In our Showing Additional Contact Fields in WordPress Registration Form post you saw how to use additional user contact fields and display them in registration form. This time we’ll dig a little deeper and use Twitter REST API to get some more information about the user and display in a WordPress author box bellow post content.

Before doing anything, we need to add Twitter field to user contact methods:

Now that this is set and all users are blackmailed into adding their Twitter details we don’t need to beg them to add their bios, upload Gravatar images or what not, presuming they have populated their Twitter profiles, of course. Warning: large block of code ahead, PHP to plain English translation bellow.

Once again, we are hooking a custom function (ts_twitter_author_box) into a WordPress filter hook (the_content).

First of all, our function needs to check if a single post is being displayed. If post is shown in an archives page we don’t want to display WordPress author box post content is returned as-is. For this we’re using is_single conditional tag. If a single post is being shown function will grab post author object by using $authordata global variable and check if user has entered Twitter details.

This is where it gets tricky and we need to play it smart. Since Twitter API only allows 150 unauthenticated calls per hour (measured from public facing IP of a server) we have to cache our Twitter request, and to achieve that we will be using Transient API. We’ll simply check if transient named “twitter-info-user-{userID}” exists, use that if it does, make a Twitter API call and create transient if it doesn’t. User ID at the end of transient name will ensure that each user gets a transient.

Using an image of finished product to break a long block of text is a great way of keeping you interested :) Custom CSS applied

We won’t get into too much detail on how Twitter API calls are made, but what we’re basically doing is using a wp_remote_get function to make a GET users/show call in order to grab user information. If the call was successful, our code will transform returned JSON encoded string ($response['body']) into a PHP variable ($twitter_info) which will be used as transient, or cache object, value (line 26). Third parameter (10*60) sets transient expire time to ten minutes, so there will be at most 6 Twitter API calls per user, per hour. Keeping Twitter API limit in mind, that should cover 25 authors, if that doesn’t work for you, set it to a higher value.

With Twitter user information stored as a cached PHP variable, now it’s just a matter of displaying whatever we want displayed in our WordPress author box. And there’s a lot to pick from, check out example request at GET users/show Twitter documentation page to see what you have available.

In this example we’ll grab Twitter username, name, profile image URL, user description and latest Tweet text. In addition to that, we’ll display Twitter Follow button, for which we only need Twitter username.

And in order to make this happen, we needed to create HTML output for it (stored as $twitter_author_box variable in code snippet above):

// Store information we plan to use as variables
$status = $twitter_info->status->text;
$photo = $twitter_info->profile_image_url;
$description = $twitter_info->description;
$screen_name = $twitter_info->screen_name;
$name = $twitter_info->name;

// Append Twitter author box to post content
$twitter_author_box .= '<div class="ts-twitter-author-box">';
	$twitter_author_box .= '<div class="ts-tab-image"><img src="' . $photo . '" /></div>';

	$twitter_author_box .= '<div class="ts-tab-text">';
		$twitter_author_box .= '<h4 class="ts-tab-screen-name">@' . $screen_name . '</h4>';
		$twitter_author_box .= '<p class="ts-tab-description">' . $description . '</p>';

		$twitter_author_box .= '<p class="ts-tab-status">' . $status . '</p>';

		$twitter_author_box .= '<a href="https://twitter.com/' . $screen_name . '" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="true" data-lang="en">Follow @' . $screen_name . '</a>';
		$twitter_author_box .= '<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");</script>';
	$twitter_author_box .= '</div>';
$twitter_author_box .= '</div>';

And if you’d rather show your author box before post content:

$content = $twitter_author_box .= $content

That really is all there is to it. WordPress user enters Twitter username into his/her user details, custom function grabs Twitter information, caches it and appends it to WordPress post content. Feel free to use this code wherever appropriate and if you know a way of improving it please post it in the comments.

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After learning how to register additional contact information fields and display them in WordPress register form, it’s time to take a look at how to allow users to set their own passwords when they register. You can achieve that using the same logic from previous post, with slightly different custom functions that you’ll hook into some WordPress filter and action hooks.

