GPL Premium WordPress themes reselling

Premium WordPress theme designing is a small and growing community. The more we support it the more we can get from it. The success of the current GPL theme providers is very important to encourage more designers to release their themes under GPL.

I saw a site reselling Premium WordPress themes released under GPL. This is legal but I am not convinced it is ethical. I strongly discourage anyone buying from such resellers or venturing into such business model.

I recommend StudioPress.com

Why should you buy from the original theme designers?

I have bought developer / membership licenses from iThemes,WooThemes, Thesis Theme,StudioPress and Elegant Themes.

Buying from the original theme designers gives you not just the theme but access to support forums, knowledgebase, tutorials and theme documentation. I have found these resources invaluable and saves you loads of time spent in understanding and customizing the theme. I am also guaranteed to get the latest version of all themes and instant access to new theme releases in future.

Premium WordPress theme designing is a small and growing community. The more we support it the more we can get from it. The success of the current GPL theme providers is very important to encourage more designers to release their themes under GPL.

Why you should not buy from resellers?

Theme resellers don’t respect the spirit of GPL but take unfair use of it. This is equivalent to leeching. They neither add any value to the theme nor do any work to deserve the money they charge. I am not naming the site here so as not to give it free advertising. Also, this may be just the first of many sites to come. The site I saw don’t even have a name / face. What is the guarantee that they will stay for long?

Not safe

Cheap resellers / free download sites may host malware that can hurt your website and PC very badly

WordPress Freelancers

Sometimes, when I am unable to accept a project, my clients ask me to recommend someWordPress freelancers. So, here is a list:

1. Bage – Bage does WP installation, theme design and customization.

2. Srinath – Srinath does WP installs, theme customization and image editing work. He also manages Twitter, Social media marketing.

Both of them are leading service providers in Elance and have excellent performance.

3. Srini – Srini is a well known WordPress developer of popular themes like Plainscape. He can make custom plugins, customize themes and plugins.

4. Ganesh – Ganesh manages blogs for some of the popular Tamil writers. He has been in business for years and offers range of services covering design, SEO and hosting.

5. Sudar – Sudar takes WP freelancing work occasionally. His specialization is plugin development.

6. Mayu – Mayu is an active blogger and a good friend of mine. He provides WordPress installation and maintenance, HTML -> WordPress theme conversion services. You can check hisWordPress freelancing profile

Must read blogs on WordPress

List of blogs on WordPress that every WordPress follower should read.

Must read blogs on WordPress:

1. Yoast – Yoast is a well known WordPress expert and maker of many popular WordPress plugins. His site is very friendly with unique content. I read his newsletter without fail and always learn some new thing.

2. WP Realm – WP Realm is a blog concerning all things WordPress. This is a non-commercial community blog, focusing on the WordPress community worldwide, and redressing a current imbalance in WordPress blogs that are too often US-centric. That means reporting on WordPress news and events across the world, from France to Serbia to China to India to South Africa to the USA and everywhere in between! They focus on WordPress businesses, blogs, events, people and services.

3. Matt – Founder of WordPress. Period. He doesn’t write much technical stuff but his occasional posts about the philosophy behind WordPress is a must read.

4. Lorelle – I feel her like an official WP spokesperson. You will find anything related to WP documented well here.

5. WPBeginner – A tutorial website to learn all things WP. The site’s content is not just for newbies as it writes on advanced topics every now and then.

WordPress Syndrome

Are you too involved in WordPress? Do you have these symptoms?

* To login to any site, you type /wp-admin/ . Example: gmail.com/wp-admin/
* The first thing you think about any website is if it is done in WordPress.
* Fight with Blogger, Joomla fans how WordPress is better.

Then you may be suffering from WordPress Syndrome

Are you too involved in WordPress? Do you have these symptoms?

* To login to any site, you type /wp-admin/ . Example: gmail.com/wp-admin/
* The first thing you think about any website is if it is done in WordPress.
* Fight with Blogger, Joomla fans how WordPress is better.

