#99 will be a new niche theme that we’re calling Announcement. Designed by Matthew Smith, the theme is geared at – you guessed it – making specific announcements. But there’s a twist though… The theme includes something new in a widget which is called “Woo – Component” and the only thing we’ll say about this now is: drag & drop, baby!

The second is a business theme called Swatch. Since this will be our 100th theme (can we hear you chanting “Woo! Woo! Woo!”?), we’re planning many surprises with this one. And that’s all you’re getting out of us on Swatch for now…

SupportPress is a help desk & knowledgebase all rolled into one theme (much like the beautifully designed hosted service, Tender). We think this will be a superb application (theme) for managing your customer support elegantly and most importantly: on a budget. Expect the release shortly. Teaser below…

The first new theme you can expect this month, is a brand-new, minimalist photography theme. This has been a very popular suggestion in recent months and we anyway felt the need to release a more modern (in terms of the functionality) version of Exposure (which was popular in its own right in the past). The new photography theme, Statua, is packing some serious punch and was designed by Chris Rowe, who also recently did Simplicity & Delicious Magazine (both that has shot up the popularity chart).

Here’s a little teaser:

Our second new theme for June, will be a grid-based magazine theme with emphasis on loads of content and a multitude of picture formats. This theme hasn’t been dubbed Editorial for no reason at all and we’ve rolled some special (new) functionality into this one with regards to individual post templates, columns and image galleries / sliders. We’re pretty excited about this new functionality, since we had loads of fun experimenting, pulling & prodding WordPress to get this just perfect.

This is what you can expect for Editorial:

They say “good things come to those who wait” and this month’s releases will be no different. Both themes are 99% completed and just about ready to launch; so they’ll go out well before we reach the end of the month.

Further good news is that next month’s themes are also already in the pipeline and well underway; so we’ll be going back to a more consistent & regular release schedule as of next month.

The new theme, Premiere, is almost ready for release and we’re building quite a few additional goodies into the initial release. We’ve also added an elaborate membership system to the roadmap for Premiere and whilst this won’t be ready for the first version, we’re planning on shaking things up considerably with this functionality.

This is what you can expect to be hitting your computer screens shortly…

Prior to starting this design, we asked Chris to spend some time researching all of the most popular business themes out there and combine the best-of-the-best. Our opinion of the final product is that it’s absolutely fantastic and a guaranteed best-seller. Guaranteed we say.

Here’s a little preview:

In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be continuing this legacy by collaborating with the likes of Cameron Moll, Matthew Smith & Orman Clark, which obviously means that you can expect some extreme awesome on the design-front.

We’ve done this, because this obviously helps out with the capacity in terms of designing new stuff, but also supplements our own design work in keeping the styles & ideas fresh. One of our collaborative designers that has become more prominent in recent months, has been Chris Rowe, who we just recently worked with on themes such as Elefolio, Air & Spectrum. These designs (themes) have all proved to be very popular, which has resulted in us taking our collaboration with Chris to a new level.

Spectrum is now our 14th best-selling theme of all-time

Chris has signed up to become an honorary member of the WooTeam for the next couple of months, which will see him working on at least 6 new designs for us. Our decision in this regard was easy based on the quality of Chris’ design work and we’re hoping that we can leverage the relationship we’ve built to improve our future collaborative designs even further.

A Few Thoughts from Chris

We asked Chris a couple of questions about working with us and here’s what he had to say (divulge)…

Why do you like designing for WooThemes / working with the WooTeam?

I think one of the main reasons is that i’m working with a group of like-minded people. Often in the past I’ve worked with clients who have very little or no knowledge of web development. Explaining the simplest of things can turn out to be quite a time consuming and frustrating task. Working with the WooTeam has been a pleasure throughout, it’s been such a simple and hassle free process every time I’ve worked on a theme.

How does designing for WooThemes (and designing themes) differ from other client work?

It’s quite a contrast when you compare the two. Client work is often done in a controlled manner, with guidelines being set so the end design meets the clients spec / requirements. Theme design is usually the opposite, it tends to be a case of selecting what sort of theme needs to be designed (e.g. business) and then having full creative freedom on it.

Elefolio: Blogging + Tumblogging + Portfolio + Dribbble

What has been your favourite design so far?

I’d have to say Spectrum. When I originally started designing it, it kind of set out to be a version 2 of Gotham News which I’d wanted to do for quite a while. As it progressed it evolved into more of a image based news theme, due to it being a little bit different to the norm I think this is what’s helped it become a pretty good seller.

How does it feel to be the first “honorary member” of the WooTeam?

