Meet Michael Krapf, WooNinja

You would’ve noticed in the last couple of months that we’ve been focusing on one recurring topic: more value for existing users. And with this latest announcement, we’re hoping to further build on that strategy in the hope that all WooUsers will find even more value & pleasant experiences within the WooCommunity.

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve noticed that the forum is being pounded by more & more support requests as the WooUsers kept modifying, tweaking and breaking (!) our themes at an alarming rate. Because this is however our exact aim with our themes (they’re meant to be customized), we figured there was only one way to improve support in this regard: hire another WooNinja.

So with that, we’d like to welcome the newest addition to the WooTeam, Michael Krapf, who will be helping out Tiago, Kirstin & the rest of the WooTeam in making our support function an even better experience!

Meet Michael

Michael has been working with WooThemes for quite a while now and has been an active community member (especially in terms of helping out other WooUsers on the forum) since the very beginning. Having become quite a prominent figure in the WooCommunity, Michael also became an Affiliated Woo Worker shortly thereafter and established himself as an extremely valuable resource for the WooUsers that chose to work with him.

As we’ve always preferred growing the WooTeam from within the business and community, Michael was the perfect candidate to help us out in terms of supporting the WooUsers in an official capacity.

Michael absolutely loves Canvas and has handled quite a few client projects built on top of it; so you’ll most definitely be able to find him answering a few Canvas-related queries on the forum.

With that, we’d like to welcome Michael for one last time and we hope that you’ll soon have the opportunity of interacting with Michael. We also hope that your experience(s) with WooThemes will just continue to grow & improve.

After recently – and without any real announcement – adding two more Tumblr themes to our collection (Decadence & TumFolio), we felt that we needed to give our Tumblr themes a proper place within the WooThemes.com ecosystem. This also signals our intent with regards to creating more Tumblr themes going forward and we’re especially excited to explore with niche-focused themes (such TumFolio).

Well, one of the things that has been on our to do list for a while now, was to redesign & optimize our theme documentation a bit, as the existing format probably wasn’t as usable as it should be. So this is what the revised theme docs now look like:

Canvas Theme Documentation

If you can remember what the old theme docs looked like, we’ve basically changed this for the new version:

• Theme documentation should be focused on being usable, so we’ve increased the size to now use full width and thus making the content easy to navigate & peruse;
• The sidebar navigation now serves as a table of contents for all the documentation available for the theme and also scrolls with you as you scroll down the page.

So we’d love to hear what you think, as these changes have been rolled out to all theme docs for both free & paid themes. You can view the docs for Bueno as this is a free theme.

And just as a note… These are the kind of improvements we’ll aim to bring to WooThemes in future WooWeeks i.e. stuff that’s not gonna make the world stop turning if we don’t do it, but also stuff that can add value if we actually find the time to implement it. So hopefully you’ll find value in this approach going forward!

As part of our continuing quest to add value for our users – not only via new themes, but also via the surrounding WooThemes resources – we’re proud to announce the new addition of the WooCodex to our support offering.

Since standardizing all of our themes with the implementation of a core set of functionality via the WooFramework, we’ve been finding ourselves using the WooFramework for all of our projects; not just in our themes. The reason for this is simple: The WooFramework already includes so much functionality, which makes it perfect for any kind of WordPress-powered website.

So as an added benefit, we’ve made the WooCodex available to all of our users, which will allow them to use the core WooFramework functionality to further extend their WooThemes modifications, or even use it for websites that don’t even use one of our themes. As an example, the WooCodex includes information on adding more theme options, modifying the custom write panel or bending our image / video embeds to your will. We believe that this resource now makes using these functions even easier and more accessible to the vast majority of our users.

The WooCodex is still under construction and we’ll update it as we go. Feel free to leave suggestions & feedback about the WooCodex in the forum and we’ll update it accordingly.

Otherwise, check out the WooCodex now.

I think that everyone would agree that a custom WordPress-built site will cost you lots more than any of our individual themes or subscriptions, right? The reason in this is purely in the time that a designer / developer needs to spend servicing one client, whilst we can spend that same time but then give multiple clients access to the same development. That’s just the way the two different business models work and both will bring their own pros & cons to the table.

Now, I’m not suggesting that custom design / development beats getting a template (since I also own a thriving custom design / development agency), but a template – when used correctly – can offer you great value-for-money; especially in times like these… When I browse around our showcase of WooThemes modifications, I see more and more great examples of how our themes were used as a framework and not an out-of-box solution. Looking at examples like Brad Ruggles, Anne Jackson, GoMediaZine & Resume Bear – it is hard not to see the value in customizing one of our themes. So why doesn’t everyone do it?

Another great example (to prove my point) is the recently redesigned ThinkVitamin website from the Carsonified crew. Even though I’d have loved for them to customize the theme more, it’s still great to see such a respect company using one of our themes; instead of having to develop one from scratch. So why would Carsonified (an established and hugely succesful company) use a WooTheme, when they could’ve done this on their own? Here’s why I think they did (and why others are doing this too):

• At $70 a pop, our Single License themes are a steal and a fraction of the cost of a custom WP theme;
• Our themes already have a bunch of non-standard WP functions built-in;
• Maybe they didn’t feel as comfortable with WordPress as they do with other platforms;
• Their design + CSS skills are top-notch, which is all they’d need to deploy to customize one of our themes.
• They wanted to launch the redesign ASAP and didn’t have the time to develop a custom theme; and
• They knew that we’d provide them with fast and efficient support on any queries they might’ve had whilst installing / tweaking the theme.

I know that for designers / developers using a template as a basis of their projects seems like “cheating”, but even Magnus is using one of our themes (modified though) on his own blog. So why when our themes offer you a fast, efficient and value-for-money solution, would you decide to go custom? For me the bottomline is a “horses for courses” approach in terms of going the custom route only when you need to; if you can however service all your needs with a modified WooTheme, why look elsewhere huh?

• Single License ($70) vs 3 Month Single User Subscription ($150): Difference of $80 USD
• Developer License ($150) vs 3 Month Developer Subscription ($225): Difference of $75 USD

And then it goes without saying that the 6 Month Subscriptions just further increase these gaps. But I’d like for you to consider the following figures, based on the club members that subscribed in the first 2 weeks after we launched the club in July this year (since those subscriptions came up for renewal now; with the majority being renewed for another 3 months):

• We launched the new WooThemes Club with 8 themes (all with multiple styles and colour options);
• Since then, we have released another 5 new themes;
• Consider that another new theme – Over Easy – will be released on Thursday, which makes it 6 new releases in about 3 months;
• So that means that the 3 Month Subscribers would’ve gotten 13 / 14 themes for their subscription; and
• This then translates to about $11 / theme on a 3 Month Single User Subscription and about $16 / theme on a 3 Month Developer Subscription.

Now in my mind (even if I could be totally neutral, unbiased and objective for a minute here) that is incredible value right there; especially considering that stuff that is going on in global economic markets.

What do you think? Does this “increase” the value of our club subscriptions in these turbulent times? Let us know your thoughts…