Then you may be suffering from WordPress Syndrome

Contributing to WordPress community

Free software projects like WordPress can grow only if community gives back. Here are few simple ways for you to contribute even without writing code.

Sometime ago, I read a disturbing post called Is WordPress a Thankless Community?. The point is that we benefit a lot from free software but don’t contribute back in any way. This is unfortunately true.

So, how can we contribute back to WordPress community?

1. Say Thanks to WordPress contributors

Do remember to say THANKS Whenever some one makes a nice WP theme, plugin, tutorial blog post or helps in support forum. You can comment in their blog, respond in the forum, rate their themes and plugins well. Every human will be happy for this.

2. Link to WordPress experts

Link to useful WP resources. This will help spread the word and establish authority for the resources. Being recognised as an expert can help the developers in many ways. For example, some one can hire them for a special WordPress project.

GlotPress

GlotPress is a new free software from WordPress team. This allows software translation by collaborating online. GlotPress

* Is more user friendly than the previous web interface for WordPress translation.
* Makes it easy to generate .po files without bugs.
* Allows to sort, filter strings based on many useful ways.
* Is available for any project.

GlotPress is a new free software from WP team. This allows software translation by collaborating online. You can see it in action at WordPress translations.

GlotPress

Premium Real Estate WordPress Themes

Collection of premium real estate WordPress themes to compare features, price and demos.
Collection of premium real estate WordPress themes to compare features, price and demos.
1. AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme

The AgentPress theme is an ideal solution for real estate agents looking to market themselves and rise above competition
AgentPress includes multiple page templates that can be used to create a complete real estate website. From single property templates to a custom homepage, AgentPress is right for you.
Theme design by Studiopress
Price: $159.90
AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme demo
AgentPress Real Estate WordPress theme details

Premium Video WordPress Themes

Collection of high quality premium video WordPress themes

Collection of Premium Video WordPress Themes to compare features, pricing and demos.

1. Groovy Video

Unique Features:

• Super-easy functionality  to create video posts;
• Videos are resized automatically and Groovy even publishes the embed code for your readers;
• Integration of the WP-PostRatings plugin for some added fun & interactiveness.

Theme design by Woo Themes
Price: $70
Groovy video Premium wordpress theme Demo
Groovy Video premium wordpress theme details

FTP publishing on Blogger to WordPress: Migration guide

FTP publlishing on Blogger to WordPress migration – Simple and step by step guide

Blogger is closing its FTP publishing soon. Those who want to stay with Blogger custom domain or Blogspot can wait for their Migration tool. I recently migrated a client’s site from Blogger FTP publishing to WordPress and it was a learning experience. Here is a brief migration guide:

1. Create a beta site in WordPress. ( http://example.com/beta/ )

2. WordPress import will not work with FTP publishing on Blogger. So, switch FTP publishing to some Blogspot domain name for a moment. Don’t worry. Your blog will be safe as all the FTP files still remain on your server and your site will be accessible.

3. Import your Blogger comments and posts from the Blogspot domain to beta WordPress site.

Premium WordPress Plugins

The future will see organised premium WordPress plugins market. Six emerging trends regarding Premium WordPress plugins are discussed here. Includes paid support, PRO versions, CMS plugins and plugin markets.

 009 was the year of premium WordPress themes. 2010 will see the emergence of organized premium WordPress plugins market.

Six emerging trends regarding Premium WordPress plugins:

1. Premium WordPress plugin markets

Like ThemeForest does for premium WordPress themes, these allow people to sell and buy premium WordPress plugins

WP Plugins: The WordPress App store from Incsub

Code Canyon: The WP plugin market from Themeforest.

Ecommerce WordPress themes

 Collection of Premium Ecommerce WordPress Themes. Compare features, pricing and demos.

1. e Shop Ecommerce WordPress Theme

• Different modes of Shopping Cart

  You may sell anything – tangible or intangible using our themes. You have an option to create your website in any mode.
  

Best WordPress Permalink structure

The best WordPress permalink structure depends on your needs. This post analyses different permalink structures, their pros and cons and recommends best WordPress permalink structure for blogs, news portals and websites for better SEO and performance.

