WooThemes

First up, we’d like to wish everyone a very prosperous 2009. We are extremely excited about the year ahead and we hope we can count on all of you to join us on this journey. And with a new year, always comes the need to tweak things in order to improve on how we’ve gone about our business before…

So since our previous two sales promotions (the 3 for 1 Halloween & 4 for 1 Xmas Special), being wildly popular - we have decided to take what we have learned from these promotions and integrated it into a new Permanent 2 for 1 Special.

This means that from today onwards, you will be receiving a bonus, free theme (either Single or Developer license, depending on which you have purchased), when you purchase any one of our great themes. With this offer, you will essentially be getting double the value, without having to pay anything extra. This offer also does not have any time limit and will be in place all year long (even though we will definitely do another “4 for 1″ - or maybe even a “6 for 1″ - later this year).

This is just another way that we’d like to show that our users are the most important aspect of our business, whilst we really want to continue increasing the value to our customers. Hope that this latest-value-add will impress all of you even further!

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We’ve decided to end 2008 on a high and make BlogTheme available for public release. So with this free release, we are now already boasting four, very nice free themes - which will definitely receive a big boost in 2009 as well.

The decision to make this theme available for free now, after initially releasing it as a paid theme, might look strange to you, but we can assure you that there’s nothing dodgy about this decision at all… We simply feel that even though BlogTheme is a great-looking theme; the new pricing structure we trialed with the theme did not really have the effect we were aiming for. So instead of increasing the price of the theme (to be level with our other themes), we’d rather just release it for free!

We will also be taking care of all our users who have purchased a copy of BlogTheme until now. E-mails were sent out to them this morning, which offers them the opportunity to either exchange their copy of BlogTheme for any one of our other great themes or request a full refund for the purchase. If you haven’t received this email please contact us.

So everyone stays a winner around here… We hope that you enjoy your New Years’ celebrations tomorrow!

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Today is supposed to be the last day of our Christmas 4-for-1 special , meaning all your Christmas shopping is supposed to be finished.

However, if like me you still haven’t got everything you said you would and you’re now already celebrating this merry time of year we’ve decided to throw you a life line and extend our 4-for-1 special till the end of 2008 , that gives you one more week to take advantage of this fantastic offer!

We thought about changing the offer slightly, and coming up with a clever new catch phrase, but why mess with a winning formula, especially if all you can come up with is this one we found on fail blog .

Happy shopping Woo Users and have a fantastic Christmas!

P.S. See all the special details on the original 4-for-1 offer post here .

P.P.S. This offer will definitely be ending when the clock strikes 12am (GMT) on New Years Eve 2008 . No more extensions.

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Today not only see’s the launch of our Christmas 4 for 1 special, but also the launch of one of our exciting themes that we collaborated with the wonderful Veerle Pieters on - Abstract.

A good few months ago we commissioned Veerle to design us a theme with a typical Veerle flair to it. We requested the theme have a business feel to it, keeping it simple and fun though. That was our only guidelines giving Veerle almost complete creative freedom on this project.

The end product that Veerle supplied us with was a pixel perfect Illustrator mashup of shapes and curvy lines in a harmonious colour palette, laid out neatly in a spacious grid structure. It was professional enough to be used as a business theme, and also fun enough to be used as a personal theme making it quite multi-functional.

Over the last month, we’ve sliced and diced her beautiful photoshop/illustrator design into neat html/css and Adii and Magnus have applied some wordpress wizardry.

I was the lucky one to be selected to create some alternate styles for the theme, not a particularly easy task when working with an industry leading designer’s designs. No pressure. I do hope you enjoy the 4 alternate styles though and will find one that suites your personality.

Without further ado here is the demo for Abstract for you to marvel at, and below you will find links to purchase it. Remember if you buy this theme in the next week you will be entitled to download 3 other WooThemes. Bargain!

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Ho Ho Ho! Santa has arrived a week early here at WooThemes headquarters, bearing lots of gifts and instructing us to dish them out to you in the form of a 4 for 1 special for all our WooTheme visitors!

