20 Best Selling WordPress Themes from ThemeForest
Have you been planning on creating your own WordPress theme? Well, then you probably may choose to install a pre-built WordPress theme to quickly setup your website. You can easily find plenty of premium themes available online, however, selecting the most suitable theme out of the sea of options can be a time-consuming and strenuous. But, you can save your time and find an appropriate theme easily, by searching for the best selling WordPress themes. It’s obvious that the theme that sells the most is well-liked by the users, and will certainly help you come up with a winning website. Below are 20 of the best selling WordPress themes that you must have a look at: 1. Avada Avada has been the top selling WordPress theme on Themeforest of all time with more than 150,000 purchases. The theme developers call it as the “Swiss Army Knife” of WP themes since it provides endless possibilities in creating a winning website design. It provides beautifully-crafted and professional looking demos that make it super easy for users to set up a complete WordPress design of any style – without having to code. 2. The X Theme The X Theme comes bundled with expanded demos that can be used to build a site of any particular niche. It helps in creating web pages with the help of WordPress popular “Cornerstone” page builder – that makes the process of creating website prototypes faster. The best part about this theme is that it enables to make edits to the theme style in real time. In addition, it helps in editing the content of the site on the fly. 3. Enfold It’s the most user-friendly theme that enables to build beautiful looking WordPress sites at a blazing fast speed – in just 2 minutes. Enfold features an awe-inspiring responsive and retina-ready layout that easily adjusts to fit the screen size of the visitor device and look great irrespective of the size of the device screen. The admin area of the theme is powerful yet simple to use. You can study about the theme features, by going through its comprehensive documentation and video tutorials. 4. uDesign This is an excellent theme that is ideal to be used by both experienced developers, as well as, non-technical users without any coding knowledge. The uDesign can help you build your website based on your preference with minimal time and efforts. The best aspect about this theme is that it is mobile-ready and can be accessed across all the devices, regardless of the screen size and resolution. 5. Salient Salient is the best selling WP theme in terms of aesthetics. It comes with unique designs that will help you showcase your brand in a distinctive manner, giving you an edge over your competitors. The theme is optimized for mobile devices and looks stunning on different screen sizes and resolutions. It’s retina-ready, contains a drag and drop page builder, is WooCommerce compatible and so on. 6. The7 Do you want to create a WordPress site based on iOS 7 or material inspired design? In that case, The7 theme is exactly what you want. It is the most advanced theme that features a responsive, fluid and retina-ready layout. The theme offers tons of customization options – that renders the ability to make any changes to the look and feel of the theme. 7. Karma The theme is trusted by over 26,000 users and is perfectly-suited for beginners. It features exceptional design that will help you stand out from the rest. Besides this, it provides automatic updates, unmatched customer support and unique shortcodes. Karma...
Read MoreThe ‘What’ and ‘Why’ Behind WordPress Multisite
If there is something most obvious among the web developers and designers, it is the fact that WordPress is conquering the web at an unrelenting pace. And that’s something easily validated by the statistical piece that suggests that close to 75 million websites on the web depend on WordPress in some capacity. Thew Internet economy is being overwhelmingly dominated by this highly customizable and unwaveringly powerful content management system. The staggering popularity of WordPress has further pushed the WordPress developer community to aim for higher grounds and get to there with ease and effect. There is no denying that the competition to WordPress is stronger than ever. You have platforms like Joomla, Drupal and Magento that are very popular, especially among the business owners and online merchants. But in sheer numbers, they are yet to catch up to WordPress. The success of WordPress can be owed to so many factors, but most to the proactive developers and designers who turn every stone in their strides to perch WordPress up and beyond its closest peers. There more and more reinventions happening every hour. And among the latest goodies that WordPress has swung at us, WordPress Multisites are grabbing headlines. What is a WordPress Multisite As is the norm, a tree would offer you not more than one type of fruit. Likewise, there are CMS platforms that allow you to run just a single website from a single installation. WordPress multisite however glides past this constraints and gives you a feature by which you can run more than one websites from just a single backend. This is among singularly the most amazing features that WordPress tosses at us as it gives us so much more freedom and saves a truckload of time. Every time you install a plugin or theme on one of the websites, it runs seamlessly on other sites on the network too. The cherry on the cake is that you have the control to restrict the access of these plugins for certain users. The question a number of folks reading this post might ask to themselves is “Have I ever encountered a WordPress multisite?”