When you install WordPress, the default permalink structure you have is http://example.com/?p=123 . You can retain this structure if having the shortest URL possible is your priority. Else, you need to change this for better SEO.

The most used custom WordPress permalink structure is http://example.com/postname/ .

The permalink structure I use is http://example.com/year/month/postname/ . This is good for performance. Also, gives an idea to the user when the post was written. They can also trim the URL like http://example.com/year/month/ or http://example.com/year/ and see archives for that period.

If you write posts daily or write many posts a day like in news websites, then http://example.com/year/month/day/postname is a good structure.

If you want your posts to be timeless, do not include date information and just include the unique post id.

How to find if a site is powered by WordPress?

How to find if a site is powered by WordPress? Search for wp-content in page source. Any site not having these words in the source is not powered by WordPress.

Get StudioPress.com WordPress Themes

Many clients approach me thinking a site is done in WordPress while it is not. So, how to find if a site is powered by WordPress?

0. Use IsitWP.com. It detects a WordPress site with almost 100% accuracy.

1. Right click on any page in the site and select “View page source“. You can also select “Page Source” in the view menu in the browser.

Premium WordPress theme markets

Free WordPress themes became a thing of stone age after Premium WordPress themes trend started booming in late 2008. Though there are lot of Premium WordPress themes making companies around, only a few like StudioPress, WooThemes, Thesis are making a mark. Not all designers can and want to build a proper business and community around their themes. So, we wondering if theme markets will be the next trend. This can very well become like the mobile apps market.

Premium WordPress theme markets are where one can sell and buy WordPress themes from various designers. Themeforest is a well known marketplace. MojoThemes is a new entry.

WordPress Podcasts

Collection of useful podcasts on WordPress. I spend a lot of time travelling and found listening to these podcasts on WordPress useful.

Recently I spend a lot of time travelling and found listening to the following podcasts on WordPress useful:

1. WP Water Cooler – Roundtable discussion sometimes involving WordPress. Recorded Mondays at 11:00am PST.

2. Hello Dolly – Newest podcast in the arena. Available in iTunes.

3. WP Candy Podcasts

WordPress freelancing

Are you convinced to consider a freelancing career with WordPress ?

Well, here are some of the usual job profiles for WordPress

Time and again, my friends ask why we focus only on WordPress. They are not sure if there is enough market for WordPress or worried what to do if something bad happens for WordPress  we sure there are bigger guys to worry and keep WordPress in health 

According to oDesk, WordPress is the 4th needed skill in demand after PHP, HTML and English. According to Elance, WordPress is the 2nd needed skill in demand !! And, it is widely speculated that WordPress may be powering 12% of websites online.

So, are you convinced to consider a freelancing career with WordPress ?

WordPress web hosting

Hostgator – A fair price WordPress host I recommend

Guides

* How to choose a web host for WordPress?

* WordPress recommended web hosts

WordPress specific hosts

WordPress.com – If you have a low budget and don’t need to modify WordPress much, then WordPress.com may be the best choice for you. You can get your own domain while getting hosted there.

WordPress help forums

WordPress.org offficial forum has lots of unanswered and unresolved questions and the waiting time for highly technical questions may be long. Surprisingly, there are not many unofficial support forums for WordPress. The few out there are run by over-worked individual WordPress geeks. Some are closed while some are inactive and filled with spam. Considering the avalanche of premium sites offering WordPress themes and plugins, there is huge space for premium WordPress support. What do you think?

Do you need help with WordPress?

Here are some forums where you can get some WordPress support:

1. WordPress official forum

2. WP Tavern forum

3. Stack Exchange forum for WordPress.

4. IRC channel for WordPress support

Premium WordPress Theme Directories

Are you looking for premium WordPress themes? Here is a list of WP theme directories to sort themes by color, price, provider and niche.
Are you looking for premium WordPress themes? Here is a list ofpremium WordPress themes directories where you can find leading theme makers and sort themes by color, price, provider and niche.

