There has been a thunder of debate here at the WP Now developers table, all over the perceived use and ideal functionality of the WordPress “Theme Options Panel”.
You may know it as that little tab on the WordPress admin page, where you can manage various aspects of a specific theme, such as logo, social media links, banner advertising, Google Analytics and more.
Some theme developers are of the opinion that making the Theme Options panel as in depth and comprehensive as possible is best and provides the most flexible user experience.
Other developers are of the opinion that less is more. That aside from a handful of necessary options, the majority of site owners don’t use this page, use other plugins, or are totally intimidated by it.
….since we are at an impasse, we decided to take to our users. We’ve put together a short survey (its only 11 questions and should take no more than 5 minutes to fill out), to get your opinions on what you think should be included.
To the first 100 users who fill out the survey at the link below, we will send you a coupon for 50% off ANY theme order. Use this for a standard theme and save $25. Use it for a developer theme and save $40. Use it for our Developer Theme Club (which includes ALL of our themes) and save $65!!! (Plus you’ll get a warm fuzzy for helping make WordPress and WPNow Themes even better.)
Thanks and keep an eye out in your email box for our newest theme coming out in the next couple of days!
The long awaited WordPress 3.0 “Thelonius” was publicly released on Thursday June 17th and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We are continuing to test our themes on the new version and have fixed some minor bugs, but we always appreciate feedback from the WP Now community. If you experience any issues after updating to 3.0, please post it in the Support Forum so we can get working on it asap.
What are some of the highlights of this update?
- Lighter, Sleeker Look
- Bulk Updates for themes, plugins, wp installations
- Help Tabs on Every Screen
- New Default Theme: “Twenty Ten”
- Easy Background Changer
- Custom Headers
- Custom Navigation Menus (kudos to the guys over at woothemes for their contribution)
- Custom Post Types
- Integrated Shortlinks Service
- WP Multi-User – Control Multiple Sites from One Admin
ReviewAZON is the easy and simple way to add Amazon product reviews to your WordPress blog. Creating product review sites just got a little easier. ReviewAZON lets you build product review sites in minutes, not hours, allowing you to build more, promote more and make more money than ever before.
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Forget about trying to add an Amazon store into your WordPress blog, ReviewAZON can easily turn your WordPress blog into an autopilot Amazon product review site with a professional look. ReviewAZON is the easy and simple way to add Amazon products and customer reviews to your blog.
ReviewAZON allows you to display over 25 different pieces of Amazon product content, you can instantly get an attractive review site loaded with product description, customer reviews, manufacturer, average customer rating, pricing, product details, brand and more! You can choose the product information that you want to show your blog visitors.
Featured Category - Designate the Category that displays in the featured image slideshow on the homepage.
Highlight Categories- Select the 3 Categories that will display under “Featured Content.” The latest post within each Category will display under each section.
Weather Area Code: Enter your zip code to get up-to-date weather reports at the top of your site.
Feedburner Settings: Add your feed URL (http://yoursite.com/feed/) to add the “Subscribe by Email” option to your sidebar
Main Page Settings – Top Navigation (Pages) – Select the Pages that will display on the top Nav Bar. Choose to include or exclude certain Pages.
Sub -Category Settings(Categories) – Select the Categories that will display on the top Nav Bar. Choose to include or exclude certain Categories.
Advertisement Settings – Add your 125×125 Ads code to show up in the sidebar Ads section. Also add your 468×60 code to show ads at the top of each post.
Stay tuned for details on the Elements Theme Options Panel…
Homepage Top Navigation (Pages) – Select the Pages that will display on the top Nav Bar. Choose to include or exclude certain Pages.
Homepage Sub Navigation (Categories) – Select the Categories that will display on the top Nav Bar. Choose to include or exclude certain Categories
Highlight Settings – Select the 3 Categories that will display under “Featured Content.” The latest post within each Category will display under each section.