. If you have not been living under a rock, you most certainly have. WordPress.com is the best example of a WordPress multisite. It is a single domain that lets you append your preferred name as and when you decide to have your personal blog. It is, in its bare bones, a massive network of multisites and you are a part of it if you are running a personal blog on WordPress.com. Apart from WordPress.com, there are other noteworthy examples of WordPress multisite that include websites lie Edublogs.org and TeachForUs. On these sites, you can have your own subdomain and share your knowledge and opinions. “Be it As it May, Why Do I Need a WordPress Multisite” The benefits of WordPress multisites have been reasonably documented by now, and most of it points towards the versatility you inject in your website using this feature. Your website may be populated with several users and as an admin, it would most certainly be the most arduous job to manage the accounts of each of them. With multisite, you got to do is to aprove the subdomains on your site of the likes of • myblog.abc.com • abc.com/myblog Once that is done, your users have websites of their own and they can tinker around it at their will. They can place the elements like headers, widgets, and other sidebar elements at their preferred position and also can change the backgrounds. They can also install themes of their choice....
Read More10 Meetups To Join If You Are A Serious WordPress Developer
WordPress theme and plugin development has really taken off in the past couple of years. You can build an entire career off of affordable – or even free – tools that enhance other people’s websites. Being a service that eagerly encourages such third party and independent development, WP is the perfect platform to focus your efforts on. Once upon a time this was more of a hobby, but the best devs are getting serious about it. So much so that local networking groups are growing all over the world. Especially in the US, in those cities where technology is big business. If you are a WordPress developer, whatever genre that might be in, now is the time to really get your head in the game. These meetups offer you an opportunity to connect with others in the field, share trade secrets, strengthen your position within the niche, and just get together with like minded individuals to discuss a topic you are passionate about. DC Tech Meetup This isn’t a WP group, but it is a wider tech and business group. It is also a very big one that has massive meetings once a month in the Washington DC area. With around 800 attendees each go, it is a great opportunity to meet with developers, business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers and more. Primary location: Washington DC; use this site for travel info. WordPress NYC In NYC, this WP specific group has more than 3,000 current members. However, they tend to hold smaller meetings that make it easier to network with others, each one drawing about seventy attendees. Every third Tuesday of the month they hold their get together centered around a lecture. Primary location: New York City; NYCgo is your best bet for travel tips. London Bloggers Meetup Talk all things blogging with other bloggers living in the London and surrounding areas. They do mini conferences every couple of months, but you can connect with locals for one on one, or form smaller meetups, if you choose. Primary location: London; I prefer this site for international travel info. Boston WordPress Meetup All WP fans are welcome to this group, where plugin and theme developers, marketing experts, bloggers and more get together once a month either in person or online (they provide webinars). Events are usually held on the last Monday of every month, in the evening, unless otherwise stated in the event details. Primary location: Boston; This site provides lots of Boston travel guides. The San Francisco WordPress Meetup A rather trendy group, this one believes in being on the cutting edge of WP technology. They welcome beginners, though there are a fair number of well established and knowledgeable people already in the meetups. They have get-togethers sporadically, sometimes once a month, and sometimes every couple of months. Primary location: San Francisco; Bookmark this site for travel help. The Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group Once a month, Vancouver residents gather for these meetings that include presentations from members, lectures, Q&A panels and plenty of networking among WP fanatics in the area. They regularly have special themes, such as Women Talking WordPress, and Icon Fonts. Primary location: Vancouver Victoria WordPress Events This is a smaller – but often more active – group in Greater Victoria. While they might skip a month of meetups when everyone is more likely to be busy (such as December), they also often have multiple gatherings in a month. Many of these meetings are bootcamp or workshop style events, meant to give you hands on training from experts on different elements of WordPress use and development. Primary location: University...
