During the busy holiday season we forgot to inform our awesome customers about the latest version of the Block Theme. You can view the updated demo here. We have made several improvements to the theme including the ability to change link and highlight colors within the Options Framework. The new slider is capable of displaying video and features a thumbnail image navigation. In addition, the Block Theme has the option to display a horizontal or vertical navigation menu. The layout was tightened up even more — retaining its unique pixel perfect appearance. If you’re looking for a theme that stands apart from traditional theme layouts, look no further than the Block Theme. Additional features include:

Options Framework

The theme now integrates with the Options Framework plugin, which offers a sleek options interface.

Featured Content Slider

The new featured content slider can display posts with a featured image or a featured video.

Featured Videos

The theme is now capable of displaying featured videos within the slider and on the homepage.

Featured Image Banners

Featured images can now be added to pages and page templates to be displayed as a banner image for that particular page.

Numbered Pagination

The blog and category pagination is now much more accommodating — allowing you to skip ahead to specific page numbers.

Color Options

We have included options for changing the link and highlight colors within the Options Framework — providing a greater array of customization options.

A collection of essential WordPress plugins.

As a WordPress theme designer and developer, I am constantly creating, testing and using themes. Along the way, I’ve gathered a collection of essential plugins that I consistently use myself or recommend.

Before sharing, I urge users not to install more plugins than they need, and delete the plugins they are not using. This will generally increase your site’s performance and save space on your server. I’ve logged in to several customer and client sites to find up to 100 plugins installed. This is a recipe for disaster, particularly if some of the plugins haven’t been updated for years — 20 SEO plugins don’t make your site any more search engine optimized than having 3 SEO plugins. There’s no need to go plugin crazy. Use only what you need.

1. Page Links To

This is such a simple, yet necessary little plugin. The Page Links To plugin by Mark Jaquith allows you to direct any post or page to the link of your choice. So, you can direct a post or page to another post or page, external link, website or even downloadable file. This is my most recommended plugin.

2. Regenerate Thumbnails

All Organic Themes use Featured Images. If you switch between 2 themes using Featured Images, the image sizes will most likely be incorrect. Rather than manually uploading the images again for each post, you can use the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin to update all your thumbnails at once. This is a huge time saver, and the plugin I personally use most often when switching between themes.

3. Portfolio Slideshow

The Portfolio Slideshow plugin by Dalton Rooney is my slideshow plugin of choice. If you’re not a fan of Lightbox galleries, Flash solutions or cumbersome slideshow plugins with an overwhelming amount of options —  the Portfolio Slideshow is perfect for you. It’s lightweight, uses jQuery, pulls images from your WordPress post or page gallery and has smooth, simple transitions. This plugin is a necessity for designers, photographers and artists.

4. Gravity Forms

I can’t say enough great things about the Gravity Forms plugin and the guys behind it. It’s not a free plugin, but it’s well worth the investment. If you are using a plugin other than Gravity Forms for creating and managing forms, than it’s probably a mistake. After using Gravity Forms, you’ll never use another contact form plugin again.

5. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy is an essential tool for backing up or migrating a WordPress site. The plugin allows you to schedule automatic backups. And if you have ever experienced the difficult process of migrating a site between hosts or servers, then BackupBuddy will save you a ton of time. It’s a paid and supported plugin. Like Gravity Forms, it’s well worth the investment if the content on your site is important to you.

6. Advanced Excerpt

The excerpt is often used within our themes to display the first 55 words of a post or page. Sometimes however, 55 words just isn’t enough. Using the Advanced Excerpt plugin, you can choose the amount and types of content the excerpt is capable of displaying — quite handy.

7. Google XML Sitemaps

One of the few essential plugins I install for SEO purposes. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin combined with maybe a couple other SEO plugins is really all you need.

8. Maintenance Mode

If you’re in the process of building your site, making site changes or updates, then you need the Maintenance Mode plugin. It displays a simple, customizable splash page, informing visitors that the site is unavailable.

9. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache increases your site performance and speed, caching your sites content. This plugin is a necessity for any site with a lot of content that receives a decent amount of traffic.