We’ve run a 3 for 1 special in the past as our Halloween special, but nothing as daring as this. 4 wonderful WooThemes for the price of 1 !

Santa has assured us this is a sensible business move and will help make a lot of people’s Christmas even more merry!

This offer applies to both Single & Developer Licenses, which means you get the following:

• Buy a Single License for $70 USD and get any 3 other themes (on Single Licenses) of your choice; or
• Buy a Developer License for $150 USD and get any 3 other themes (on Developer Licenses) of your choice.

For the single license special, each of the 4 themes comes with an individual license, so you can use the themes on 4 different websites.

HOW IT WORKS

As with everything in life, there’s some “rules” with regards to the special… Here they are:

1. The special is only valid from 17 December (midnight GMT ) until the end of 24 December 2008 (midnight GMT) the clock strikes 12am on New Years Eve 2008 (we extended the special ) as specified above. No previous purchases will be eligible for this. If you miss the deadline, you will not be able to make use of this special.

To take advantage of this fantastic Christmas present simply select to purchase your favourite theme, for example, our latest theme offering, Abstract (which we collaborated with Veerle Pieters on will be launched with the start of this 4 for 1 promotion - details to follow). (more…)

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What a year 2008 has been, WooThemes is only 5 months old, yet we’ve launched 17 themes, answered about 2 400 support queries (14 000 forum threads!), and replied to a heap of sales/administration emails. To put it lightly we’ve been busy bees .

Today is a very special day as we are launching the much anticipated 19th theme of 2008 appropriately named - Busy Bee . BusyBee was masterminded by Magnus “Flash Gordon” Jepson , after much research into the reasons for our most popular theme - Fresh News .

Busy Bee caters for a huge variety of users, it can be used as a news based or magazine based theme. Alternatively you can use it for your personal blog, or your business website. It is packed full of useful features, with Magnus revising a good chunk of the theme options.

9 dedicated advertising blocks, with an easy to integrate Adsense option, 13 pixel perfect colour styles and completely widgetized sidebars and footer space, with some lovely custom-built widgets.

Go taste the honey here , constructive feedback most welcome as per usual.

Update: We’ve added a video player widget because of popular request. Grap version 1.0.1 if you already downloaded the theme. Check out the docs for how to setup video posts.

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It’s the 28th of the month and we’ve got just enough time to squeeze another theme release in before the end of the month, that mean’s we’ve launched 3 themes this month!

BlogTheme is another design concept that we received through our WooContest . Designed by Chris Rowe, who also designed Gotham News , this theme, that’s name is pretty self explanatory, has been specifically designed to cater for personal bloggers who like a simple, clean-cut blog design, with no bloating functionality, just the optional lifestreaming plugin that helps bring together all your social media profiles onto your site.

This theme is bundled with 5 colour styles, one of which we are sure we’ll suite you and your colourful personality.

You’ll want to read what we’re about to say!

We’ve decided that we will be launching some even more affordable themes, specifically for personal bloggers, with less functionality, but of course the same quality framework working under the bonnet. BlogTheme will be the first of these themes and available for an amazing 40 dollars ! Yup 40 dollars !

What are you waiting for, take this theme for a test drive , find out more about what this theme offers, and then give your blog a facelift.

As always please provide us with your constructive feedback.

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Well, maybe this isn’t as cool as Batman himself, but we think you’d love it nonetheles… Gotham News is the 2nd theme (after Typebased) we’re releasing from the recent Top 10 submissions in our WooContest.

So before we get into the details for the theme, we’d like to say thanks to Chris Rowe - who designed the theme - for a great theme concept. Chris’ 2nd Top 10 submission - Personal Blog Theme - is also almost ready for release and you can expect that one early next week.

