The WooThemes Blog

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.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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After the resounding success of Week 1′s showdown we are quite excited about this second installment. After a good while browsing through all the wonderful showcase pieces we decided we would put two Groovy Video theme customizations head to head this week.

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Sheesh, it feels good to kickoff the newly, introduced Showdown Series (get the info here) today. We hope that all of you have been just as excitedly awaiting the start of a new, intereactive campaign, which promises to be a whole lot of fun.

So for the very first Showdown ever we are featuring two incredible modifications of The Station, which has been our best-selling theme for the last 3 months. The two designs squaring off today is the elegant DBDA Studio versus the funky YourMentalWealth blog. Let’s get into some critique and reviewing then…

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Welcome to the madness. So this our attempt at spicing things up here a little by featuring a showdown between the absolute best of the best in a bit of a blood, sweat and tears affair…

Ever since we first started WooThemes, all of you have shown us that you love modifying our themes, ripping them apart and creating incredibly beautiful websites. You just need to spend a few minutes on our showcase to understand what we mean.

So what’s the showdown then? Basically we’ll select two of these incredible user-modified versions of our themes every week and then have them square off against each other for the title of Showdown Champion. We’ll select the contestants based on submissions on our showcase and we’ll always select two contestants who used the same theme as the basis.

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