In under two months Socket has surpassed the 200 purchase mark. It’s still selling more than twice as fast as our first theme, Caulk, which has itself seen a surge of popularity recently (we thought Socket would have passed it in overall sales by now). Here are a few of our notable numbers from ThemeForest:

• We have 517 combined sales
• Socket has been rated 20 times and currently has an average rating of 5/5 stars
• Socket has 117 total comments
• We have achieved the coveted Sliver Bear Claw badge (sold between $10,000 and $50,000 on ThemeForest)
• Our ThemeForest items have earned us clients from 5 different continents

We are greatly looking forward to creating our next template. Pick up Socket for a mere $37 from Theme Forest today!

Isn’t that amazing? We had no idea our very first theme would take off like it did. Thank you to everyone who has purchased and given us such positive feedback on our flagship theme! Now, let’s break 300 with Socket! We’re currently at 150 sales with Socket in under a month, which should put us on pace to hit that mark. A few other Theme Forest landmarks of note:

• We recently received our sliver bear claw badge for exceeding $10k in gross sales (currently at $11.5k)
• We cracked the 44% commission rate tier a week ago, and are a few hundred bucks shy of cracking 45% tier
• Our total lifetime volume is 430 sales
• Our newest theme, Socket, is rated at 5 out of 5 stars after 148 purchases

To keep up with our progress and subscribe to our future theme releases, view our Theme Forest portfolio.

We here at OSWC are students of the newest design trends in the biz. We love shiny new things. If there is a new toy out, we have GOT to get our hands on it. We don’t know why, but that’s how it works with us. The same goes with web design trends. jQuery is very hot right now, and we’re getting our hands on it and playing with it like it’s the newest smart phone. We already employed some of the hippest CSS2 trends when we built this site, like image sprites, background image hover effects, and purely CSS drop down menus. Since then, we’ve leveraged a lot of the newest jQuery techniques too, beginning with the Twitter plugin, continuing with a validated AJAX contact form, adding in some nifty portfolio sliders, and rounding it out with some cool quote rotators (e.g. the Outer Spice Buzz panel on the Services and Portfolio pages, as well as the bottom-right panel on every page). So, we’re continuing that trend today with a few more features.

Our shiniest, most notable new feature is the star animation in the header. Undoubtedly you’ve already noticed, but just in case you missed it, scroll to the top of the page and check it out – Outer Spice is now flying through space! There is a subtle animated image made up of stars that slides across the original image in the header, making it seem as though we’re meandering through space on a galactic quest of domination and adventure. Those are indeed strong words, but once day you’ll see – we will take over the universe. The animation is done using jQuery (no flash here!), specifically by leveraging a plugin called Spritely. Check it out for yourself, it’s pretty awesome. And we’re only using about 20% of what it can actually do (we’re not actually using the “sprite” feature – just the “pan” feature for now, but we’re planning to implement some sprite animation in the future).

The other feature we just implemented is the brand new Google Font Directory via the Google Font API to produce awesome fonts that render in any browser without the use of jQuery or images. That means the page loads faster and is much more SEO friendly. We were previously heavily using a font called Yanone Kaffeesatz in images as headers and text all over the site. However, Google just added that font to their directory of free fonts, so we were able to do away with all those images and lighten up the site a bit.

Check out this awesome font – it’s really a font – no image or jQuery is used!

Cool, huh? We were going to employ the cufon font replacement technique, which uses jQuery to transform embedded fonts into images on the fly, but thanks to the Google Font API we were able to go one step further and put our special font directly on our page. Natural. Pure. Indexable. Gracefully downgrading. That’s what we like to hear at OSWC. Stay tuned for changes to our portfolio and services pages!

Today In Development: Blog In The Spotlight. Today’s blog is Function Web Design. With articles focusing on, you guessed it, web design, Function specializes in Wordpress theme and plugin development. I particularly like Function because they definitely live by one of our core philosophies here at Outer Spice: Less is More. For instance, Function seems to post an article no more than a few times per month. As a result, each of their articles are well thought out and of very high quality. Their articles are relevant, insightful, and original. Today’s article really caught my eye since Socket version 1.1 was just released, featuring a revamped theme options page. The article is entitled Wordpress Theme Options Overload? A Judgement Call and it brings up an interesting topic, once again, in the “less is more” category.