Advertisement Settings – Add your 125×125 Ads code to show up in the sidebar Ads section. Also add your 468×60 code to show ads at the top of each post.
Feedburner Settings: Add your feed URL (http://yoursite.com/feed/) to add the “Subscribe by Email” option to your sidebar
“Your designs are top-notch, your functions are sophisticated, I just wish there was an easier way to configure the site from the get-go.” That sentiment from veteran themes club subscriber, Glen Kovonoski, was one we took to heart. We knew that staying competitive in the Premium Themes market meant making our themes more user-friendly, more accessible and more intuitive. It meant a setup procedure with no php files and no code.
As a result, we’re thrilled to announce the release of our WPNow Theme Options Panels, now available within all of our themes. These Options Panels host a variety of configurable features including: color schemes, featured categories, navigation display, advertisements, social media logins, RSS feeds and more… all with the click of a button.
While this is nothing revolutionary in the world of WordPress, it is one more step in our mission to make WP Now Themes the most flexible, straightforward and elegant way to use this amazing platform. We aim to help WordPress grow beyond its blogging roots and establish itself as a true CMS to rival the likes of Joomla & Drupal.
In the coming months we’ll talk more about what’s brewing in the WPNow Labs (just think… total navigation & widget customization for each individual post/page on your site, widgets that escape the sidebar and a ‘Set It and Forget It’ Complete Ad Management System). But today, we want to give the spotlight to our Options Panels:
The theme updates and theme options panel for older themes have been postponed until WordPress 2.9 is out. We plan on experimenting with WP 2.9′s built-in thumbnail system that will be included with 2.9, as well as a few other 2.9 developer features.
If anyone has any questions feel free to comment below.
Just a note to anyone looking for support with any of our themes, we now require you to provide proof of purchase when seeking support. This change will help ensure that we provide support as son as possible to legitimate customers who need assistance. When creating a support ticket be sure to include your transaction ID if you used google checkout, OR your Paypal email address if you used Paypal.
Another note regarding browser comparability with our themes. Originally we started out supporting IE6 but we no longer support it. IE6 slows down the development process and prevents us from using certain HTML/CSS techniques that would enhance and optimize our themes. IE6 is also a very outdated browser, for more information about why developers are dropping IE6 visit http://www.ie6nomore.com/ As of right now we currently support and extensively test all of our themes in IE7, IE8, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera.
As always, let us know if you have any further questions or concerns by emailing us using the contact form on our website.
Huex is awesome. And no… we really aren’t sure how to pronounce it. We can tell you that the name is derived from the word hue; which is an attribute of color… and Huex has an abundance of color and oodles of hues. Not to mention a sharply styled design and the inclusion of the WP Now theme option panel, but we’ll talk more about that later.
The first thing I want to explain are the color options. Aside from everything that makes this theme so awesome, the color options are what stands out the most. By default, Huex comes with six different color schemes; blue, green, gray, orange, purple, and red. If the color switcher is enabled then website visitors can click on a color cube at the top of the right column and then magic happens. The webpage fades with a dark opacity and with a colored rotating graphic, indicating that the newly selected color scheme is loading. Once the loading is complete, the rotating graphic disappears as the darkness fades and reveals your color of choice. It really is impressive.
The WP Now theme option panel has finally arrived on the Huex bus, and it couldn’t be happier to finally come face to face with you! As a WP Now theme user, you should be pretty excited to come across the newly added panel as well. How come? Let me explain…
In the past, certain things like setting the featured category and editing the advertisements had to be hard coded into a theme option file. Then that file required you to overwrite the existing file via FTP… and nobody likes saving files, opening an FTP client, overwriting the old file, and so-on. The WP Now theme option panel now streamlines these tasks by adding them into the WordPress admin panel, so there is no more messing with that theme option file or FTP. We’re trying to build as many options into the custom panel as we can. Every theme will have its own specific set of options to simplify all tedious tasks just for that theme.
