For you. Personally.

We’re happy to release our 33rd theme (yes – we already 33 themes…) and the theme in question, is the personal blog theme – myweblog. The theme has a similar style to our most popular, personal blog themes, like Fresh News & Busy Bee and in that regard myweblog is sure to be a winner!

And myweblog also has the privilege of debuting our new stable Woo Framework backend, which we’ve been going on about recently. Both Aperture & Meta-Morphosis was released with beta versions of the backend, but myweblog includes the backend that we’ll be intregating into all of our old themes very soon.

So instead of me harping on about how cool this new backend is, have a look at it for yourself:

And then just before I let you leave… Go ahead and view demo, read up on myweblog’s features and then consider buying the theme and joining the WooThemes camp in the process.

Blogging & Streaming

I finally feel that we’re making some headway into the backlog of themes that was created by all of the amazing designs we purchased via the WooContest last year. It seems as if there’s light at the end of the tunnel and I’m extremely excited to push out more of the themes that we’ve previewed recently.

So the next theme on the release list is Bloggingstream, which was designed by Firman Daus. The theme – which sports a sexy integration for a lifestream – is just as well suited to a personal blogger, as it would be for a “diligent” publisher. The design also contains 7 different advertising to enable you to make money from your website.

Style-wise, we’ve kept the default style as clean as possible, to allow you to truly make this theme your own, whilst we believe that the additional (light-on-dark) styles can also be used out-of-the-box to suit your own branding needs. You’ll see that we’ve put some effort into the typography, spacing & layout to keep the focus on the content.

So view the demo, read up on the specs of the theme and then give us a little feedback love…

Download the WooTees design kit

Stop the press. We’ve decided we’ve had enough of wordpress themes and we are now going to be venturing into the t-shirt design business instead.

…… that’s a joke, don’t worry.

April is going to be a monumental month for us at WooThemes as it will be the first time all 5 of us of the WooTeam will be in the same room at the same time!

A few months ago we all decided we would get together for Future of Web Design 2009 in London, England. What better event to attend together to soak up some design goodness from the industry’s best designers.

We’ll hopefully be taking some t-shirts to the event to giveaway and that’s where we need your help – in designing them. We are looking for a kickass design that people want to wear, not your typical promotional tees that get thrown into a cupboard never to be worn. Your design can be trendy, humourous or professional, or even all three – we open to suggestions.

Prizes

- The winner will receive $500, a 6 month developer license, and their name on the collar of the t-shirt gaining you huge street cred.

- The runner up will receive $250 and a 3 month developer license.

- 3rd place gets you a 6 month developer license.

Terms and Conditions

• The design submitted must be entirely your own work.
• By entering this competition you consent to your design concept being used by WooThemes and possibly even avaliable for purchase at a later stage. First, second and third prize will, as already stated, be awarded a cash prize for their work.
• The winners will be required to deliver their design in the required format before payment is made, determined by an inspection of the design source file.

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…

Groovy Video - Perfect for video bloggers

So we finally got our groove on and finished the first theme in the Groovy Series (from the WooContest)… After releasing WooTube (our first video theme) last month, we’re feeling very comfortable with further extending our range of multimedia themes and the newest addition to our collection is Groovy Video, which was designed by the talented Izuddin Helmi.

(We know this has taken long to release, but we’re sure that the end result more than makes up for this!)

Groovy Video carries a similar style to our free theme – Irresistible (also by Izuddin) – but is much more focused in terms of its functionality. Groovy Video is exactly as the name suggests: a video theme with a very trendy and fun design. Coupled with some nice jQuery here and there, you’re bound to enjoy browsing through all the videos on a site using this theme.

We’ve again made including any videos as easy and quick as possible; you literally only need to copy / paste the video’s embed code into a custom field and Bob’s your uncle. We’ve also already integrated the WP-PageNavi & WP-PostRatings plugins for you – so no need to worry about those either.

This theme does what it says it does; and it does that well. It doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not and if this theme could talk, it’d probably tell you that it only wants to be groovy…

View the demo of Groovy Video here or consider buying into our awesome club. Feedback welcome as always here at WooThemes…

Newsport was one of the design concepts that was originially submitted in the theme contest we ran last year October. It was designed by Armono Wibowo – an Indonesian web designer – who finished in the top 10 of the competition. Armono also designed Typebased which is available for free on Woothemes.

