WordPress Codex

If you are looking for some reliable documentation and information regarding WordPress sites, WordPress codex is the place for you. This free online manual is hosted by WordPress.org and is useful for beginners as well as experienced users.

The technical nature of this rulebook will help you get started with WordPress download and installation. With optimum access to support forums, the WordPress codex provides help with troubleshooting issues related to themes, plugins, design, site development etc.

WordPress Reddit

The Reddit thread for the WordPress community is everything WordPress. This holistic online forum is a blessing for all sort of WordPress users. This is a place where WordPress redditors come together to discuss tags like ‘How to Tutorials’, ‘Plugin and Theme Development’, ‘WordPress Core Plugin Requests’, ‘Help Requests’, Job Offers etc.

WordPress TV

WordPress TV has an edge over all other WordPress resources because of the visual element it offers. It features video lessons from experienced WordPressers. The comprehensive nature of these videos makes learning fun because they are short and meaningful, in a true sense.  You could knock yourself out with these videos if you are looking for questions regarding WordPress site building. This asset is an open forum and people can submit meaningful videos to this platform and have them featured once they are approved.

WPKube

This resource is the hub of many informative WordPress blog posts. Here, you can find information right from beginner guides to advanced issue fixes.

They feature amazing WordPress tutorials along with free and premium WordPress themes download. They have a ton of beginner guides and reviews such as How to Setup WordPress Multisite, WordPress.org vs WordPress.com, and more.

They also have a great collection of exclusive deals and coupons to help you save money on WordPress, such as SiteGround, MaxCDN, etc.

WPRecipes

WPRecipes is that free piece of a pie that makes the life of new WordPress developers, easy. This web-based WordPress resource features a collection of useful snippets, that can help you add new functionality to your WordPress website.

Themeforest

The largest WordPress Theme marketplace in the world, ThemeForest is a Powered by Envato. This marketplace features a huge number of quality WordPress themes with detailed documentation and reviews so that users choose the best from the lot. If you are new to the WordPress realm, Themeforest can help you with the type of theme you are looking for. And if you are an experienced professional theme developer, you can submit your own theme.

Jobs.WordPress.net

This is the authoritative section from the official WordPress.org domain. It features verified WordPress related jobs from all around the world. If you are looking to take up a job related to these areas, you might consider delving into this resource:  WordPress Jobs in Designing, Development, Migration, Performance, Plugin Development, Theme Customization, and Writing.

Tuts+

If you wish to master new WordPress skills, the educational platform of Tuts+ will help you. The platform currently features over 960 Video Courses, where new videos are added every week. The resource makes available expert instructors to visitors so that can learn the right thing. Powered by the Envato community, Tuts+ offers membership with a free 10-day trial, to begin with. Once you are into it, it’s only $15 per month.

DesignBombs

If you are a new web designer / developer or you are simply want to build your new website on your own, DesignBombs will be an easy, step-by-step guide for you. This WordPress resource offers help guide you to start a blog, and go through other helpful articles. Best suited for beginners, this free platform also offers exclusive deals for designs.

What’s more, they also have several plugin comparison guides such as Membership plugins, landing page plugins, and more.

Manage WP

This quite a popular and non-profit WordPress resource brings on the latest WordPress news for its members and readers. They aspire to help the WordPress community discover best new WordPress stories every day. With the constant introduction of new content, Manage WP is quite an awesome community in itself. The site offers free membership and in order to be able to submit blog posts, users are required to earn points by community interaction.

Other 10 Noteworthy mentions

Apart from the resources that we have mentioned above, the WordPress world has yet many resources that are awesome in the content they offer. Here are some worth-mentioning ones.

• Official WordPress Lessons
• WP Apprentice
• WordPress Visual Quick Start Guide
• TreeHouse
• OnextraPixel
• Hongkiat
• WP Tavern
• iThemes
• Udemy
• Smashing Magazine

If you are familiar with WordPress, there is no denying that learning WordPress is a fruitful investment; both in terms of money and expertise. With so many great resources out there, the sky is not the limit. You can take your career to greater heights if you know where and how to start well.

A WordPress blog or a business brand’s website, WordPress is for all. To begin with your e-commerce stores, online shops, and blogs; you need to take the right plunge. We have managed to list the 10 + 10 best WordPress resources and there are yet many equally awesome resources available for you to exploit. If you are aware of other great WordPress resources, please share the love with us so that we can get them featured and further share them with other WordPress enthusiasts, too. Have a great time, WordPressing!

This is a guest post by Devesh Sharma.

Know 2017 design trends and use them

Let’s start the new year fresh! If you planned to redesign your site in 2017, here are the recent trends that have been implemented by many designers. Of course, no obligation to follow the crowd, but having a look at the design trends won’t hurt, and could provide you lots of inspiration.

