Brand new to their portfolio, WooThemes‘ latest edition to their growing theme family is Optimize, a premium Wordpress theme packed with super hot new features, and entirely new WooFramework and 22 color styles to boot!
Don’t let the home page of the layout deceive you into thinking it’s just another image rotator. This featured content presenter is dynamic in that it applies the smooth appeal of PrettyPhoto that allows a super modern lightbox effect that works for images AND video. Just browsing the demo, the coolness of this is quite evident.
Just below the featured content area is the “life-streaming” bar that allows your most recent Tweet to be displayed. This is growing more popular and certainly a neat add-on feature.
Below the Twitter box is a place to showcase your site’s content through “mini-features”. Included in the navigation is a separate blog, which allows you to use this premium Wordpress theme to utilize Wordpress as a CMS. The demo site uses it to showcase a portfolio, but you can use it to showcase your company’s work, regardless of what you work on.
Another thing that I really like about this theme is the smooth drop down functionality of the top navigation. The look is clean and complete, unlike other premium themes that have a chopping drop down look. These drop downs have styled backgrounds and fade in and out smoothly with no flash.
Feature List
A custom home page featured area to showcase your work or products, with optional sub-featured area to give them more insight.
Custom home page layout with optional Twitter box, Mini-features area, Info/Quotes box and option to insert any page above/below mini-features area.
Sexy jQuery effects and PrettyPhoto (lightbox) integrated in theme.
An optional integrated portfolio section to show off your work/products.
Custom Woo Widgets for use in the sidebar and in the widgetized footer: Search widget, Ad space widget, Flickr widget.
22 stylish alternate colour schemes to choose from plus custom color picker so you can set your own background color and link color.
Last but not least, the brand new WooFramework2 with updated options panel
Continuing to maintain their clear superiority in the premium theme development world, WooThemes has upped the ante with an improved backend framework that improves efficiency and makes it easier for you to customize your shiny new premium Wordpress WooTheme.
Per the WooBlog:
As we have mentioned in the last week, we’ve been working on a new version (2.0) of the WooFramework, which we’ll be releasing with Optimize tomorrow. The integration of WooFramework 2.0 with Optimize, serves as the public beta of the new framework and we’d like to fix all of the possible bugs first, before we integrate it into all our older themes (all 54 of them).
So all of our subscribers who will get access to Optimize tomorrow, will have the opportunity to play with the new options panel & framework. For the rest, the following preview video will have to do the trick…
I’ve gone through the video (below) and am anxious to dive into working with the framework. I never really like the accordion style set up they had before, but it was easy to get along with because they give you so many customization options to work with. The new layout and functionality is sure to be a huge hit.
StudioPress has done it again with a sleek new Premium Wordpress theme specifically tailored to businesses. Keeping to their roots, StudioPress has released Executive, another dark theme with dynamic front page designed to showcase snippets of all the important stuff about your business. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Feature List
CMS style theme
Separate blog section
Ability to have static full-width pages
Looks like a web site, not a blog
Drop down navigation
Widget ready
Custom back-end that allows for quick, easy customization
Looking for that special theme, but know that deep down inside you’re really just an indecisive perfectionist? Have a fickle client that changes his mind like he changes his son’s diapers? How about that new site concept that you’ve been dreaming of that you just can’t nail down that perfect look? Woo Themes 5 for 1 Christmas Premium Wordpress Theme sale is just the answer you’ve been looking for.
It’s no secret that Woo Themes is by far one of our favorite theme developers around and this is the opportunity to get your muggy paws on 5 of their themes for the paltry price of 1! With individual premium theme prices normally in the range of a very worthy $70 per, this makes an excellent holiday special and gives you an opportunity to cash in on some of that creative desire and hold a stock of some sweet Wordpress looks.
If you’re more of a club kind a’ guy/gal, no problem. Woo Themes is offering a schaweet 20% off all club memberships – whether you be a user or developer. What are the benefits of being a club member, you say? If you are someone who is constantly building new sites using Wordpress whether for clients, yourself or friends, a club membership allows you to have unlimited access to ALL the Woo Themes premium Wordpress themes. This is perfect since they come out with a sweet new design each month.
Brought to you by StyleWP, the So Apple Premium Wordpress Theme is well organized and extremely easy to navigate and read. With a smooth and modest look, this premium Wordpress theme is a great magazine style theme that can showcase all the topics you want to talk about. Offering a cool visual representation of the content excerpts, the home page is laid out nice and allows for attention to be drawn quickly to the varying forms of content on your site.
WooThemes latest grunge-rock theme lights up the stage with a blend of sophistication and rough edges that makes Backstage the perfect theme for your band. With a featured content scroller on the home page, dynamic widget locations and the famed WooThemes backend framework, this theme is sure to help you be a rockstar.
Feature List
A home page slider showcasing band/musician photography.
A home page dedicated module to the band/musician biography.
Unique page templates for your discography/music archive, and image & video galleries.
Neat theme integration with media attachments.
Custom Woo Widgets for use in the sidebar.
Home page widgetized zones for a media widget showcasing images, videos or music.
A recent news widget.
An upcoming shows widget.
Flickr and advertising widgets amongst others.
7 stylish alternate colour schemes to choose from.
Over time I find it entertaining to watch theme developers grow and their skill increase. One can often look over their theme portfolio and see time go by as little attributes improve. You can see hints of framework upgrades and witness tiny little accents get a little cleaner with each theme.
For a while now, I’ve kept it no secret that Woo Themes is my favorite designer, but ElegantThemes is quickly catching up. It is pretty easy for me to know when I really like a theme because I start justifying in my shiny head how I can use it. The latest addition to their family, Lumin, is a premium Wordpress theme that very well may soon be the new portfolio site for Too Creative, my “parent” company to all my blogs. I love the smoothness, the gradients, the subtle fades of elements, the dramatic accents and the clever use of shadows. I feel good when I look at it, really good. I know other people will think I’ve got a great site if I’m using it; and impressing people is important when you are showing off your stuff.
ElegantThemes has a great number of themes and they have a backend framework control panel that has become much more sophisticated over time. The Lumin premium Wordpress theme comes packaged with 3 preset styles, a smooth featured content slider on the home page, a gallery display preview by just mousing over the thumbnail, built-in advertising management, and a slew of other features that are sure to make your mouth water.
Pricing: one of the best things about ElegantThemes (and what could be the start of a trend!) is the low barrier of entry when it comes to price. The number of theme developers are growing and what many of them are doing is offering subscription pricing that gives developers and users alike the opportunity to have access to all the new sweet themes they come out with with a flat monthly fee. ElegantThemes comes in at just shy of 20 bux a year; that’s right, I said $20 A YEAR. Not too shabby, indeed!
Features List:
Opera compatible
Netscape compatible
Safari compatible
Wordpress 2.8 compatible
Three Color Schemes
Threaded Comments
Optional Blog-style Structure
Gravatar ready
Firefox compatible
IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
Advertisement Ready
Widget ready sidebars
Theme Options Page
Custom thumbnail images
PSD files
Valid XHTML + CSS
Smooth tabless design
Pricing
Unlimited theme membership for only $19.95 per year.