Once again, we begin by showing a few extra fields in WordPress registration form and checking user’s input. This time, it’s password and repeat password field, but in order to fight spam account we’ll add one of those beloved “Are you human?” fields as well. Here’s the code:

Our ts_check_extra_register_fields function performs three checks:

1. First it makes sure passwords match
2. Then it checks if password is at least eight characters long
3. Finally, it compares value from “are you human” field to WordPress site title

If any of these conditions are not met, error message will be displayed above the register form. If all is well, WordPress will move on to creating a new user account. But, since we want WordPress to store password into database, rather than generate its own, we need to hook our ts_register_extra_fields function into user_register action hook:

It’s dead simple, if password field was left empty our function does nothing. If the field has a certain value, it passes it to $userdata array as $userdata['user_pass'].

That would be all if it wasn’t for that annoying “A password will be e-mailed to you.” message near the end of WordPress registration form. Luckily, it can be easily replaced by hooking into gettext filter hook:

Why would you want to do this? Well, while most users won’t mind having a password set for them, it still might be better to treat them like humans and let them set their own. Of course, you can copy all the code to functions.php file inside your theme folder or turn it into a plugin by simply merging it into one PHP file and adding standard plugin information (plugin header) to it.

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In this simple, three step tutorial you’ll see how easy it is to modify list of contact method fields being used in WordPress user profiles and display those fields in WordPress registration form. Tools needed to achieve this are custom fields from usermeta table, one WordPress filter hook and two WordPress action hooks.

This could be very useful for WordPress powered websites that allow anyone to register and display user (author) information attached to their posts, on authors’ profile pages or anywhere else.

OK, so let’s start by getting rid of the old and welcoming the new. Raise your hand if you used Yahoo IM, AIM or Jabber (seriously WordPress, no ICQ??) fields in WordPress user profiles. Good, you’re the 1%, shame on you. In order to drop those three and add Twitter, Facebook and Google+, we need to hook our custom function into a WordPress filter hook, or in plain English – modify output of a WordPress function.

Our custom function, ts_modify_contact_fields() intercepts $contactmethods array before it’s being output, removes the AIM, YIM and Jabber and adds Twitter, Facebook and Google+ instead. You can add this code to your functions.php and check out your user profile from the dashboard. If you’re not already familiar with add_filter function, you should definitely check out its Codex page.

Now that we have stepped into the 21st century and social networks have replaced AIM, YIM and Jabber we can show off this new data on our website by using get_user_meta() function. For example, in order to show official Twitter Follow button you should do this:

What that block of code does is check if user with ID = $user_id has entered Twitter info, and if the answer is yes, displays the Follow button:

Follow @slobodanmanic

All that is pretty neat, but people are lazy, and they tend to forget things, right? Why not allow users to fill in their contact information while they register. I do love WordPress registration form the way it is now, dead simple with only two fields (although, being able to set your own password would be nice – more on that in our post on allowing users to set password during registration), but if you’d really like your users to enter their additional contact info and don’t plan on making the fields mandatory, why not add them to WordPress registration form? Here’s how:

In the first block of code we hooked our custom function into a WordPress filter hook to modify WordPress’ output. This time, we’re using an action hook to hook our custom function into a WordPress action. Read more about add_action() function at the official WordPress Codex page.

Once again, that last block of code in plain English – “Hey WordPress, when you run register_form action, would you be so kind to show these fields as well? Thanks!“. Kinda like, “Honey, since you’re going out to a bar, could you take out the trash as well?” but more techy. It’s adding a function (taking out the trash) to your action (going out). The filter function is different, what it says is “Honey, now that you’re going to take out the trash, could you take this heavy old chair that we don’t need as well?” – you’re still taking out the trash, it’s just a little bit different – your output (pun, pun) is being filtered!

