All the latest news and announcements, straight from the WooThemes HQ!
A New Showdown
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04. Jan, 2010 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
After being a rip-roaring success in 2009, we’re bringing back the 2nd Season of our Showdown later this month.
The Showdown aims to feature the best modifications submitted to The WooThemes Showcase and put them in the ring against other “competitors” in a fun, interactive competition to be crowned the best WooThemes modification. Our Showcase already features some amazing modifications and the Showdown is further aimed at increasing the visibility & usability of the Showcase (more great modifications, means more inspiration for existing WooThemes users looking to customize one of our themes).
We’ll be presenting some awesome prizes this time around (we’ll even try to get some prizes sponsored outside of WooThemes stuff), so make sure to submit all of your WooThemes modifications to the Showcase ASAP, so that you can be considered for the new season.
Designing Woo-Awesomeness
22. Oct, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
By now you’d know that WooThemes has worked with the best-of-the-best designers within our industry in creating some amazing themes. But our collaborations haven’t been exclusive to only the well-known designers; instead we’ve often collaborated with designers that were relatively unheard of before.
Designers like Firman Daus & Armono Wibowo have made a big impact with their submissions, whilst we’re also excited to preview a new, unseen design by the talented youngster, Ajmal Eylia. There is however one name that shoots to prominence when thinking about young, unknown designers that have made their debut on WooThemes: Izuddin Helmi.
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Saving You Money
09. Oct, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
This morning I was randomly playing around with Google Lab’s News Timeline when I stumbled on two interesting, mainstream articles referencing WooThemes. The article entitled “How to Launch a Professional-Looking Blog on a Shoestring” basically went on to explain in great detail how a WordPress + WooThemes combination saved the author a lot of time & money in setting up a new website.
The second article about two mainstream news websites in Iowa who have also adopted the WordPress + premium themes approach, just drives the point home: premium / commercial WordPress themes save you both money & time.
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Showdown: The Best of the First Season
14. Sep, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
In the last 3 months since we first launched the Showdown, you guys & girls submitted more than 3000 votes and almost 500 comments on the 9 weekly battles that place. For us, this has been a massively successful (and rewarding experience) and we’ve definitely seen how the Showdown has positively affected the quality of contributions to the Showcase.
All good things however come to an end and today we’re officially closing the first season of the Showdown. As a Season Finale we’ve decided to host one more battle featuring the 9 winning contestants from the previous 9 Showdown Weeks. As a recap, here are all the winners…
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 9
07. Sep, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
New week = new Showdown. But since our IE6 post seemed to hijack all of the comments & votes last week, we decided that we’ll keep last week’s Showdown live, along with a new Showdown this week. So please do vote & comment on both, as both weeks’ modifications are incredible.
This week we’re featuring two modifications of our incredibly popular free theme – Irresistible – which has had more than 20K downloads since it was released. And for this battle we’ve picked two diverse contestants in Palo Verde Lodge and Tony Joe White, which means that you’ll have a tough time once again to choose the ultimate winner… Ready, set… Go!
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 8
31. Aug, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
In recent weeks we’ve been making it a habit to feature modifications that were done by designers in the Showdown… Why? Because at WooHQ, we totally value awesome design! And this week doesn’t look like it’s gonna be any different…
(Also view the NEW Showdown for Week 9!)
Aperture may still be a relatively new theme around here (at least in comparison to old school favourites like Fresh News, Gazette & VibrantCMS), but it’s fast becoming one of our most popular themes. So up for today’s contest is Sean O’Brien’s AUS120.com & Chan Min Maung’s Phoe Chan. So let’s see whether they’ve done Aperture justice with their awesome modifications (you get to decide of course)…
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 7
24. Aug, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
This week we’re featuring two modifications of one of our older themes (again) – Over Easy – but judging by the amount of awesome modifications of the theme in our showcase, this is one of our most popular themes to date. Originally designed to function like a business / CMS theme, we’re surprised that today’s two contestants have managed to turn it into a design portfolio, which just makes their mods so much more awesome!
Last week we had a battle of the designers and it seems that this week is going to continue that trend… But hey, we’re sure that you guys aren’t complaining, because this means that you get to vote & comment on some really, hot eye candy… 
So up for battle today, we have the Affiliated Woo Worker – Kirstin Pauk – who will be going head-to-head with the brilliant They Creative team. The coin flip says that They Creative will be up for scrutiny first…
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Tumbling Down?
18. Aug, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
Feeling rather inspired this morning, I decided to present myself with a new challenge: to develop a new tumblelog framework built onto our favourite platform – WordPress. A few hours later and I’ve got the basic ideas in place for where I want to go with this. But nothing around here at Woo would ever be complete if we didn’t throw this out there for your feedback first…
So… Recently I’ve been very impressed with Tumblr and have been surprised by their popularity and adoption rates. Looking at myself however (and the difficulty in posting on my own (full-on) blog, I can understand why micro-blogging is becoming the publishing medium of choice (Twitter probably being the ultimate proof in the pudding). With that in mind then, I’m definitely keen to develop a framework (and subsequently a set of tumblelog themes) for WordPress, but I’m also intrigued by the prospect of possibly porting these designs over to Tumblr.