10. Jigoshop

E-commerce websites are always in demand. However, they are generally very difficult and expensive to create. With the Jigoshop plugin, you can add a shop to any WordPress powered site quickly and easily. While it’s not as extensive as some e-commerce plugins such as Shopp, Jigoshop offers the essentials at a price you can afford — free.

The latest theme added to our repertoire is the Business Theme. Check out the demo here. The theme features a clean, corporate and responsive design perfect for companies that are seeking a beautiful option for both the web and mobile devices. In addition to many of our standard page templates, the Business Theme also includes a page template for posting jobs, and an RSS news page template. The theme contains several color options — the header, background, link and highlight colors can easily be changed to match your brand. The Business Theme is a solid foundation to build your company website upon.

We’re so excited about this theme, we even decided to use it for our company, Invulu, Inc.

All of our themes have been localized!

Organic Themes is excited to announce the localization of all our themes. Meaning, the themes have been updated to include files for translation to languages other than English. While our themes previously contained the groundwork for localization, they were only partially prepared for translation. Now, translating our themes is a relatively simple process.

Translating the theme to a different language can be accomplished by editing the .po and .mo files included within the theme folder. You can begin the process by following these steps:

How to translate the theme

1. Download the program Poedit.
2. Using Poedit, open the en_US.po file included within each of our theme folders.
3. Translate all text within the file from English to your desired language one line at a time.
4. Save the translated file to the languages folder within the theme as 2 file types — .po and .mo.
5. Important: Name the files using the proper language and country codes for your translation. For example, es_MX.mo would be the Spanish translation for Mexico.
6. Finally, you may need to change the WordPress installation to your matching language. This is accomplished by defining the language in the wp-config.php file using the following code: define ('WPLANG', 'es_MX');

That’s it! You can begin using the theme in another language!

It’s time to announce another major theme update. The Restaurant Theme is the latest in our collection to be spiced up. Check out the updated demo here. Like the Natural Theme, we have condensed the 3 previous color variations in to one super theme with several color choices available in the new Options Framework. We have updated the food menu page template and custom post type, and given the design a major update. The new Restaurant Theme is more delicious than ever. Check out some of the additional features:

Options Framework

The theme update also integrates with the Options Framework plugin, which offers a much more sleek options interface.

Featured Content Slider

The new featured content slider can display posts with a featured image or a featured video.

Featured Videos

The theme is now capable of displaying featured videos within the slider and on the homepage.

Featured Image Banners

Featured images can now be added to pages and page templates to be displayed as a banner image for that particular page.

Numbered Pagination

The blog and category pagination is now much more accommodating — allowing you to skip ahead to specific page numbers.

Color Options

We have included options for changing the link and highlight colors within the Options Framework — providing a greater array of customization options.

The Natural Theme has received a heavy dose of awesomeness to the design, functionality and theme features. Check out the updated demo here. Rather than having 3 separate color variations as in previous versions of the theme, we have condensed the variations in to one super theme — containing background and color choices within the new Options Framework. In addition, the design has been perfected, a new featured post section has been added to the homepage, the content slider has been updated and much more. The Natural Theme is an excellent solution for businesses working in or around the environment. The theme also makes a great blog, portfolio or storefront. Check out some additional features included with the latest update:

Options Framework

The theme update also integrates with the Options Framework plugin, which offers a much more sleek options interface.

Featured Content Slider

The new featured content slider for the Natural Theme can display posts with a featured image or a featured video.

Featured Videos

The theme is now capable of displaying featured videos within the slider and on the homepage.

Featured Image Banners

Featured images can now be added to pages and page templates to be displayed as a banner image for that particular page.

Numbered Pagination

The blog and category pagination is now much more accommodating — allowing you to skip ahead to specific page numbers.

Color Options

We have included options for changing the link and highlight colors within the Options Framework — providing a greater array of customization options.

We’ve changed our Simple Portfolio Theme to the Showcase Theme, but the name isn’t the only thing we changed. While the theme maintains a similar layout and design as previous versions, we cleaned up the appearance, code, added a new featured content slider, Twitter feed, numbered pagination and the Options Framework. The logo and sidebar now remain fixed to top left, while the rest of the content scrolls — making the navigation always available for a clean user experience.