While this is one of Function’s shorter, less in-depth articles, it is very important because it asks this question at a very important time. Right now, theme developers are adding more and more options to their theme options pages, and too often it is only for bragging rights as to who has the largest number of options, even if a lot of them are redundant or useless. Socket contains one theme options page separated into 4 categories, and a total of around 50 options – all of which are necessary. We do not attempt to do anything that an existing plugin can already do, in order to avoid reinventing the wheel. That is exactly what this article is talking about. Check it out – it can really be applied to anything you do as a developer or designer. Content is king, meaning that design and functionality should always yield the the meat of your site: content. Having too many theme options can not only muck up your content, but more importantly scare away your potential clients due to over-complexity and over-complication.

Here is Function’s “mission statement” of sorts:

Designing a website that works… We Pride ourselves on giving you Great design & Functionality, providing a website that will impress on first looks, and continue to impress as you explore it. We make it as easy as possible for you to look after once we’ve finished. So if you’re after a website or blog design to freshen up you’re site we’re more than happy to help.

In just 18 short days, Socket has already hit 100 purchases. To put that in perspective, our popular and successful first theme Caulk hit 100 purchases in about 2 months. So that means Socket is officially selling more than twice as fast as Caulk. We’re very proud of this success and we’re glad that so many people have been able to benefit from Socket’s awesomeness. Pick up the theme for a mere $37 from Theme Forest today!

We are pleased to announce that the HTML (PHP) version of our Socket Wordpress template has been approved for sale at Theme Forest. At only $17, it’s definitely a steal. It’s got all the glorious features of the original Socket, but without the limitation of having to use Wordpress. 34 page templates, jQuery enhanced, Piecemaker 3D flash slider, font replacement, fancy menu dropdowns, 9 gorgeous skins, and 2 AJAX contact forms are just a few of the features that round out Socket. Best of all, the code is intuitive, commented in-line, indented, spaced, and accompanied with a documentation help file that explains how to use it. Check it out on Theme Forest. Here is the description:

• 34 page templates
• 6 different portfolio page layouts
• A unique theme design not yet seen on ThemeForest
• Piecemaker 3d content slider
• 3 separate jQuery content sliders
• 9 gorgeous professional skins
• cufon font replacement
• superfish drop down menus
• 2 AJAX contact forms
• JQuery enhanced elements including multiple jQuery sliders
• Easy to customize
• Twitter & Flickr integration
• Slick “more” panel slides out to expose non-critical content from under the menu
• The best free template icons out there
• Valid XHTML and CSS, and compatible with all modern browsers
• Completely styled blog pages (archives, single post, post list, comments, related posts, etc.)
• Lots of white-space and modern styling techniques
• Indented, spaced, commented, and intuitive code (HTML, CSS, and PHP is all commented in-line)
• Superb, prompt customer service
• Excellent documentation
• Lots more!

Socket is a very powerful and flexible CMS for corporate and/or portfolio use. It was developed using the latest technologies and web coding standards, and employs state-of-the-art features such as jQuery enhancements, font replacement, AJAX contact forms, social media integration, and more. Here are a few of the most notable features:

• Over 30 page templates (6 different portfolio layouts)
• 9 gorgeous professional skins
• Unlimited widget combinations using 15 distinct widget panels
• A huge, beautiful featured area to showcase your work
• Tons of back-end theme options

To really get a feel for everything Socket can do, check out the live demo and explore all the pages. The features are described on each page, and you can also see the different skins. Here is a list of each skin with a link to see it in action:

Skins (click to see live)

• Slate
• Aluminum
• Epoxy
• Carbon
• Neoprene
• Iron
• Brick
• Malachite
• Magnet

You can create 2 websites that look completely different from each other using Socket, since it has so many options for arrangement of widget panels, number of columns, colors, styles, and page templates. It truly is a premium theme by any and all standards. Here is a full list of features:

Features

• Over 30 page templates
• 6 different portfolio page layouts
• A unique theme design not yet seen on ThemeForest
• 3 separate content sliders
• 15 distict widget panels
• 9 gorgeous professional skins
• cufon font replacement
• superfish drop down menus
• 2 AJAX contact forms
• JQuery enhanced elements including multiple jQuery sliders
• Organized and easy-to-use theme options page
• Twitter & Flickr integration
• Slick “more” panel slides out to expose non-critical content from under the menu
• The best free template icons out there
• Valid XHTML and CSS, and compatible with all modern browsers
• Forward-engineered to work with Wordpress version 3! (currently tested with Wordpress 3 beta 2)
• Integrates with post thumbnail featured introduced in Wordpress 2.9
• No plugins required
• Nested and paged comments
• Related posts underneath blog posts
• Lots of white-space and modern styling techniques
• Indented, spaced, commented, and intuitive code (HTML, CSS, and PHP is all commented in-line)
• Superb, prompt customer service
• Lots more!