Read More10 Gorgeous Flat Responsive WordPress Themes
“Flat design” was developed as a response to the once-dominant design school of skeuomorphism, which attempted to recreate real world objects in iconic form. For instance: a skeuomorphic “On” button on a website might look like a real world light switch. For a variety of reasons, tastes have changed. Today, more and more users (and designers) want cleaner, more functional interfaces. Enter the “flat design” aesthetic. The gist of flat design is that usability is king. According to this philosophy, graphical user interfaces (GUI) shouldn’t be too stylized. Shadows, reflections, gradients, edges, and other baroque elements can make designs feel claustrophobic and impede usability. Rather than create realistic imitations of objects, like clocks or calendars, flat design uses simple block-like images. The goal is to grab the user’s attention and guide him or her through a process. Solid, big blocks of color can convey messages more effectively than ornaments. Why Your Flat Design Should Be Responsive If you opt for a flat WordPress theme, make sure it’s responsive. What does “responsive” mean? It means that you develop your site in a way that lets it break down or “respond” to whatever device, tablet, or computer accesses it. The site “responds” by automatically resizing, shifting the layout, and customizing the experience for the user. In this way, your site’s load time, readability, and navigation are optimized. Without a responsive design, things can get problematic. For instance, a developer might need to integrate multiple themes. Or you might have to leave it to the user to resize and reformat your site — not ideal, especially if you’re running a client-oriented business or studio. The key to choosing the right flat theme is to understand your purpose first. As Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, sagely advises: “begin with the end in mind.” Let’s explore 10 gorgeous flat (and responsive WordPress) themes: Coffee & Cream Ideal for portfolios, websites, vCards, and blogs, this theme comes jam-packed with cool features, including shortcodes and premium widgets. Great for one page sites. Persona Theme Do you need unlimited sidebars? Excited about frontend publishing? This responsive theme is excellent for small businesses as well as for bloggers who sell info products. Flatsome The future of beautiful e-commerce is here, and its name is Flatsome. Excellent for online shopkeepers. Avalance Are you looking for a portfolio website theme? If you’re a creative artist (or an agency that represents clients), choose this gorgeous template to display creative works. Mobilee WordPress Premium Responsive GSM Mobile Theme Are you an app designer, or are you in the app business? This fully responsive theme supports both Google Play and the App Store. Hypertext – One-page Flat WordPress Theme If you run an agency or corporate studio — or if you’re building a portfolio for your art — this popular, dynamic theme is flush with useful functions. Simple to use and easy to build. Cuber – Modern Responsive Minimal WordPress Theme Another great, refreshing and interactive option for small businesses. Extra News – Responsive News and Magazine Theme Whether you’re a content strategist, or you’re hoping to launch the next “Upworthy,” this theme is tailor-made for publishers. Seamlessly integrate slideshows, galleries, reviews, and videos. Felice WordPress Theme – 2 in 1 This flexible, beautiful theme can work either as a personal portfolio or as a corporate website. It’s fully responsive, and it provides 2 in 1 theme functionality, so you can create a single landing page, a one-page portfolio, or a more sophisticated site. Benthos Flat eCommerce WordPress Theme Gorgeous typography can lead to more sales and...
