WordPress theming has a rich history. Over the years, theme authors have brought a plethora of features to the platform. In part, it is because they have often had to solve foundational issues with WordPress to create the features that end users want. The post and body classes all theme authors use today? Those were…
ThemeBeans founder Rich Tabor released Merlin WP on GitHub in public beta this week. The project provides a beautiful experience for installing and setting up WordPress themes with all of their plugin dependencies, Customizer settings, widgets, demo content, and more. “I was inspired by David Baker’s Envato Theme Setup Wizard and was working to add…
Marcus Couch and I are joined by Stephen Cronin and William Herring of Envato to discuss ThemeForest, Envato, WordPress themes, and several other topics. We discover how ThemeForest reviews themes and discuss what the company is doing to improve the quality of themes sold on its marketplace. After the interview, we cover the news and…
At BuddyCamp Miami 2014, I learned about BuddyPress and what it’s capable of. During the first session, I learned you don’t have to worry about BuddyPress themes anymore since 1.7 introduced theme compatibility. This means that BuddyPress sites no longer require a BuddyPress-specific theme. Later in the day, there was a session devoted to BuddyPress…
In an era where many website designs are powered by popular themes, it’s become common for folks passing by to want to snoop under the hood to find out which theme a site is using. If the visitor is not capable of inspecting the code with his browser, he might resort to a service built…
PressCastle launched this month with an ambitious goal: to put every WordPress theme in one place. The site currently has more than 13,000 themes that are categorized and searchable. The themes were collected from more than 250 sites and represent 400+ theme authors. If you visit the Themes section of the site you can filter…
When BuddyPress 1.7 was released in April 2013, the most anticipated new feature was WordPress theme compatibility. This marked a turning point in BuddyPress history and meant that sites no longer required a BuddyPress-specific theme. Prior to 1.7, use of the plugin depended on having a BP-enabled theme. Developers had to do quite a bit…
This is a simple thing but it bears mentioning. Many major WordPress theme providers offer the ability to easily add Google Analytics or other tracking code via the theme’s options panel. The idea stems from wanting to market a theme with everything needed to create the website that you see in the demo. Theme developers…