So now we can see and edit the fields in user profiles and we have some additional form fields in WordPress registration form. Next and final step would be to store those values into WordPress database, and in order to do that we need to hook into user_register action hook:

Yes, customizing WordPress registration form really is as simple as that, it took just 37 lines of code (without comments and empty lines, of course, I’m trying to make this look good!) to take care of:

1. Removing some unused fields and adding Twitter, Facebook and Google+ contact information fields, hooking into user_contactmethods filter hook
2. Adding those fields to WordPress registration form, hooking into register_form action hook
3. Making sure they get stored in WordPress database when new users register, using user_register action hook

If you have an idea of how to improve this process, I’m sure you know how a comment form works :)

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This article is part of a series – Internet Marketing For Every WordPress Startup.

• Part 1 of the guide to marketing for WordPress fans explained why good communication skills through blog, transparency and friendliness are essential ingredients of every successful WordPress startup and how all your efforts will be multiplied by the level of passion you show for your work.
• Part 2 turns your attention to things that will convince others of your quality service by demonstrating your credibility and availability.
• Part 3 is all about search engine optimization.

6. Being Polite to Search Engines – SEO

Just to be clear before we even start, the value of your WP product outweighs any marketing or optimization efforts you put into making your code, design, templates or other WordPress goodies accessible and visible to search engines. What SEO does for your WordPress startup is make it search engine friendly, semantically correct and enhances usability and user experience.

SEO is an ongoing process which includes things you do:

• On-page – happens right there within your domain
• Off-page – externally, outside your domain through link building

Yeah, yeah, me too :), so let’s get started!

Web Traffic Basics

All web traffic is made up of these three musketeers:

• Search Engines
• Referring Sites
• Direct Traffic

In order to get your website going, you have to make sure it’s in Google, Bing and Yahoo indexes, because this is where a lot of friendships and partnerships come together.

By making everything you do on web both people and search engine friendly, you’re increasing your chances for conversions, which is people signing-up for your services, newsletters, rss feeds, making purchases, etc…

Search engines 1. crawl your every page and make a note of the most prominent phrases in their indices. Those phrases are keywords that define a topic for each internet page. After 2. indexing, your content is being 3. analyzed and 4. served in Search Engine Result Pages based on the search query relevance and web page quality score.

OK, now that you know the basics it’s time to make your content interesting to both people and machines. I’m not going to bore you to death with technical terms, but instead with actionable stuff.

Why Does Search Engine Optimization Exist?

One of the reasons SEO exists is because of search engines’ inability to comprehend things as people and the only thing robots are currently capable of dealing with is HTML text. Consider SEO a bridge between human and machine understanding of the web.

That is why if you have ~

• flash or java based content, you would want to copy what’s written in it in HTML.
• audio and video content, you would want to have transcripts.
• photos, you should write ALT Tags that explain what’s in them.

You content is as valuable as the number of people it influences.

Optimize Title, Alt Tag & Meta Description

Title Tag is one of the most important on-page elements. Always include your main keyword in a title, preferably at the very beginning of the tag. Include your branding and put it at the end of each title tag.

For example, the Title Tag of this post is ~

Complete SEO Guide For Every WordPress Startup – 3 | ThematoSoup

and it is 64 characters long.

If you can, stay below 65 characters, so complete title can be displayed on search engine result page, but don’t follow this rule blindly. If it takes more than that to explain your topic, make it so, as search engines index a lot more than 65 characters.

Title, header and alt tags, URL slug and meta description should all be relevant to one another and preferably contain keywords.

If your website is packed with photos you should add an Alt Tag which explains what each photo is about. This HTML tag will help search engines index photos and it will also make it accessible for on screen readers that are being used by visually impaired people. It helps if your photo has a relevant filename, too.

This photo, for example, has an Alt Tag that says “Best Actor Ever”. I’d advise against using Alt Tags in this manner, because search engines don’t get irony. A filename for this photo is “kurt-russell-imbecile.jpg”, which is far more appropriate.

Make sure you use search engine friendly dash for separating words in filenames and urls.

Meta Description is something not used in search engine ranking algorithm but is displayed in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and plays an important role in Click-Through Rates. Try to stay bellow 154-character mark when writing Meta Descriptions, so search engines can display them nicely.