A true privilege. To me WooThemes is easily the biggest and most recognised WordPress theme selling company out there, to become not just an honorary member but also the first one is a great feeling. Having been able to design the themes I have so far has been a great experience for me so I thank the WooTeam for giving me that chance.

Next up: Food Magazine

The design that finally lead to us inking this new collaboration, is the design for one of our next releases, Food Magazine. It’s a new magazine-style theme – done by Chris obviously – which has a little niche focus: food. Below is a little teaser…

Delicious...

Before signing off, we need to mention that all aspiring designers out there, can take note of how Chris has evolved as a designer and to such an extent that he is now a honorary member of the WooTeam. You can do the same by submitting your designs to us here.

With that said, we’d like to show you a lil’ preview for our first theme of the year – Biznizz. Biznizz is a sweet new business theme, which will add some variety & spice to our existing collection. Expect the release in the next couple of days.

Launch date is imminent (no exact day has been decided yet) and we can confirm that the initial bundle of 10 amazing themes will be selling for $250 (lifetime updates & support, along with the PSD’s). So here’s a look at 5 of those 10 themes (the next 5 will be teased next week), ranging from magazine / news publishing to personal and microblogging to business & photography. It’s all there…

Diverse: Magazine Magnificence

Focused: Sexy Blogging

Nimble: Express Tumblogging

Practical: 1-2-3 Business Profit

SnapBlog: Photoblogging Reinvented

Existing WooThemes users will be able to get these on a significant discount; so don’t worry… We’ll look after you!

Firstly, we have Ryan Downie’s personal portfolio theme design that he originally designed for his own personal use – fueled by his passion for Coffee, Red Bull and lunchtime pot of noodles according to his Twitter stream.

This theme’s release is literally around the corner and boasts more custom post type integration and a great summize of your online presence on the home page.

Caffeinated by Ryan Downie

Then we have another exciting FREE theme coming to you in the next couple weeks. Skeptical is a clean personal design by Nur Fathihah – who submitted a design to us via our site, that we believe should be a hit based on Typebased‘s similar styling and success.

Skeptical by Nur Fathihah

Don’t worry there is of course lots of other development going on behind the scenes – a great new feature to the WooFramework by Foxinni (think sidebar management), an exciting restaurant theme with lots of niche functionality, iPhone testing and SVN management. Hope those hints are subtle enough to get your mind’s racing.

In recent months, you may have been able to criticize us for a *supposed* lack of updates, theme releases at a fast rate & maybe even innovation. But we have been quietly working on things that will absolutely blow your mind, and the best news is that these will be available to you within the next 6 – 8 weeks.

First up, we have a brand-new real estate theme that will revolutionize the way you are building these type of websites with WordPress at the moment. On show today, is Realtor:

Using the latest functionality available in WP 3.0, we’ve developed something that will be of real value. And beyond this being “just another theme”, we’re also planning some very exciting additions & tweaks to our business model in a way that will influence the way you use WooThemes greatly.

For the moment, let’s just say that Realtor has been built using a the WooFramework + a new, little (!?) add-on.

This means that you can soon expect some more business, portfolio, blog etc. themes from us again. In fact, we have these two beauties; both going out to beta in the next day or two. Boast (the first teaser below) is a business + portfolio type design, whilst Diarise (more of a niche release) will surprise many of you with it’s amazingly, unique functionality… Check out the teasers…

The next release though, will be another tumblog-type theme that is a slightly adapted version of Woo on the Slopes. You can expect this new theme – called Retreat – by Wednesday.

So below is a preview of our upcoming theme, CityGuide, which went out to beta recently. If all goes well, CityGuide should be released next week, so keep watching this space!

Our new batch of themes (i.e. these are designs that have been completed and are ready for development) includes collaborations with the likes of Sam Brown, Liam McKay, Ryan Downie, Mads Esjing, Kirstin Pauk & Chris Rowe; so there’s bound to be something you like in the new year.** The batch also includes themes across all of our ranges i.e. magazine, portfolio, business & personal blogs.

Here’s a very sneaky preview (we’ll follow up with more detailed previews closer to the respective theme’s release dates)…

** There’s also some new designs coming from both in-house, with some incredibly exciting new stuff from Magnus, Mark & Cobus. So come January, we’ll be firing on all cylinders in bringing you only the most awesome WordPress designs.

We approached Liam in July and asked him to design a follow-up theme for the hugely popular Gazette Edition theme (which is also one of our all-time best-selling themes). The result is a superb, content-rich magazine- / news-style design titled The Daily Edition. Let’s have a look at the design…

The header showcasing a minimalist & sophisticated style, which just means that it's a blank canvas and ready for your modifications to be added. Just add creativity.

