WordPress.com launches premium themes and WooThemes gets involved

Written by Mark Forrester on February 3, 2011 Blog.

It is with great excitement that we can finally announce a MASSIVE achievement for us. A few minutes ago WordPress.com announced its plans to offer premium themes to users of it’s hosted solution. With WordPress.com having over 17 million blogs and recently publishing it’s impressive traffic stats of half a billion unique visitors a month, it makes perfect sense to further monetize their offering with premium services.

The Headlines theme listing page on WordPress.com

We were contacted by the theme wranglers at Automattic and asked if we would like to offer one of the first two premium themes on WordPress.com. Naturally we said yes and decided Headlines would be a good theme to trial, given it’s magazine layout, neat slider, and slick color schemes.

Headlines - A magazine theme for self-hosted WordPress Sites and now WordPress.com users

The news is already covered on the WordPress.com blog and it has made it onto TechCrunch. Hopefully our servers can handle the traffic surge.

A special thank to Matt Mullenweg for entrusting us with pioneering the way, along with the guys at Theme Foundry, and to Lance Willett and Ian Stewart at Automattic helping us optimize the theme for WordPress.com usage.

Headlines is available for the affordable price of $45 on WordPress.com
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32 Responses

  1. andrew
    February 3, 2011 at 6:01 pm #

    Congratulations guys – a deserved, massive win.

  2. Surendran H
    February 3, 2011 at 6:07 pm #

    That is really a great NEWS. Congrats WOOTHEMES. 🙂

    You are the BEST always!

    Best of Luck!

  3. Wes Kriesel
    February 3, 2011 at 6:35 pm #

    Congrats!!!

  4. Ryan Riatno
    February 3, 2011 at 7:12 pm #

    Congrats guys !! 🙂

  5. Mark Casey
    February 3, 2011 at 7:57 pm #

    Great news.

    Just so you know… the link to the WordPress.com blog goes to the Techcrunch article. 🙂

    • Mark Forrester
      February 4, 2011 at 9:16 am #

      Thanks Mark. Fixed the link.

  6. Anthony Watts
    February 3, 2011 at 8:15 pm #

    Love the “headlines” theme, and I’d buy it in a second…except it has one missing feature that kills it:

    No custom header image.

    I have a signature image, and thus I can’t really migrate without it.

    Please oh please please convince wp.com to offer this theme with a custom header image so I can move to it.

    • Magnus
      February 3, 2011 at 10:41 pm #

      EDIT: Doesn’t seem like wp.com allows uploads of logo, and the background is only for the main part of the body, not the header.

      • Anthony Watts
        February 4, 2011 at 2:14 am #

        is that a full header to replace the colored bar?
        I’m sorry for asking but I can;t tell from any of the descriptions presented at wp.com

    • Nikole Gipps
      February 6, 2011 at 2:01 pm #

      If you need a custom header, you probably should be using self-hosted WP and not WP.com anyway. WP.COM is a little limited in terms of truly customizing your style, regardless of the theme.

      But you can do it with Headlines …
      http://www.peacefulquestretreats.com
      like here … with self-install WP.ORG.

  7. Ed
    February 3, 2011 at 10:02 pm #

    wow – congrats to the Woo team on this big news – have you any more themes in the pipe for the marketplace?

    Ed

    • Mark Forrester
      February 4, 2011 at 9:17 am #

      Automattic is trialing premium themes on WordPress.com, depending on their uptake I’m sure there will be more to come soon.

  8. Edward Palmer
    February 4, 2011 at 4:31 pm #

    Congrads gents! Good work and well deserved! Long time user! Ed Palmer

  9. Alex
    February 5, 2011 at 12:56 am #

    Well done. Congrats, this is huge.

    Can we buy shares in you guys!

  10. Mike
    February 5, 2011 at 1:36 am #

    You guys are truly innovators in your field! Only been with you guys for a few weeks and it has transformed every aspect of my site!

    Congrats again, and I fully expect you to take over the WP theme world, if not the real one!

    Can someone say, “IPO.”

  11. Trond
    February 5, 2011 at 2:44 am #

    Amazing!! Big opportunities for Woothemes!

  12. Jesse
    February 5, 2011 at 6:39 pm #

    I can understand why they picked woo for this but whats up with theme foundry? they have 6 themes and honestly while they might be clean they bore me.. what was the criteria to get into this trial?

    • Magnus
      February 5, 2011 at 6:50 pm #

      Don’t think there was any criteria. We were just asked 🙂 it’s a trial project so I’m sure they will want to include more companies later on. Shelf is a pretty awesome theme

  13. Nikole Gipps
    February 6, 2011 at 2:01 pm #

    Congrats!

  14. pegarose
    February 13, 2011 at 1:12 am #

    love woo themes 😉

  15. Will
    March 3, 2011 at 11:36 pm #

    On your own hosted one you can upload your own header – is that possible one your WordPress one?

    Looks a great theme!

    • Magnus
      March 3, 2011 at 11:53 pm #

      Yes, you can see a screenshot of that on the Crisp theme showcase page 🙂

  16. Dave Straus
    March 11, 2011 at 10:57 pm #

    WordPress Video Tutorials-39 Step by Step Videos http://www.filesonic.com/file/199042372

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