If it’s relevant to search query and compelling in content than there’s a good chance of users clicking on your link. Also, the words that users enter in search engines will be bold in your Meta Description, Title Tag and URL, thus increasing chance of a click.

URL and Link Optimization

URLs perform better if they’re shorter. Put keywords in your friendly URL slug. If you’re thinking about using sub-domains or sub-directories, despite being longer most of the times, sub-directories tend to perform better. Don’t use stop words, such as “and”, “an”, “a”, “the”…, in your URLs, because search engines discard them.

Links in footer and sidebars are not as valuable as your top navigation or links in your main content. Remember to always put navigation as high in your HTML as you can.

Search engines value links that are right below your home page more, so don’t go all crazy with categories and subcategories, archives and sub-directories. Make it nice and flat, if you please.

Headings

Although Header Tags (H1…H6) have less impact than originally thought, make sure yours are explaining the topic well for the sake of semantics and usability if for non other.

Decide what the core message of your content will be. Put yourself in other people’s shoes. By doing this you can more easily create your titles.

While it’s good to refer to your readers as “YOU”, they will refer to themselves as “I” when performing a search. Have this in mind when you write both Title and Header Tags.

Keyword Selection Guideline

Keywords define your web-pages. In order to generate maximum amount of traffic you’d want to find keywords that people use the most to find your content. You should install Google Analytics code and track metrics that lead to conversions, keywords included.

The way you can extract keywords is to ~

• look for keyphrases which are specific and which describe your topic, product or service
• look for keyphrases which are supported by substantial amount of content on the website
• scan through the pages and headlines of your site and identify the words that are most relevant and may look interesting to your audience
• brainstorm for as many relevant keywords and variations as possible

Consider what you want your audience to do – read an article, get in touch, sign-up for newsletters and edit your content accordingly.

Use Google AdWords Keyword Tool for choosing which keywords are the most valuable. It even does brainstorming for you.

You do this by ~

1. entering all your keywords
2. making sure that on the left side, under “Match Types”, “[Exact]” is checked
3. performing search

As an example, let’s take our Super Light Nivo Slider Skin freebie page. I’ve entered several of the keywords, I thought might bring people that are looking for a light jQuery slider, in Google Keyword Tool and this is what I’ve got.

After this, you would want to see how many other web-pages you are competing against. You do this by performing the following searches:

allintitle:”nivo slider”
allinurl:”nivo slider”
allinanchor:”nivo slider”

This gives you a rough estimate of pages which have phrase “nivo slider” in their title, URL and as an anchor text. If the search volume number is greater than the number of pages you’re competing against, than that keyword might be a valuable one. But, do take time to investigate results, because sometimes top ranking pack is just a bunch of clueless websites with no real value, whatsoever.

Contradictory to what I wrote above, we never did SEO optimization for our Nivo Slider Freebie page and we’ve managed to get it on Google’s first page for a very general term “nivo slider”, among others (just don’t tell anyone). This only shows that quality of your work is beyond any numbers or Google estimates.

Don’t be frightened by numbers, for if your WordPress product is a great one, you’ll get on top eventually.

Additional tools that can help you with keyword research are Google Trends which shows search volume and popularity for a given keyword and Google Insights for Search which provides data about regional usage, popularity and related queries for keywords.

Web Usability & SEO

Internet is being crawled by engines, but it’s meant for people. Bear this in mind every time you decide to produce something new online.

Your web-site should ~

• be designed with function in mind
• provide easy navigation
• have pages optimized with 1 or 2 keywords
• have high-value content

User experience is tightly connected to web-usability. If your web-site’s design, information architecture and content are created with logic in mind and easy for users to navigate through, then search engines will crawl it equally easy and index more of your content. Not to mention a positive sentiment it will leave people with.

Off-page SEO is All About Building Backlinks

You’ve done everything in your power to make your WordPress totem accessible, usable and search engine friendly. The time has come for you to show it to the online community and hopefully get their approval.

There are three main ways of pulling this off ~

• Do Nothing

Your content is exceptional and people will figure that out by themselves.

• Find Influencers In Your Niche

Find potential link prospects by investigating your niche and get in touch asking them to do a review. If you’re building a web-app you can offer them a free service for it.