1. Official WordPress directory for premium WordPress theme designers
2. Theme Sorter
3. WP Best
4. WordPress Premium
5. WP Hell

Useful WordPress Tips Websites

Are you looking for useful WordPress tips websites? Here is a list of websites offering regular updates on WordPress tips and tricks.
Are you looking for useful WordPress tips websites? Here is a list of selected websites which offer regular updates on WordPress tips and tricks.

Beginner WordPress tips:

1. WP Beginner
2. WP TV

Advanced WordPress tips:

1. WP Engineer
2. WP Recipes

Plugin release: Tag or Category term

We are glad to announce our first plugin called Tag or Category term_group Order.The purpose of this plugin is to group tags or categories from the WordPress dashboard. This allows queries that fetch terms to use ‘term_group’ as a sort order and and display them in a semantic way in archives and individual posts.

For example,

If we have three groups of categories for size, color and object, then categories displayed as

Small, Green, Table

Big, Blue, Chair

are more readable than

Table, small, green

Chair, big, blue

How to use WordPress SEO by Yoast and Scribe SEO?

WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast and Scribe SEO premium plugin are two essential plugins we use for optimizing page content. Here is a brief guide on search engine optimizing your posts using these.

Scribe SEO WordPress plugin

In your post / page edit view, you have two sections for SEO called:

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
2. Scribe Keyword research, Scribe Content Optimizer, Scribe Link building.
WordPress SEO is a popular free plugin and quite straight forward.

Genesis Child Themes

Links for free and premium Genesis child themes by StudioPress and an analysis on the growing WordPress child theme trends.

Genesis WordPress theme framework

The beauty of Free Software is that it allows a healthy economy to grow around it.

While WordPress saw the growing industry of premium themes 3 years back, now I can see a new trend of child theme market growing on top of premium WordPress themes with GPL license. A good example is the number of 3rd party child themes available for the Genesis WordPress theme framework designed by StudioPress.

Here is a list of child themes for the Genesis theme framework available outside StudioPress:

How to fix Timthumb security issue?

Get a free website secuirty scan from Sucuri.net

Timthumb.php is a popular script that is used to resize images dynamically in WordPress sites. This can be usually found in some popular premium  themes and image related plugins. Last week, a serious security issue was found in Timthumb. Unless, you update Timthumb to its latest version at once, your site is vulnerable for hacking. This is a serious threat affecting thousands of websites and even the WordPress founder Matt blogged about this. So, please act now.

Here are few simple steps to fix timthumb security flaw:

Update: Use Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner plugin.

1. Deactivate unwanted plugins.

2. Delete all inactive plugins and themes. If you have customised any of these themes or plugins, do take a backup in your computer.

3. Go through your active themes and image related plugins and look for a file called thumb.php or timthumb.php . This can be usually found in the root folder of the theme or in folders like scripts, lib etc., If you are looking at the right file, you will see the name of Ben Gillbanks and a link to this project. Woothemes, Gorilla themes, Thesis, early versions ofElegant Themes are some of the theme shops that make use of this script.

WordPress SEO Case Study Provide by Iglodlabs

A case study of our Word SEO work:

The site is a niche blog on resources in Tamil language. The site has been online since 2007.

In June 2011, I started implementing some WordPress  SEO measures and observed the following results immediately:

1. Page views, visits and search traffic doubled.

WordPress.com SEO

If you are in WordPress.com, you cannot and need not do much to improve the SEO technically as it is a great platform for SEO already.

Still, here are some ways  for better SEO in your WordPress.com blog:

* First, make sure that your blog is set to allow search engines. Visit Settings – > Privacy in your dashboard and choose the first option.

Iglodlabs Provide SEO best practices recommended by Scribe SEO plugin

SEO best practices recommended by Scribe SEO plugin

Scribe SEO WordPress plugin

Overview

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the traffic to a website from the organic or natural results of a search engine. SEO does not try to trick search engines. On the contrary, the goal of SEO is to provide information-rich content in a way that is naturally weighted by the search engines because it follows the “rules” of the search engines. Below are guidelines for optimizing content according to current SEO best practices.