Simple featured scrolling module (for the homepage), which utilizes left / right navigation, as well as an indicator (the 5 red dots) of where you're at in the "slideshow".

We'll also (probably) use extensive jQuery (by the master - Foxinni) to make the video player module something special indeed.

Here's something we haven't implemented (at least in this form before)... Talking points is a mash-up of most-commented & manually highlighted articles. We obviously just love the Basecamp-esque styling of this module! This styling is also carried through & supported in the design of the sidebar elements.

Lastly, the footer "ends" the design with the same minimalism & sophistication that the header started. The footer will be extended and extremely customizable; with the main aim being to improve navigation to the most important sections on your website.

Feedback / Suggestions

So what do you think about the images we pasted above? Think this is a worthy addition to our collection of Magazine-type themes? From the teaser images we’ve posted above, is there anything (in terms of functionality) that we should consider including at this stage? Any other suggestions?

Anyway… Whatever you decide to say, just fill up & enjoy on the comments below!

Note… Whilst these themes’ designs have been finalized and some of them has been coded, there’s no clear ETA on any of their release dates. So it’s not gonna help if you ask us in the comments. All of these themes will however be pushed out in the next 3 months; so even though we’re being vague, you won’t have to wait too long…

Antisocial by Tim van Damme

Antisocial is a hybrid of Tim’s personal “business card website” and a bit of a blog. We’re extremely happy with how this design panned out and we believe this is quite a unique concept in terms of WP themes and what’s available at the moment.

We almost get a kind of “desktop” feel when looking at the design, as there is a kind of “dock” on the left-hand side of the page. That dock will be used to link out to all of your social network profiles, whilst the rest of the design (on the right) mainly takes on the functionality of a traditional blog. The homepage also thus serves as some kind of aggregation space for your activities online and the only element missing from these mockups is a link to a Lifestream page, where you’ll be able to stream all of your activities on those social networks. Anything we’ve missed with Antisocial?

Antisocial - Home

Antisocial - Inner Post

Backstage by Elliot Jay Stocks

Another first for us is Backstage, which is being aimed at bands / musicians / artists. We’ve got some amazing functionality planned for this one and this along with Antisocial will be two of the most unique themes we release in 2009.

There’s however still quite a few question marks (for us) in terms of some of the functionality that we have planned with Elliot. We haven’t decided how we’re gonna handle the music files yet for example or where the “Download Free Tracks” section will pull it’s content from. We are however incredibly excited to get our hands dirty in making Backstage one of the most unique themes of our collection and also the WordPress theming community as a whole.

Backstage - Home

Backstage - Music

Backstage - Home (Glossy Style)

Exposure by FRESH01

Exposure has been based on the success of Aperture and the e-mails we get requesting more photoblogging themes. Again, we’re planning some awesome functionality in terms of widgetizing the whole theme and making it SUPER-customizable!

The idea with the widgets is, to include so many options that it’s gonna come out your ears… Options like displaying posts from a specific tag / category, including a slider for an image section and of course, you’ll be able to use the widget more than once. So in actual fact, there’s just going to be one Master Widget, which will allow you to build your own Exposure. This is most surely ambitious, but we’re sure that we can pull it off (read: Foxinni has got his work cut out for him)!

On another note… We’ve decided to not include a separate written blog in the theme, as we felt that the audience that this theme is aimed at, will be talking via their photos. Obviously every photo can include some text / multimedia content, but the theme won’t have two sections in terms of photos & blog. Thoughts?

Exposure - Home

Exposure - Home (Alternative Widgets)

Exposure - Home (Grunge Version)

SophisticatedFolio by Tony Geer

We love our portfolio + blog combo themes (maybe because we’re all designers at heart), and SophisticatedFolio will be the latest design to join our portfolio themes collection. It’s definitely different to the designs we did before and we’re sure that homepage will wow anyone!

We like the fact that the theme is totally different to our other portfolio themes and the homepage design (especially the featured area) is also a new look in terms of what our existing theme collection offers… Another change-around, is the sidebar that’s actually on the left. So whilst SophisticatedFolio may not be groundbreaking, we believe this is an awesome alternative for our existing portfolio themes.

SophisticatedFolio - Home

SophisticatedFolio - Portfolio

All that’s left is for you to tell us how awesome these concepts are and how excited you are to see them released in the near future… Go on… We know you love them…

More seriously… We’d love to get your constructive feedback on the concepts and if you have any suggestions on the kind of functionality that we should (try) include, we’d love to hear them. Fact of the matter is, the designs are awesome, but if the themes that fit your needs, we’re not doing our job. So tell us what kind of functionality you need from these theme concepts and we’ll do our best to include it!