We recently did some customizations of our Caulk theme for the Blogger’s Bug website started by Mike Wilkerson of 2GuysTalking fame. In return, he gave us a huge shout-out in his weekly 24 series podcast which you can Listen to here – you’ll hear the Outer Spice plug at 4:50. If you’re into 24 (I used to be until around season 6) then you should definitely give his podcast a listen. Here’s the official website: 24podcast.com. Oh, and did I mention this is the official podcast of the Fox television series 24? So, you can also get to it by going to Fox’s website and clicking on the 2GuysTalking podcast link. Thanks again for the shout-out, Mike!

In other news, OSWC is wrapping up development on our newest premium Wordpress template called Socket, which will be available for sale on ThemeForest.net. We have also recently finished several other projects that will be appearing in our Portfolio section soon. Check back often!

We will build your website according to best industry practices for search engine optimization.  The code will validate and the content will be easily indexable.  We agree with SEO industry leaders who preach ‘Content is king’ – and recommend producing consistently unique, interesting, content that centers around the search terms and subjects you want to score high with.

White hat (good) SEO techniques

Content is king.

Every so called SEO guru will tell you – the best possible way you can increase your SEO is to create consistent, quality, content.  Now be very careful when you go down this road.  Just because you put out content, doesn’t mean its good or that it will automatically be ranked better.  For instance – take these 2 SEO related websites.

http://seo-tutorial.seoadministrator.com/ – Great collection of data centered around all things SEO

http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/google-personalized-search/ – Very lazy article and thinly veiled attempt at linking.  Below is the entire content of the post written by the author of the site:

David Harry of the SEO Dojo has pulled together an interesting study about Personalised Search (how Google changes rankings based on various metrics included being signed into a Google account) [enter article quote here]  This is a very difficult area to monitor and draw conclusions from – and an area I’ve certainly neglected. Hence the link. Worth a read.

That’s it!  The entire post. This is very lazy.  Great content will bring more visitors than cross-linking every single time.  Spend the extra time on extremely high quality articles and blog posts.  You’ll quickly stand out over the regurgitating news linkers littering the Internet.

Related, incoming links

Notice I’m not talking about any types of links.  Your goal should be to get your website URL as a link on sites that are directly related to what you’re doing.  If you have a video game review blog, you want to try and get your website URL on the front page of a video game store, video game online magazine, etc.  You do not want to have your website URL linked on the front page of a yarn wholesaler, or a recipe website.  Search engines will see you are not contextually relevant.

Consequently, when you are choosing the links that you will publish on your front page, remember this same technique of contextual relevancy.

Communities

If your site is one that can attract and hold a community, having a forum is a wonderful way to engage your target market and score higher with search engines.  Think of all the indexable content coming from multiple new posts every day!  If you can manage them and keep them on topic, your own users can help you increase your search rank.

Black hat (bad) SEO techniques

These are techniques that are penalized when identified by search engines or administrators.  They are unethical and lazy.  They range from trying to game the system to flat out deception.

Hidden content – white text with a white background stuffing keywords in hopes that search engine crawlers index everything.
Meta crazy – in the meta tags of the header, people will stuff keywords here like crazy.
Link farms – groups of websites all linking back towards each other in order to spam the index of a search engine.
Gateway pages – content stuffed with keywords that auto-redirects when you go there to another page they want you to see.
Cloaking – a human reading the website would see different things than the search engine spider read.

Grey hat (shady) SEO techniques

Here’s the ‘grey’ area.  They aren’t strictly forbidden among all circles, but they aren’t exactly on any white list.

Paid links – I pay to get my link on your website which has a ton of traffic.  This high traffic value will increase your search rankings.
Duplicate content – micro-site interlinking or having links that link back to your own site, perhaps with duplicate or simple content.  This technique is starting to slide into the black hat seo area.

There are many other techniques constantly being tested and refined by SEO’s every day.  Just like nearly everything in life; consistent, hard work will pay off.  Great content is truly the king of search engine optimization.

Here is a website I came across with over 100k icons. The problem I’ve found with other free icon websites is that it’s hard to browse through the myriad of icons available, and when you do finally come across a set you like, you discover it is not free for commercial use. The great thing about this website is how it lists the icon sets out thumbnail style so you can easily view many at once, and it lists the license directly below each thumbnail. The only thing it’s missing is a way to sort by license, instead of just sorting alphabetically by icon set name. Check it out for yourself: FREE ICONS!.