The Theme

I think we were attracted to Gotham News mainly due to its simplistic beauty - and by that I don’t mean that it is not well-designed - in fact, it means that the design & style is great without being overbearing. This is one of the main things we’ve found recently - and it’s been confirmed in the responses we’ve gotten via our survey already: our users want our themes to be as customizable as possible.

For this very reason, Fresh News is our most popular theme ever - it’s got a great design and it’s built on a superior code base, which has allowed our users to customize it extensively (see the Fresh News mods on our showcase as an example).

So to cut to the chase - we saw all of these characteristics in Gotham News and that is why we’re so excited about this release. Essentially we’ve given you the blank canvas (that has been constructed on our top-notch theme framework) and it’s your job to make this design your own!

Magazine Style?

We’ve been focussing on a lot of themes that are not magazine-orientated of late, but again the preliminary responses on our survey has showed that most of our users are still very interested in buying these type of themes (it’s currently second after business themes). So Gotham News is basically us listening to your requests!

From a functionality point of view, we haven’t tried to reinvent the wheel, but instead we’ve taken some of the best elements from our other magazine themes and integrated them into a hybrid offering. The focus of Gotham News is on variety and catering to a vast amount of users’ needs & requirements.

Batman needs us

So we’ve got to run out, since Batman needs our help… But we’d love for you to check out Gotham News in a little more detail, view the demo of the theme or maybe it’s time for you to sign up to our themes club (which now sports 17 themes already!).

Oh, and leave your feedback. Please.

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We’re very happy to announce the release of THiCK at last, after posting the teasers to the theme about a month ago already. But I’m sure you’ll forgive us, since we’ve been hard at work on quite a few other thinks during the last month (which included 4 new theme releases anyway). Plus, you’ll have to forgive us, once you see this beauty in action…

THiCK was designed by the self-confessed, punk rock designer - Matt Brett. This was the first time that we have worked with Matt and he is also probably the most-popular and most-established designer with which we have collaborated. And we can honestly say that Matt lives up to this glowing reputation as rockstar designer - the design of THiCK is awesome and the CSS superior to most websites you will find out there. So kudo’s to Matt for helping us create an incredible theme!

DESIGN

We asked Matt to create an uber-personal blog theme, which resembles the thinking and principles behind the redesign of his own site, which he did a while back. The result is a design that is intended to allow you to take back your own blog and publish all of the various elements that builds your personality (photos, lifestream, your favourites etc.).

The style itself is reminiscent of the style that Matt has become known for… The theme includes both a grunge & clean version, along with the option to use a traditional dark on light approach or a light on dark style. And then you will also have 5 different colour schemes (default - grey, blue, orange, green & pink) to choose from for each of these 4 style options, which makes it 20 possible colour / style combo’s in total. (more…)

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Eek… This is kinda embarrassing, but we missed our own birthday, which occured on Sunday, 2 November. We had been planning to do a post about it, but things just never really panned out, considering we were busy finalizing stuff for the WooContest. But better late than never, we say…

So then I think it’s time that we hear a nice big “Happy Bday Woo!” from all of you folks! Now sure - WooThemes itself is only 4-odd months old, but this whole journey started out on 2 November 2007, when I released The Original Premium News Theme (I was also on my own at that stage). Back then, I definitely was not as serious about the business as I am now and it was only when Magnus & Mark joined that things really started to take shape.

In hindsight, our business has far exceeded my wildest expectations and I think all 3 of us are more motivated than ever to continue building WooThemes!

Now, with all of that out of the way, we’d like to give all of you a present (even though it is our birthday). So since The Original Premium News Theme started it all, we’ve decided to release the theme to the public for free. We’ve learned a helluva lot since releasing The Original theme, but that theme is one of the cornerstones on which WooThemes has been built. So we’re sure that everyone will enjoy this free release…

The theme will be released under the same terms as our Snapshot theme i.e. you will need to purchase a support package from us to get access to the support forums & tutorials. Otherwise you will need to enjoy the theme without our help!

So download the theme and enjoy this one as a celebration of the journey we have undertaken in the last year!

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