For those of you that participate in the Revolution affiliate program, I just wanted to give you a heads up that Brian is currently offering a special promotion.   Basically he is offering a 25% payout bonus for one week on all sales!    See this post for additional details.

As a quick side note, I know some of you have purchased one of Brian’s themes.   If you’ve bought a single license and have thought about upgrading to the All-Inclusive Developer package (get all of his themes, plus future releases), he is temporarily offering an upgrade option for just $200 (instead of the usual $320). This offer ends at 12:00 midnight Friday July 11th CST.

After speaking with my good friend Adii of Premium News themes, it looks like he has made a bold, yet wise decision to move his Premium News business to the new domain Woo Themes.  Obviously moving your website to a new domain can be a big hassle (I’ve done it 4 times in the past year for a few of my websites and it was a lot of work), but in this situation I really think it was the right and necessary move for the growth of his business.

So, why did Adii move his online business to a new home?  One very important word…brandability.  When he launched Premium News Themes, it was originally to sell One Theme, the original Premium News theme.  Since then, his business has expanded drastically, and that domain was limiting him to releasing only news WordPress themes.

So, now the Premium News Themes can be found over at Woo Themes.   What other changes were included with the domain transfer?

1. Woo Themes Team Grows - The Woo Themes team has added a new member named Elliot Jay Stocks.   I’m not familiar with Elliot’s work, but more people probably means faster theme production and more choices.
2. Woo Themes Club - This is an interesting idea for a subscription-based WordPress themes club that appears to be set to replace the concept of an All-Inclusive Package we’ve seen other designers do.  The cheapest membership is $150.00 quarterly, but that gives you access to all existing Woo Themes as well as any new themes.
3. Regular Theme Releases - The Woo Themes team is committed to releasing at least 1 new premium theme each month, with many months have 2 new premium themes.
4. Two New Premium Themes - You can now purchase two new premium WordPress themes.  They are VibrantCMS and ProudFolio.
5. New Prices - All Woo Themes (previously Premium News themes) are now available at premanently reduced prices.  You can get a single license for $70.00 or a developer’s license for $150.00.

Overall, I am impressed with the new setup and I think it will be interesting to see how this changes the premium WordPress themes market.  How will having a team instead of an individual improve both production and support?  Will their price reduction force the competition to reduce their prices?  Will their twist on the theme club idea take off?

Check out the new and improved Woo Themes.

The WordPress community is filled with a number of great WordPress theme designers who are regularly releasing both free and premium WordPress themes.  One thing that quickly becomes apparent when reviewing all the themes out there, is that each theme designer has their own unique style, and each person who downloads or buys themes has different tastes as well.

One of my favorite WordPress theme designers right now is Lee from Themespinner, whose themes have a very unique and custom style that I personally have always enjoyed.   Today I was excited to find out that Lee has followed up his Themespinner campaign with a new theme, this time called One Theme.

This theme boasts one of the largest feature lists I’ve ever seen:

• Custom Control Panel
• Widget Ready
• AdSense Ready
• Javascript Drop Down Menus
• Custom Search Result Page
• Archive, Links & Sitemap Templates
• Child Pages Ready
• Child Categories Ready
• Numbered Comments
• Valid XHTML/CSS - Full div layout (no tables)
• SEO Optimized Code
• FREE Updates forever
• FREE Support
• Logo Design Service Available
• Theme Installation Service Available
• Five Color Schemes: Blue | Green | Pink | Black | Red
• Two Homepage Layouts
• Tracking Ready (Statcounter/Google Analytics)
• Gravatar Ready
• Thumbnail Ready
• Unique “Hot Conversation” Plugin
• Featured YouTube Video
• Feedburner RSS
• Feedburner Email Subscribe
• Featured Homepage Article
• Featured Homepage Categories
• AdSense / Affiliates / CPM or any other advertisement
• Exclude Category Links
• Exclude Page Links
• Exclude Footer Links
• Upload Main Logo
• Upload Footer Logo
• Upload Site Background
• Upload Header Background

Here is a screenshot of the homepage:

Here is a screenshot of a post page:

I’m not sure those pictures even do the theme justice, as the comment form and every detail is really well done.  If you’d like to get more information or purchase One Theme, it is currently available for $99.95 (Webmaster license), $199.9 (Webmaster Pro license), or $299.00 (Web Developer license).

Who says that these days you have to pay for a high quality WordPress theme?   Today I noticed that one of my favorite free theme designers, ChiQ Montes, has released yet another incredible WordPress theme.

Her newest creation is the Maggo Mag theme, which is a 3-column theme with the sidebars split out on each side (I’ve always liked this style and wish more 3-column WordPress themes had the content in the middle).  Other features include being 125×125 ad block ready, the ability to add a video to the right sidebar, and of course the wonderful color blue.

Here is a screenshot:

And here is a live demo.   If you’d like to try out the Maggo Mag theme, you can download it here.