It was then coded by PSDtoWordPress and woo-erized (adding the icing on the cake) by Magnus, who built some nifty functionality into it, spread across 4 widgetized modules. You can do all sorts of cool things using the theme option’s panel, like swop the category based top navigation bar for a page based navigation top bar. You can move the logo to the left and have a 468 X 60 ad banner next to it. You also have complete control over what categories appear where and you can paint your theme 11 different colours.

Find out more about the theme or demo it here.

An irresistibly good free theme

We know February has been a bit slower compared to the previous 2 / 3 months, but it must be as a result of the extreme heat here in South Africa (where I’m based) and the icy coldness over there in Norway (which Magnus calls home). So instead of focussing on some of our upcoming club themes, we’ve been in a giving mood…

Along with the free icon set we released last week, we’d like to announce the release of our brand-new free theme: Irresistible, which now becomes our 5th free theme release. The theme was designed by Izuddin Helmi and was a Top 10 winner in the WooContest of last year.

Irresistible (demo here) is a personal blog theme, with a little bit of a multimedia focus. The idea was to great a visually-rich design that accomodate your written content, lifestream and all of your multimedia content as well. Nothing flashy; just a cool personal blog theme, with the standard WooThemes backend goodness thrown in there as well.

So enjoy this free release and if you’re impressed with the quality of the theme, consider buying one of our premium themes.

So with that in mind, here’s some of the themes that we’re working on at the moment. All of these themes will be released in the next 3 months – we might change this slightly – depending on whether something comes up and we replace one of these with another concept – and in no specific order. All of these themes are currently in various stages of development and we’ll probably schedule their release as soon as they near completion (we’re not like those corporates with 1 / 3 / 6 & 12 month plans…). Here they are (click on the thumbnails for larger previews):

Geometric by Adii

This will be our first theme release for 2009 and it has been scheduled for tomorrow (if all pans out as planned). The theme is actually already completed (see demo here) and I’m just working on adding a few different colour schemes and styles (go here for more previews).

The theme is a blog & portfolio hybrid and I’ve tried to take everything we’ve learned from you about our previous portfolio themes (Fresh Folio & Proudfolio). So this is a new take on an older idea, whilst the custom, widgetized (!!) homepage is also something new for Woo. Check back tomorrow for a more complete demo & run-down of Geometric’s features…

Newsport from the WooContest

Since our magazine themes are still wildly popular, we expect that this one will be a hit with you as well. Another theme from the WooContest last year, Newsport sports an elegant and structured interface, which is very different to some of the other content-heavy designs we’ve done in the past.

Coupled with a few alternative colour schemes and inner page templates, this one is going to be a beauty. Promise. Plus – we might just try out a few new functionalities for this one… Got suggestions? Hit us up…

Cushy by Liam McKay

We really love working with Liam and this will be his fourth theme on WooThemes. Cushy is a business-minded theme with a difference, since it incorporates some of the current corporate-design trends, whilst also following some of the tried and tested principles of yesteryear.

The additional colour schemes for Cushy also looks yummy and we’re sure you’re gonna be woo’ed when you play around with a live demo of the theme. Expect this release sooner rather than later.

Irresistible from the WooContest

To say that this theme is unique, is an understatement I think. Irresistible is definitely something different to what we’ve done until now and I think the theme shows a lot of promise in general.

From a functionality perspective, I also think that the theme will be very much multi-purposed and will serve a wide variety of your needs (instead of focusing on a niche purpose). The style is also a nice change from what we’ve done previously – so I expect this will freshen up our overall theme options.

Groovy Video from the WooContest (1st Prize!!)

Groovy Video is the first theme we’re developing from the Groovy series (consisting of 3 different themes), which won our WooContest last year. I think a video theme is much overdue on WooThemes – because even though we support nifty video integration in most of our themes, we don’t have a niche-video theme yet.

With Groovy Video, we’ll definitely be covering our bases in that regard. Plus I think the design is pretty cool and along with Irresistible and the 2 other Groovy themes (all by the same designer), I believe it’s gonna give our theme offerings a nice, fresh feel.

Groovy Photo from the WooContest (1st Prize!!)

Another niche that we haven’t entirely explored yet, is that of photoblogs… So after numerous requests and months of procrastination, we’ll be releasing our first photo-orientated theme in Groovy Photo. The layout as it is at this moment, isn’t totally representative of the functionality we envision for it, but we’ll be adding some alternative layouts and cool features as we develop the theme.