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 6
17. Aug, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
Last week we took a little break since our previous Showdown, but today we’re back with the 6th installment of the first season of the Showdown. Up until now we’ve had wins with big margins, others with much smaller margins and we’ve even seen underdogs beating out the much favoured competition. So what will happen this week? Well, that’s kinda up to what you say and how you vote…
This week, we’re featuring two amazing mods of one of our older themes – Proudfolio – which has been around ever since we re-branded & relaunched as WooThemes last year. I picked both of these modifications – GoInnovate & Move Design – based on the fact that the websites just do not look one bit like the default Proudfolio… Both are also for design agencies, so the quality was kinda expected… We’re expecting a fierce battle however…
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This is where the magic happens
05. Aug, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
I don’t think that our Affiliated Woo Workers (and the value they add to our business) are praised quite often enough. Fact is, beyond the core WooTeam, these guys and girls are one’s that are probably most experienced in using & modifying our themes.
If you have a look at AUS120, Cubicle Ninja’s & Kirstin Pauk’s websites, you’ll note that these guys obviously knows what they’re doing. What makes these even better, is the fact that all of them are based on an original WooTheme; so judging by this, I’m sure you’d agree that they have enough experience to tweak our themes at will…
These guys are also included in the list of 14 (currently) available Affiliated Woo Workers which you could contact for help in getting really extensive modifications done to your WooTheme. Between those 14 freelancers / agencies, we’ve gotten a heck of a lot of submissions on the Showcase and there’s enough evidence around that they’re worth the money they get paid.
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 5
03. Aug, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
In the past two weeks we’ve had our closest Showdown, and our most-voted Showdown ever. So we’re a little hesitant to make any predictions about what this week will deliver… We’ve decided that it’s another of our all-time most popular themes – Gazette – that’ll serve as the canvas on which today’s battle will take place.
The two amazing modifications that’ll be squaring off against each other this week are the colourful SARocks (created by WooThemes co-founder, Mark Forrester) and the sophisticated and awesome, Quarterback Records. Since we’re fair and all, it’ll be Quarterback Records that’s up first…
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 4
25. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
So after last week finally delivered the intense Showdown (with the winner taking it by only 9 votes…) that we had all been waiting for (and the one I had predicted), we kick off this Monday with another bruising battle… This time, the theme in question is Fresh News’ big brother – Busy Bee.
The two websites that will be squaring off against each other this week is the money-making blog – IncomeDiary – versus the totally inspired, personal blog of Sarah Stanley. A quick look at the two sites makes you realize this is gonna be another close-knit affair, so let’s jump into our analysis right away… Girls up first…
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About the Showcase
25. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
So we’ve been making quite a bit of noise recently about our Showcase and you may have been wondering why we think this is so important in relation to our other activities. We hope that after reading this little post about our goals & aims with the Showcase, you’ll come to appreciate the awesomeness it possesses a little more…
Here are some of the reasons for us punting the Showcase so fiercely of late…
1. It’s about recognizing your hard work. So first and foremost, we believe that the Showcase is there to recognize the amazing work that all of you are doing based on our default themes. This is important to us, because your work is really amazing and if we can just send a little traffic your way, we’d be very happy.
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Themes: What’s next?
21. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
We’ve been releasing quite a steady flow of themes in the last couple of months (18 since the beginning of this year) and since this is (almost) the middle of 2009, we figured we’d take a little bit of a backseat and just consider our next move.
Whilst it’s our job to make decisions about what kind of themes to release next (and judging by the growth of WooThemes, we’re pretty good at that), we thought it’d be good to put this out there to all our fanboys and -girls and get your opinion / feeling on this… So just as a matter of recapping things, here’s all the “types” of themes we’re releasing at the moment:
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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 3
20. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
So after massive blowouts in the first two weeks of the Showdown, we really hope that we can get a very close battle this week around… I mean – how much fun would a nail-biting 51% vs 49% Showdown actually be!? Especially if the winner finally takes the last 10 votes before we close the poll, to snatch a very-late victory… So here’s to hoping that this week will be just that kind of Showdown…
For Week 3, we have thus called on our best-selling theme ever – Fresh News – to hopefully provide a close battle. In the one corner, we have a very recent awesome modification in WhatFest, which will go up against probably the first-ever, great modification of Fresh News – GoMediaZine.
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Why buy the PSD?
18. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
PSD? Huh?
So we get quite a few e-mails asking us what the value is of buying the Developer Package (which includes the PSD file) over the lower-priced Standard Package. First off, we need to explain what the PSD actually is…
All of our themes are designed in Photoshop, before they are coded into HTML / CSS and then into WordPress. So the PSD we refer to, is that original Photoshop design file, which we used to code the theme you end up buying. That PSD is also still layered, which means that all of the elements within the design are still separated and you are thus able to change those individual design elements much easier.
Now that you know what you may be buying, I guess we need to tell you why you’d want to buy a Package which includes the PSD file. Here’s a few reasons…
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