Wow, is it just me, or can Brian Gardner read minds?   As most of you know, I maintain a large portfolio of domain names as sort of a hobby.  A couple of weeks ago I invested in a couple of Geo domains with plans to develop them into portals for their respective city niches.   With the focus of the internet continuing to become more and more local, I think these types of domains are the best way to invest money online right now.

As Brian has been prone to do in the past, he has released a theme that is exactly what I am looking for, at the exact time I need it.  Today he has released his new City WordPress theme, which was of course designed to serve as a portal for a geo domain or similar website.

Here is a screenshot of the theme:

Revolution City theme features:

• Featured tabber and thumbnail section on the homepage
• Dropdown menu navigation
• All 3 sidebar areas are widget-ready
• Theme options page inside WP dashboard
• Comments section coded for Gravatars
• Google AdSense integration in between posts and comments
• Blog page template

A common strategy among city domainers is to develop a blog along with your city domain, so I really like that Brian included a blog template with this theme, and it is available at an affordable price!

If you are interested, right now you can purchase the Revolution City theme single-use package for the Revolution standard price of $79.95, or many will want to get the multi-use package for $199.95.  Of course people who have purchased the All-Inclusive package will get the theme for free.

This guest post was written by Herbert of Digital Media Break, where he writes about the latest digital technology. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

There’s nothing like the feeling of knowing your website’s theme is unique from everyone else’s. Usually, this reassurance is accompanied by a four-digit bill for a professionally-designed page. This isn’t the most realistic or feasible solution if you’ve already got background knowledge in HTML and CSS, are willing to learn, or just can’t cough up the change (I know I couldn’t). So, you stick to the free themes that everyone else has - except you’re going to put your own spin on it. You’re going to modify the colours, the logo, the footer, add DomTABS, and make it totally amazing. For free. Sounds good, right? I’m right behind you, but let’s not dive headfirst into this.

Before choosing your colour schemes, your logos, or researching how to modify Search.php to fit your own needs, you’re going to need to choose a theme. This is arguably the most important step - as the theme defines your blog’s/website’s functions, layout, and abilities. If your chosen theme has these three qualities, I know you’ll be satisified:

1. Author’s Support

No, you don’t need a one-on-one e-mail session; theme authors are usually too busy for that - so they set up support forums and an introductory modifying readme. If the author of your theme didn’t offer up a readme or support forums, try Googling when troubleshooting. If there are no results anywhere in the world, reconsider the theme - do you know enough HTML and CSS to modify it on your own?

2. Layout

Many people overlook the layout - but it can actually make a huge impact on your site. Not only is the site’s layout a reflection of yourself (let’s hope it’s not too cluttered or messy), but it’s also something that is extremely difficult to change yourself. Check the layout - are the sidebars wide enough to fit advertisements into? Is there an advertisement banner in the header? Does the theme have too much stuff in too little space? If you’re feeling iffy about the theme already, take a breather and reconsider - is the theme worth it? Ask yourself - what kind of layouts work best, and with which kinds of sites?

3. Sustainability

Believe it or not, the best-looking themes probably will end up having you do a lot more work. For example, the best-looking Magazine themes, which typically incorporate a lot of graphics in the front page, make use of WordPress’ Custom Fields to display them on the front page. The images must be to a specific dimension, and must be uploaded to the correct folder in your theme. Can you imagine doing that - for all your posts from now on? Do you have the resources to do so? Does your theme automatically resize your photos for you, or will you need to learn how to use Paint.NET or Photoshop?

I can personally relate here - I used to use the Mimbo theme by Darren Hoyt. It was just two images: one for features, and one for the latest featured post. I’d probably change the latest featured post on a weekly basis, and I could use Photoshop to crop it easily. My generous Internet connection allowed me to have quick access to my FTP folder, and I was satisfied. However, I got really sick of the murky Mimbo colours, so I switched themes to The Morning After by Arun Kale. I realized that the Latest Post function, although beautiful, incorporated graphics, and just looked horrendous without the picture. The problem was - with every post, you needed to upload a 470×175px picture to your ftp folder, as well as a 48×48 thumbnail of your picture for the “Recent Posts” sidebar. That’s two pictures for every post. Was the trade-off worth it?

Not in my opinion. After a couple of weeks of redesigning, I scrapped everything and started from scratch. For two days straight, I was tinkering with the three-column Copyblogger theme. No custom fields, no different categories - the theme is the going back to my simple roots - and I like it!

Once you start, don’t stop.

Once you pick your theme, you can’t re-choose. It exhausts both your time and mind to search for themes - so once you find a suitable one, stick with it! Instead of second-guessing yourself, do your research and choose your colour schemes. Fix up your logo. If you’ve got second thoughts, wait until you’re through finishing altering your theme - and if you realize you can’t sustain it, then scrap it and go for a makeover.