The success of Groovy Photo (and Groovy Video for that matter), will also influence our decision with regards to developing more multimedia themes in future greatly – so we kinda look forward to experimenting in this regard.

Groovy Blog from the WooContest (1st Prize!!)

The last theme in the Groovy Series, is a more blog-orientated theme, but as with Irresistible I think it’ll proof to be multi-purposed enough to be wildly used and extremely popular among our users.

I think a custom, widgetized homepage is definitely a possibility here as well, which means that the homepage acts as more of an aggregation space – instead of a straight-forward (and stale) blog homepage. Blogs are so over-rated anyway… (We didn’t really say that…)

myweblog form the WooContest (designed by Spencer over at wefunction)

I know this post and these concepts are all about “new approaches”, but I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing to diversify and try reinventing the wheel slighty. So myweblog is another, unique approach to the more “traditional” blog layouts around and again, I find the value of this theme and the way that it “shakes up” and adds diversity to our themes showcase.

As with all of our themes, the built-in backend options and alternative colour schemes will definitely make this a theme that is ideal for some you or for one of your next projects. Maybe we’ll even include a nice little colour picker, so you can colour-code all of your categories… Who knows!?

The Station by Adii

I know, I know… I don’t design a theme on WooThemes for ages and now suddenly I’ve done two… The main reason is that I want to challenge Magnus’ dominance (in terms of individual themes’ popularity) and I’m totally planning on designing the next Fresh News-killer!

The Station is a business / corporate theme and I hope to included all of the stuff that’ll increase the flexibility of the theme. Stuff like stronger secondary navigation, breadcrumb navigation and different inner page templates (all with its own widgetized spaces) is a must in my mind. You can probably expect this release mid-February if all goes well!

But wait, there’s even more…

Along with these previews posted here, Mark is also working on two brand-spanking new concepts, which I’m sure you’ll love as well. Like me, Mark hasn’t designed a theme himself for WooThemes in a while and we’re both pretty keen to knock Magnus from his thrown!

We’re also finalizing the details of a collaboration with Bryan Veloso and Elliot Jay Stocks have penned us in for another theme in April. And maybe we’ll go knock on Jason Santa Maria’s door (my favourite designer by far) now that he has left Happy Cog.

We’re starting off 2009 more amped than ever before and we hope that you’ll find the value in our new themes… Kindly leave us some feedback, thoughts and nice, little warm fuzzies. Please.

Obviously with a competition of this nature, there’ll be some people who walk away as winners and others who’ll get another opportunity to win next time (there’s no such thing as losers in our book). We have decided to award a 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize, whilst we have also contacted another 7 designers to buy their submissions. This will then make out our Top 10.

Before we get to the winners, we’d also like to thank Elliot Jay Stocks, Liam McKay, Brian Gardner & Jason Schuller for acting as guest judges and providing us with some valuable input. We considered their votes, along with ours to finalize the following list:

1. The Groovy Series by izuddin.helmi – $2000 Winner!

Choosing the ultimate winner for a contest like this, is never easy – but with three great variations in the series, we absolutely had to pick this one! We love the style, customizability and the different layouts, which ultimately clinched the first prize in our minds.

2. myweblog by Spencer.Gurnk – $1000 Winner!

We think this concept is a typical WooThemes design and that’s probably the reason why we like it so much. They say that one shouldn’t “try fix something when it’s not broken“, so this slick theme will fit into the hugely popular WooThemes theme recipe book easily and we believe that it’ll proof just as popular with our users.

3. Store WooTheme by jonikox – $500 Winner!

With our recent push to get into the commerce / business themes market, we think this one will go down really well. The grunge design is definitely popular and we’ll be sure to add a few more styles to the design before it’s ready for release.

4. Irresistible by izuddin.helmi

There’s something truly mystical about this design and we love it. We’re sure that with a bunch of different colour schemes, this theme can turn into one of the most popular themes on WooThemes.

5. Prouder Studio by thecraigvine

Another design that can count itself unlucky that it didn’t make it into the Top 3. Irrespective though, we’d love to develop this theme and add it to our growing list of portfolio themes.

Completing the Top 10…

Then, in no particular order, here are 5 more outstanding submissions, which just didn’t make our Top 5. We have already contacted these designers about purchasing their concepts, since we’d love to develop these and add them to the WooThemes stable.

