The Discounts

Buy any standard theme package for 20% off for a cost of $56 rather than $70. Plus, you get 4 bonus themes so that’s 5 themes for $56! Use the code BLACKSTD.

City Guide

Buy any WooCommerce Extension, WooCommerce Child Theme or App Theme (Listings, Estate, FaultPress or SupportPress) and get a 20% off. Use the code BLACKOTHER

Listings

New Club Subscriptions are 20% off and the first month is free. A club subscription gives you access to ALL themes, support, and 2 new themes per month. Use the discount code BLACKCLUB

To view all of the available discounts, check out WooThemes’ Black Friday / Cyber Monday blog post.

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WooThemes – Cyber Monday Sale

StudioPress is having a Thanksgiving / Black Friday special. Everything they sell will be 25% off.

The sale starts today, November 22, 2011 and ends next Monday November 28th, 2011.

All you have to do is use the code THANKS when checking out and 25% off will be applied to your entire purchase.

Here are some of the ways that you can save.

1. Get the Genesis Framework for only $45.

2. Wipe the entire shop clean and get the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme Package. Get Genesis plus every design they’ve made, plus every design they make in the future, and save more than $74 off the regular price and over $875 off the retail price — and that’s just the existing 43 designs!

Make sure you use the code THANKS when you check out.

This deal ends promptly at 7:00 pm Pacific time on Monday, November 28, 2011.

photo credit: lincolnian

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25% Off Everything at StudioPress Through November 28, 2011

Recently I wrote about premium responsive themes, which are themes that will adjust to the size of the device on which they are being displayed. As mobile devices are becoming used more and more this is going to increase in importance.

Here are a collection of free responsive themes.

The Themes

Yoko

Responsive Twenty-Ten

SimpleMarket

Flexible

Foghorn

Skeleton

Ari

Bonpress

iTheme2

Constellation

Renova

Whiteboard

Meerkats

photo credit: sfajane

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13 Free Responsive WordPress Themes

I am frequently asked for recommendations for web hosting, newsletter services and premium themes.

I decided to make a list of services that I use or have used for my clients that I especially like and post them here. I also have a permanent page called recommendations.

The Services

Hosting

Hostgator is one of my favorite web hosts for shared hosting and I’ve been really pleased with their customer support. They also have great prices and hosting starts at $3.96/month.

I’ve also worked on a number of sites hosted by Media Temple. Their grid service starts at $20/month. I’ve also been pleased with their support when I’ve had questions.

I also really like Bluehost’s shared hosting. I don’t use them for any of my sites but quite a few of my clients do and are happy with them. Hosting starts at $3.95/month.

Security

Sucuri is one of my favorite services. They remove malware when your site has been hacked, monitor your site for any unauthorized changes, and notify you immediately when any of these things happen. After removing malware Sucuri provides recommendations for securing your site and notifies google if your site has been flagged as a malacious site. They will remove malware as many times as necessary but hopefully they will only need to do this once. They remove malware quickly and say they will do it within 4 hours during the work week. I have found that they usually do it in less time, even on the weekend. A yearly plan for one site is $89.99. They also have plans for 10 and 30 sites. I highly recommend this service and wrote a post about it recently.

Premium WordPress Themes

StudioPress makes the Genesis Framework and a number of child themes. They are highly customizable and include great widgets that make creating a unique layout much easier. If you can swing it, the Pro Plus All Theme Package is a great deal. For $299.95 you get the framework and all child themes, support, and any future themes that are released. This saves over $800! The All Pro Plus package, however, does not include any themes from the StudioPress marketplace.

Elegant Themes is a membership site where you get all of the themes and support for one low price. Currently, there are over 6o themes and the annual fee is $39. In addition to a great design and layout each theme comes with an epanel to set theme options, a shortcode collection, and updates.

Templatic has a number of great themes for all types of sites; real estate, e-commerce, magazines and multimedia. Recently I featured their responsive theme. Each theme can be purchased separately for $65 or you can become a member and get access to all themes for $299 and $15/month. Templatic also has great customer support.

WooThemes also has a number of great premium WordPress themes for all types of sites. They offer sales on individual themes, a 3 for 2 special, and have a theme club, which provides access to all themes. The standard package includes 3 themes for $70 and the membership starts at $125 and $15/month.

Accounting Software

Outright is online software for small business accounting. I’ve been using it since early last year and I love it. Most of my billing is done through Paypal and all of my Paypal data is pulled in. I can also track all business related expenses, which makes doing my quarterly and annual taxes so much easier. You can also integrate Outright with your business bank account. Their customer support is also excellent. They respond via their help desk as well as on Facebook and Twitter. You can get a free month when you first sign up and if you want to continue using the service it is $9.95/month. Outright and Sucuri are two of my absolute favorite services

Newsletters

Constant Contact is an easy to use service for newsletter and email marketing. And you can try it for free for 60 days! Pricing starts at $15/month for unlimited emails and can include 500 email addresses. Prices depend on the number of people on your subscriber list.

MailChimp is another newsletter and email marketing service that I highly recommend. While I don’t find it as easy to use as Constant Contact it does have a free plan that includes up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.

Books

Digging Into WordPress is an excellent resource for intermediate to advanced WordPress users. The print version is a lot more expensive than the pdf version but with the print version you get a copy of the pdf, all included themes and lifetime updates. The print version is $75 and the pdf is $27.