Don’t take my word for it, check out the updated theme demo.

The Verbage Theme v2

We’re very excited to announce the latest update for the Verbage Theme. Not only because of the awesome new design, but some amazing new features that make this update particularly sweet. The first is the mobile media query. View the theme demo on your iPhone or iPad for a different, but equally awesome experience. We have added media queries to the theme so that the design will change to a more mobile friendly layout when viewed on a mobile device.

Next, the Verbage Theme now contains a considerable amount of customization options — including the ability to change the links and highlight colors, as well as the option to change the header background color in addition to the full site background. There are multiple display options, so you can choose to hide or display the various sections on the home page.

If that wasn’t enough, the updated theme now boasts a new featured content fader, numbered pagination, featured banner images for pages, video capabilities, the Options Framework and much more.

The Bold Theme is the latest of our themes to receive a major update to the design, functionality and features. Check out the updated demo here. Rather than retire the theme, we have breathed new life in to it. Previously, the Bold Theme couldn’t decide what kind of theme it wanted to be. It was more of a general purpose theme. With the latest update, we have redefined the Bold Theme as a video theme. The large content slider is now ideal for showcasing HD video, and the theme is a perfect solution for vloggers, animators and videographers. In addition to redefining the theme’s purpose, we have added several other new features:

Options Framework

The theme update also integrates with the Options Framework plugin, which offers a much more sleek options interface.

Featured Content Slider

The new featured content slider for the Bold Theme can display an unlimited amount of posts with a featured image or a featured video.

Tweet, Like and Google Plus Buttons

Everybody loves to share! With the latest update to the theme, simple Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus buttons have been added to featured home page posts.

Featured Videos

The theme is now capable of displaying featured videos within the slider, homepage tabber and category pages.

Featured Image Banners

Featured images can now be added to pages and page templates to be displayed as a banner image for that particular page.

Multiple Homepage Post Options

You can display one, two or three column posts on the homepage — allowing for greater control of the homepage layout.

Numbered Pagination

The blog and category pagination is now much more accommodating — allowing you to skip ahead to specific page numbers.

We have made major improvements to our Magazine Theme! Check out the demo here. The Magazine Theme is the most recent of our older themes to receive a facelift. We have cleaned up the design, styling and code considerably while also adding many new features. We have structured the new Magazine Theme to play nicely with the popular BuddyPress plugin, so a new level of community features can be integrated with ease. This version of the theme is sure to be a hit with online magazines, businesses and communities. Many other new features include:

Options Framework

The theme update also integrates with the Options Framework plugin, which offers a much more sleek options interface.

Featured Content Slider

The new featured content slider for the Magazine Theme can display an unlimited amount of posts with a featured image or a featured video.

Tweet and Like Buttons

Everybody loves to share! With the latest update to the theme, simple Twitter and Facebook buttons have been added to featured home page posts.

Featured Videos

The theme is now capable of displaying featured videos within the slider, homepage tabber and category pages.

Featured Image Banners

Featured images can now be added to pages and page templates to be displayed as a banner image for that particular page.

Google Font Headings

To add that extra little design flare, we have integrated Google fonts for main headings.

Numbered Pagination

If you have lots of posts, the pagination is now much more accommodating — allowing you to skip ahead to specific page numbers.

We’re excited to announce the release of a new theme, the Studio Theme. You can view the demo here. Our latest addition to the theme collection was created to not have the initial appearance of a WordPress theme. As a designer, the only issue I have with WordPress themes is that most of them are instantly identifiable as a WordPress theme. Whether it’s an obvious blog layout, overwhelming amounts of content, a long horizontally scrolling home page or what I have dubbed “layer cake” design, most WordPress themes have a distinct appearance that is saturating the internet. The Studio Theme provides something different.

I find that many people in need of a website for their business have no desire to blog. The Studio Theme was created to fill their needs. It has an abundance of page templates, and the option for fixed height pages with different layouts. While the theme does still contain a blog page template and blogging capabilities, it’s not the focus of the theme. The Studio Theme is for small businesses, freelancers and studios that are too busy for blogging, but need a presence on the web for their business.