• Newsport by Armono Wibowo
• Bloggingstream by fir.da.us
• TypeBased by Armono Wibowo
• Gotham News by onvo
• Personal Blog Theme by onvo

So a big congrats to all the designers that have made it into our Top 10 and especially to the three winning designers for their amazing concepts! What do you think? Do you like the designs we picked? Or do you think we missed one of your favourites?

We have been busy gathering guest judges, and we have a few great web designers who were able to help cast their votes. We will be posting more details later in the week as the contest ends. Here is four more designs that we think are top notch.

Purwokerto by Deny Sri Supriyono

TripBlog by Maikel Neris

Newspaper Blog by Didats

P*wned by izuddin.helmi

So as we did last week, here’s Week 2′s roundup of our favourite WooContest submissions. Again, these are in no particular order and we’re simply highlighting the submissions that stand out at the moment…

Prouder Studio by thecraigvine

Groodeo by izzudin.helmi

The Blogging News by fir.da.us

leTrailer by ledzuc.com

Along with these, I’d also like to highlight Groopholog by izuddin.helmi, lePortfolio by ledzuc.com and textonomous by fir.da.us.

If we haven’t selected your submission as one of our early favourites in weeks 1 & 2, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a chance to win! In fact, for all you know we might’ve left out our first-most favourite from both these roundups…

We really look forward to see the new submissions towards the end of the month! Good luck to everyone and keep ‘em coming please!

In no particular order here are some of our favourites:

Store Front by pbiscuit

Slurpie by IzuddinHelmi

sanduneBiz by Nick Desai

the

paper by Gunay Donmez

Disclaimer: These designs where handpicked by the WooThemes team and are some of our favorite designs to date. In the end it is the design with the most positive comments on Flickr, and the design that gets most votes from our guest judges that will be selected as our winner and runner up.

]]> http://www.woothemes.com/2008/10/week-one-roundup-of-our-favouritewoocontest-submissions/feed/ 16 http://www.woothemes.com/2008/10/woocontest-submit-your-design-and-win/ http://www.woothemes.com/2008/10/woocontest-submit-your-design-and-win/#comments Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:24:29 +0000 Mark Forrester http://www.woothemes.com/?p=233 As you all know, we at WooThemes love collaborating with industry-leading, creative designers and launching stylish and unique WordPress themes every month. We also love seeing how our fantastic community of users customize and implement our themes.

We therefore thought it would be a good idea to launch a competition where you our readers/users can get involved, and gain some exposure, designing a theme concept for us. Not to forget, you stand the chance to win some big money!

How to enter

To enter the competition, contestants must submit a  theme concept you think would go down a treat on WooThemes.

• The design must be created in Photoshop, Fireworks or Illustrator format.
• The website container must have a width of between 940 and 980 pixels, catering for the average 1024 X 768 user.
• The entries must be submitted to the WooThemes Flickr pool in jpeg or png format and tagged “Woocontest”.
• Entries must be submitted before midnight on 31st October 2008. That’s Halloween night! Woooooooooooooo.

Your submission on Flickr must include:

• Your name and any URL you would like linked to in case you win.
• Any stock or source images you have used including URLs. Be sure to only use stock images that have Extended Usage licenses that allow for distributing the theme design once coded, otherwise avoid use of stock images.

The winner will be chosen according to the amount of positive comments it receives, as well as feedback gathered from guest judges (guest judges will be announced soon).

The winner will receive $2000 and a 6 month develop license, whilst the runner up will receive $1000 and a 3 month develop license. Both will obviously grab a heap of exposure.

We will then add some wordpress magic to the concept and launch it is an official WooTheme, crediting our winning designer.

Terms and Conditions

• The theme concept submitted must be entirely your own work. As mentioned above if stock imagery is used it must have an exttended usage license.
• By entering this competition you consent to your theme concept possibly being used by WooThemes and avaliable for purchase on our site. First and second prize will, as already stated, be awarded a cash prize for their work.
• If any other theme concepts are used by WooThemes the designer will be informed and a once-off fee will be awarded to the designer for the concept. The fee will be agreed upon by both parties. Sales generated off the theme will be kept by the company.
• The winning theme concept and the runner up may be required to mock up an inner page before payment is made, determined by an inspection of the design source file. A clearly noted grid structure is highly recommended.

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