• “Jumbotrons”: Big, bold components for calling extra attention to featured content or information.
• Non-rectangular headers
• Circular images with text beautifully wrapped around them.
• SVG images: Despite being around since soon two decades, SVGs have gained significant interest over the last two years.
• Big, bold typography and a more widespread use of serif fonts.

Speed up that website!

With more and more people browsing the web on their smartphones and the importance of loading speed in Google ranking system, a good website is a site that loads fast. How do you website ranks on Google PageSpeed Insight and Pingdom? Here are a few quick tips to improve your site loading speed.

• Use caching. The W3 Total Cache plugin is a must-have on any serious website.
• Switch to a quality web host (WP Engine, Hostgator, Vidahost, KickAssd…)
• Optimize your images for top speed.
• Get rid of unoptimized 3rd party scripts like the Facebook likebox.
• Use a fast WordPress theme.

More ideas… More content!

People visit blogs and online magazines for one thing: the content. All the rest is secondary. This is why creating useful content should be in your top priorities for 2017.

Finding what to blog about can sometimes be a bit tricky. Here are a few ideas:

• Check out the trends on Google trends and see if people are interested in what you’re planning to write.
• Make use of your real-life work experience: have you recently coded a revolutionary WordPress Theme for a client? Is your company doing cool things with jQuery? Talk about it!
• Follow other blogs in your niche and read a lot of posts from quality blogs. You’ll be surprised how easily ideas will come to your mind when you read and learn a lot from others.

Revive your old posts

You probably wrote very useful articles in the past. Just because they’re old doesn’t mean that none of them is useful anymore. Here are 3 ways to easily revive your old content:

• Use the Revive old posts WordPress plugin, which allows you to automatically tweet your old posts.
• When writing a new post, always link to other relevant articles from your blog. You can automate this process by using SEO Smart Links, a free WordPress plugin.
• Update your old articles, publish them again, and use a 301 redirection to automatically redirect the old one to the updated version. The Redirection plugin can definitely help for this.

Put more effort in your blog promotion

Writing great posts should be the priority of a blogger, but promoting the content you’ve created should always come as the close second. Promoting your blog posts will attract new visitors and clients, and could lead some of your best articles to go viral.

• Have a Twitter and Facebook account for your blog, and keep them updated.
• Promote your blog posts on different sites and platforms. Here’s a list of places to promote your content.
• A cheap and efficient way to promote your Facebook page and YouTube videos is Promolta. Check it out!
• Build and maintain an email list. Mailchimp and SendInBlue are definitely the best current services to manage email lists.

A few more tips…

Feeling perfectionist? That’s great! Here are a few more tips that I plan to apply myself and indeed encourage you to as well.

• Increase your social media presence and be available for your readers on Twitter and Facebook.
• Better safe than sorry: Always keep WordPress and its plugins up to date, and do regular backups. All in One Migration is a free plugin that can backup your database, themes, plugins and content. My preferred backup solution at the moment.
• Invite guest bloggers on your blog: having various authors with a different writing style and different views can be very refreshing for your visitors. Many bloggers will be willing to write free of charge on your blog, or you can invest a little and find a paid contributor.
• Keep SEO in mind and always looks for new ethical ways to make your blog rank higher on search engine result pages.

Rajdhani

This font is great for headlines and menu. Tech site Hongkiat has put Rajdhani in good use in their clean, neat main navigation menu.
More info/Download

Roboto

Probably the most popular and used Google Font, Roboto is a great alternative to web safe fonts like Arial or Helvetica.

For an example of Roboto in use in a WordPress theme, check out the Insight theme by WP Zoom.
More info/Download

Montserrat

Clean, classy and readable, Montserrat is a great choice for a blog or website. It can be used for paragraphs, headings, or both.

Montserrat is used in the beautiful WP theme named Deca. Check it in action here.
More info/Download

Libre Franklin

Another very clean font which will be the perfect successor to the endless amounts of Arial and Helvetica fonts on websites. Libre Franklin is the font I chose for the 2017 version of CatsWhoCode theme.

Libre Franklin can also be seen at use on another theme from WP Zoom, Presence.
More info/Download

Source Code Pro

When you want to display code in WordPress or any other kind of site, you need a very readable monospaced font.

Courier has been used for years. Looking for an alternative? The free Source Code Pro font could be exactly what you’re looking for.
More info/Download

Open Sans

Open Sans is optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces, and has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms. No wonder why many designers rely on it when it comes to building beautiful and readable websites.

The font can be seen in use on 23 Video.
More info/Download