For beginning to intermediate WordPress users, I recommend WordPress for Dummies. It’s a great resource for getting started with WordPress and removes a lot of the initial confusing that some users might have.

How about you? Do you have any services that you love or can’t live without that you would add to this list?

This post contains affiliate links.

photo credit: rt48state

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WordPress Themes, Hosting, Newsletter, and Security Services That I Recommend

Responsive web design a hot topic right now especially because it is becoming more common for site to be viewed on mobile devices. According to Smashing Magazine, “Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.”

What this means is that the design will scale for different screen sizes and gadgets rather than a new design and layout being needed for each device.

Here are 8 premium responsive themes for WordPress

The Themes

Blocco, by Press75, is $75. You can also purchase the all theme package, which provides access to all current and future themes, for $400. 20% of this is donated to charity.

Buro, by WooThemes, is $70 and includes two additional themes. For $150 you can get three bonus themes and the PSD files. You can also sign up for the Theme Club Membership.

Argentum, also by WooThemes, is a theme for the WooCommerce plugin. WooCommerce is free but this theme costs $70 and includes two additional themes. For $150 you can get three bonus themes and the PSD files. You can also sign up for the Theme Club Membership.

Responsive, by Templatic, has a standard license for $65 and a developer’s license for $99. They are currently having a special on their all theme membership until October 15th. You can get access to all themes for $199, which is $100 off the standard price.

The Driskill Child Theme, by StudioPress, is $24.95 and requires the Genesis Framework, which is $79.95

Good Minimal, available at Themeforest, is $35 for a regular license.

Reveal, by Theme Trust, is a responsive portfolio theme. It costs $49.

Entreprenium, by ColorLabs Project is $49.

Have you thought about using a responsive theme on your site? While they are still fairly new, I do think this is the way design will be going.

This post contains affiliate links.

photo credit: adactio

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8 Premium Responsive WordPress Themes

Gosh, I haven’t posted all month. Usually I prepare posts before I go on vacation and schedule them but, obviously, that didn’t happen. And then I’ve been SO busy since I returned. Or less organized – but I’m hoping that I’ve just been to busy.

I’ve featured quite a few premium themes this year on a variety of topics, such as a video themes and church themes. If you missed any of these posts, I’ve gathered them together here in one convenient location.

• 8 Premium WordPress Church Themes
• 8 Premium WordPress Food and Restaurant Themes
• 11 WordPress Video Themes
• 18 Premium WordPress Photo Themes
• 5 Premium Real Estate Themes for WordPress

Hopefully the regularly scheduled programming around here will resume soon.

photo credit: janramroth

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Premium WordPress Themes Featured this Year.

If you are interested in building a WordPress site to sell properties, you might want to consider one of these 5 Premium WordPress themes for real estate listings.

These are my 5 favorites and they have the necessary features already built in.

Let me know if you use a different one that you really like.

ElegantEstate

StudioPress AgentPress Child Theme

Estate – Real Estate Solution

Real Estate Theme

WP Pro Real Estate 2

photo credit: digallagher

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5 Premium Real Estate Themes for WordPress

Thesis is a popular WordPress theme. I’ve worked with it quite a bit and have spent time customizing it.

There are a number of Thesis “skins” that have been developed that can be implemented to change the look of your Thesis theme without having to customize it.

And while Thesis isn’t free, these skins are. Thesis, however, is required.

Here are some of my favorite skins for Thesis.

Neoclassical – This was a popular theme created by Chris Pearson. People still love it so a Thesis skin has been created. (Chris Pearson is the guy who created Thesis).

Kickstarter

Fresh Company

Simple Life

Cutline Plus

Thesis Bold

Typically, the theme replaces content in the custom folder within the theme folder and has to be uploaded via ftp. The skin will also contain a dat file that gets uploaded through the Manage Options screen within the Thesis settings. Each skin, however, may have specific instructions so I recommend checking them before the installation. You will also want to check that you are running a version of Thesis that is compatible with the skin.

photo credit: avlxyz

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6 Free Thesis Theme Skins for WordPress

Photos are important to most of us whether we are professional photographers or if we want to simply document out lives.

Here are 18 premium WordPress themes that will showcase your photos.

This reminds me – I don’t take nearly as many photos as I used to. My daughter is going to think the first three years of her life were way more important than the ones that have followed. ;-)

Expose Child Theme

Photoland

Exposure by WooThemes

Object by WooThemes

Groovy Photo by WooThemes

ePhoto

Landscape Child Theme

Deep Focus

ReCapture

Photo Graphic

Gallerific

Photocraft theme

InspiredBits Theme

Aperture by WooThemes

Gallery

PhotoBlog

Photo Nexus

Galleria

This post contains affiliate links.

photo credit: amyashcraft

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18 Premium WordPress Photo Themes

Videos are very popular online and are a great way to share information and educate others. While I prefer to learn by reading and doing rather than watching, I know that others prefer instructional videos.

Here are 11 Premium Video Themes for WordPress that are designed to showcase the video content on your site and make the videos easier to manage.

Hopefully you will find something that works for your site.

Evid

Video – Free Premium Theme (no support)

Groovy Video

Premiere

Vidley

On Demand

WooTube

Video Elements

Videozoom Theme

TV Elements

Video Flick

This post contains affiliate links.

photo credit: photofarmer

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11 WordPress Video Themes