Read MoreBenefits and the Drawbacks to Use Font Awesome Icons Plugins
When Rachel Baker created the Font Awesome Icons Plugin, it brings a new means of replacing the standard icons that you can use in your website. The plugin was only a mere rebirth of the original font icon created by Dave Gandy for Twitter Bootstrap which is now available through Rachel Baker’s Font Awesome Icons Plugin for WordPress. Using the plugin provides you more liberty of designing your icon fonts to suit your website design. However, while this may be a good thing for some website owners, there are some people who view using the Font Awesome Icons plugin to be a disadvantage. Here are some insights about why some view the plugin beneficial while others find it as otherwise. The Advantage of using the Font Awesome Icons Plugin Web designers find it too cumbersome to use a lot of images on a website as it could use a lot of web space owing to their file size. It can also be too tasking to correlate these images to your HTML and scaling problems might occur along the way. Using the Font Icons will help you use a scalable image to use on your website irregardless of the size and scaling factors. Thus, whether you are using different font sizes, the icon font remains to be the same causing you less issues when designing your website. Webmasters like to take advantages of the feature of the Font Awesome Icons Plugin for their WordPress site because it offers more scalable font images and icons that will be limited only according to the size most suited to their website. Thus, the pro in using the plugin comes with the convenience of web designing when using images in web designing where you use one icon that can be adjusted to varying sizes without scaling issues. Moreover, the Font Awesome Icons PlugIn provide various types of choices that will suit your media icon needs from video to social media icons. As you choose from the wide choices available, you can try different sizes without the risk of losing the definition of your images. The fonts and icons can be adjusted in terms of their transparency and color without worrying about disturbing their definition and size quality that will suit your website. As a web designer, you will like the flexibility of using the Font Awesome icons within the various regions of your website from the sidebar, header, columns, content, and stacks. You can use it in like manner as embedding the font face thereby letting you use scalable icons that you can manage similar to using the CSS codes. The Plugin also gives you a cleaner system when managing your icons because you can keep the color and size variations of the font based icons in a single file. Some downsides worth noting While there seem to be many pros that can be derived from using the Font Awesome Icons Plugin, it is worth noting that it comes with some cons too. In some cases, some find it difficult for screen readers to read the font icons and often mistaken them as alphabet letters. Using only a single icon may result to a smaller image size which makes the plugin better to use only when you are using multiple font icons. Lastly, the font characters are available in single color but using the CSS3 offers a solution to tweak the font icon colors according to your preferences. With these minor disadvantages of the Font Awesome Icons Plugin, it remains to be a good option to use by those owning a WordPress site. The...
Read MoreBringing Push Notifications To Your WordPress Blog
Roost enables WordPress sites to send push notifications to users of mobile devices, including iOS and Android, as well as to a number of different browsers. Getting push notifications right can be tricky. There’s a fine line between keeping your subscribers up-to-date and spamming them with intrusive and unnecessary interruptions. For most bloggers and business users of WordPress, push notifications are unnecessary. There are plenty of other mechanisms for getting the word out to subscribers, including the sadly declining RSS feed, email, and social media channels — particularly Twitter, which has taken the place of RSS for many. But, there are some use cases where it’s important to give up-to-date information immediately. A news site that publishes time sensitive information, the value of which degrades with time. A close-knit blogging community whose members want to be kept apprised of recent post publications. A WordPress eCommerce site that runs frequent promotions that users want to be made aware of. Push notifications, to mobile devices in particular, should adhere to a few simple rules in order to avoid alienating users. They should be: Used infrequently. Only used for important updates. Used minimally for marketing purposes to avoid spamming. Easy to subscribe to and even easier to unsubscribe from. Introducing Roost Roost is a notification service that can send push notifications to iOS and Android devices as well as some web browsers. The Roost service provides a collection of tools that make implementing push notifications on various platforms relatively straightforward. Roost provides a WordPress plugin, which put the registration box in WordPress site’s header or footer, allowing users to easily opt in to push notifications. It will automatically send notifications with custom text to subscribers on the publication of blog articles. The fly in the ointment is that users who want to receive push notifications will have to install Roost’s native app on that device, which means that your users become Roost’s users too, but there’s really no way of getting push notifications on to mobile platforms without this step. A particularly useful feature of Roost is that it provides a detailed analytics dashboard, so that users can track the effectiveness of their push notifications. Roost is a solid solution for businesses that prefer to put their development effort towards creating a mobile web presence, rather than investing in the development of a web app for multiple platforms. It allows them to make use of some of the marketing advantages specific to mobile platforms without going fully mobile native. About the author Graeme Caldwell works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on Twitter at @nexcess and check out their tech/hosting...
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