So the last time we posted some teasers, was way back in March this year (here & here) and from those lists we still have Feature Pitch & “Big Easy” (from Dan Rubin) in the backlog. Feature Pitch will be released next week and then Big Easy, along with Groovy Photo & Blog (from last year’s WooContest) have been scheduled for release next month. (Don’t hold us to that, because we’re a fickle bunch hehe…)

For this post then, we’ve got 4 amazing new theme concepts that we’re working on. You’ll see that we’re only showing you very small teasers in Part 1, but as soon as all 4 concepts are completed, we’ll be publishing more in-depth teasers of the upcoming themes. So here we go (in alphabetical order)…

Some Max Voltar awesomeness

Antisocial by Tim van Damme

We’ve been in love with Tim’s network design ever since we first saw it and apparently we’re not the only one’s that have wanted to create a design inspired by his original work. So we’ve been working with Tim to create a design which includes all of his network design’s elements, along with a little blogging & lifestreaming. The result is a very early concept called “Antisocial”, which is totally unique to anything we’ve released before. [Tim has also given his blog followers a little preview here.]

VIP Access

Backstage by Elliot Jay Stocks

Elliot finally makes a comeback and Backstage will be his second contribution to WooThemes (only because we love Elliot & Proudfolio has been a very popular theme among you lot). Since Elliot has had multiple affairs into the music scene, we thought it would be great to ask him to fill another gap in our theme collection; a design that would primarily work for musicians, artists & bands. The result? An amazing new concept – Backstage – which comes in 3 different style flavours (grunge, glossy & minimalist). You really want this theme (too)…

Great photography exposed

Exposure by FRESH01

And yes… We are still designing in-house as well… Cobus (FRESH01) only joined our little team earlier this year and whilst he’s been responsible for polishing both of my recent themes (The Station & Feature Pitch), he hasn’t contributed his own, unique design yet. But that is officially changing when we’ll be releasing Exposure in the coming months. Exposure is a photoblog design (guess, you could use it as a digital portfolio as well) and has been heavily influenced by the popularity of Aperture. The idea was for Exposure to have a really minimalist feel (even though Cobus has already designed a grunge style alternative as well) and totally focus the attention on the photos.

Showcase your work

SophisticatedFolio by Tony Geer

Personally I’ve always been a fan of Tony’s work and I was pleasantly surprised a while back when we got an e-mail from him, suggesting a little collaborative design effort. We have thus been working with Tony on a new portfolio (and blog) design, which should draw a lot of inspiration both from his current design, as well as the previous iteration, which got a lot of linklove from design galleries. SophisticatedFolio is thus just an upgraded offering on our already-great range of portfolio themes, since we haven’t released a portfolio theme in quite some time.

What you waiting for?

If you haven’t joined WooThemes yet, you really need to think long & hard about why you’re not sharing in this fun. We think the above teasers are enough evidence that things here at WooThemes are only gonna get better and the themes collection is sure to hot up towards the end of year.

In addition to these themes, we’re also negotiating more collaborations with some top-notch designers. Magnus (who hasn’t designed a theme for a while) also has a new theme concept in the works (a design that was initially used as an early iteration for WOO2) and rumours suggest that Mark is designing the follow-up to Aperture. So you’re missing out on the fun if you’re not involved…

OH: and how awesome are those teasers? Bet you can’t wait for Part 2…

Feature Pitch

I have been enjoying putting on my design hat of late and ever since FRESH01 & Foxinni joined the WooThemes team, I now have some amazing skills to assist me. So for Feature Pitch (which will still get a more unique logo), I came up with the concept and then had FRESH’s help to polish the design and truly turn it into a top-notch WooTheme.

The theme’s purpose is simple: to sell your products / services. This is a promotional site, influenced largely by the way Mac Applications (see Things.app and Versions.app) are being promoted and sold. Also – to serve this purpose, we have actually gone for a much narrower design and the width is only about 800px.

I feel that this theme is something unique in terms of our current business theme offerings (only Productum comes close in purpose & focus), which means we’re only trying to offer you an even bigger variety when it comes to using the right theme, to promote your business in the best possible way. Here’s some teaser images:

Feature Pitch - Home

Feature Pitch - Inner Page

Feature Pitch - Blog

Metamorphosis

When we saw this latest design from Izuddin (who is responsible for the hugely popular Irresistible & Groovy Video), we immediately knew this this would be another hit if we were to release it for free.

We like the fact that this is a very unique theme in terms of not having any kind of sidebar (either on the homepage or on the inner pages), which means that the traditional sidebar elements will go into a widgetized footer, with a horizontal slider. Nothing beats a theme that’s unique and free… Or that’s what we believe! Have a look…

Metamorphosis - Home

Metamorphosis - Single

Suit & Tie

I think you’ve all grown accustomed to the fact that here at WooThemes we’re not overly concerned with our ego’s and that we thus love collaborating with industry-leading designers. This time around we’ve gotten Bryan Veloso to work with us on another business theme (2009 is the year of the business theme we believe!) and we’re amazed by the results thus far.

As we’ve done with all the big name designers (Veerle Pieters, Elliot Jay Stocks, Matt Brett & Dan Rubin), we gave Bryan an open brief in terms of what we wanted and the result is an extremely clean, jQuery-infused business theme titled Suit & Tie. Again, the idea of the design is to focus on its core-competencies and to not try be everything to everyone. Also, as I mentioned about Feature Pitch above, we believe in getting a wide variety of themes into our collection, as that is where the real value is for our users. So here you go…

Suit & Tie - Home - Blue

Suit & Tie - Home - Blue & Gray

Bloggingstream

And then we’re finally breaking the backlog of themes from the WooContest… The design is by Daus (who also designed another free theme of ours – Typebased) and with FRESH01′s help, we’ve turned this into a truly stunning theme (imho). The theme can be used as either a traditional blogging layout or a more content-heavy magazine look (as we’ll be developing a bunch of different layout options for this).

We also decided to strip the theme of all its colour (for the default colour scheme), as this should allow our users to really customize the theme extensively. We’ve also tried to keep the emphasis on the content of the site; and not so much any pretty graphics in and around it.

So what do you think?

Bloggingstream - Home - White

Bloggingstream - Home (Alt Layout) - White

Bloggingstream - Single - White

Bloggingstream - Home - Purple

Journal

This is another new design-in-progress from our friend, Daus, which we only got to see this past week. Journal is a magazine-style theme with a difference, as it is completely unique compared to all of our other magazine themes to date. For me, the theme resembles a printed newspaper, which really appeals to me.

Sorry for the lower-res preview, but then again, this post is all about teasing you anyway…

Journal Magazine Theme

Aperture

And then last but not least, I’d just like to mention Mark’s amazing new theme concept called Aperture. Since he has already blogged about it over here, I won’t say too much and I’ll let you visit his blog for some better quality mock ups.

I do however want to add that in terms of the types of themes currently available in the WP community, I believe that Aperture will be one of our most unique and niche themes to date. So we’re extremely excited about this one (along with the others we’ve posted above) and trust that you’ll continue to be excited with us…

Aperture by Mark Forrester

Have your say!

After an extremely long post (I promise that it took me a whole lot longer to write, than it took for you to read it), we’d love to hear your comments on all of our recent theme concepts. Tell us which theme you like best, why you don’t like others and maybe how we can improve on some of them.

Then, we’d also like for you to have a quick vote on which theme concepts you like most… If you all vote for the same theme, it might twist our arm in terms of which to develop first…

A while back we got him to do a collaboration with us on a new theme and we’re no nearing the end of the design process (Dan has already started coding it). The concept is a personal profile space and includes sections to publish your portfolio, along with your other online activities. We’ll also be using Cufon (first time for us) for the custom fonts, which will add a nice typographic style to the theme.

So here’s a bit of a teaser… The theme (which is yet to get a name) will probably be available in the next 2 / 3 months… But we’re open for persuasion on developing this earlier…

Default Home Page - Clean & Dark styling

Default Inner Pages

An example of a heavily textured style

And lastly a clean version of that same alternative colour scheme

Lately I’ve been fairly quiet being more involved in creating alternate styles for other designer’s woothemes, then designing themes myself, but over the last few weeks I’ve managed to find some time to work on some designs of my own. The latest being Productum which is a theme dedicated to promoting your product or service.

Click on image to see full size preview

Packed into a neat 16 column grid structure this theme comes bundled with a neat product image slideshow, a featured content block, recent news/blog posts and some widgetized modules available on your home page. As always it will be available in a variety of colourful styles. With all these features you should be able to customize Productum enough to have a very slick, professional marketing tool. Might I add this theme is not an e-commerce theme, but will have theme options to easily link buttons to payment facilities.

This theme should be available for purchase in late March/April.

Constructive feedback and feature requests are much appreciated, but we obviously cannot guarantee to accomodate all of them.