• Build Your Brand

Whenever you comment on a blog post you can leave your web-address and create awareness. Be active throughout your community and everything you do will not go unnoticed.

In addition to this you could get your customers’ backlinks by asking them to add your badge to their site if they like your product.

Other Online Resources For Making Your Website Search Engine Friendly

Google Webmaster Tools will tell you a bunch of technical stuff about your website including keywords, sitemaps, crawler access, URL parameters, internal links and links to your site, malware, etc. You should also set your preferred domain (either www or non-www version).

Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin will take care of your sitemaps, meta robots, breadcrumbs. You should set admin and search pages to noindex, so search engines don’t present them in SERPs.

Read Google’s Search Engine Optimization Guide PDF and Google Quality Raters Handbook.

Conclusion

SEO landscape is constantly shifting, so focusing on the quality of your goods, whether it’s a blog, a web-app or a WordPress premium theme, you will ensure your SEO effort is a long lasting one.

Be consistent with your on-page, as well as your off-page SEO. Do it for the sake of a better and more usable Internet and search engines will reward you. By using techniques described above you will ensure that no search engine algorithm update can do your WordPress creature harm.

Optimizing your web-pages is never a done deal. It can always be better. If you’re into testing which layouts are most user-friendly and provide best user experience, then check out Google Website Optimizer. Using it is pretty straightforward.

I wish you Happy Optimizing!

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This article is part of a series – Internet Marketing For Every WordPress Startup.

• Part 1 of the guide to marketing for WordPress fans explained why good communication skills through blog, transparency and friendliness are essential ingredients of every successful WordPress startup and how all your efforts will be multiplied by the level of passion you show for your work.
• Part 2 turns your attention to things that will convince others of your quality service by demonstrating your credibility and availability.
• Part 3 is all about search engine optimization.

4. Credibility

Credibility is the capability to elicit belief and it is one of those things that draw the line between a professional and an amateur. The way you earn other people’s trust is by exposing your work and sharing your products for them to use and learn from.
Credibility shows commitment and helps your likeability factor (speaking of the post’s featured image).

Freebie Marketing

Since its first appearance, freebie marketing never subsided. You may want to release quality freebies from time to time. To quote our WordPress developer, Slobodan Manic (yes, Manic is his real lastname) – “It’s better to make one high quality freebie packed with HTML/CSS code, than to release mediocre ones often.” Everybody likes free stuff, especially if it’s high quality goods.

If people like things you create they’ll want to connect with you either on social networks, by email or using rss. Make sure you treat your new friends kindly and provide them with interesting, weekly blog posts or monthly newsletters with discounts, promotions or news on things they might benefit from.

For gathering your future friends’ and clients’ info I suggest a service called MailChimp. It’s easy to implement and it even has a free plan that will work fine for just about any WordPress startup.

Be sure to put your social icons in the footer of each freebie, blog post or newsletter and don’t hesitate to ask for a feedback.

Q/A Networks for Professionals

Engage any of the networks that fit your niche – quora, forrst, dribbble, linkedin and try to comment and give answers to topics you find to be the quality ones. Not only will you learn something new by reading other people’s posts and comments but this communication might spark an idea or two and maybe even a friendship. You should aim at quality and consistency and not quantity of your answers, and try doing this at least twice a week.

Don’t forget to participate in the most important WordPress network of them all ~
WordPress Support Forum.
It will build your authority in the eyes of WordPress founders, who often spend time there.

Testimonials

Another way of showcasing your quality work is by using Testimonials. People love stories because they can relate to them. Testimonials is what makes a difference in the end, between someone getting ready to close the deal with you or that someone leaving your website.

Include a picture of the person that is willing to give you a testimonial. This will increase the trust and persuasion level.

5. Availability

A way of saying you care about what your friends, customers and what you do is availability.

It’s very important for you to respond to every comment on your blog in a timely manner, because this shows your respect and care for your audience and it also increases possibility of further engagement. As long as you maintain a chat-like (not snailmail-like) ambiance for the crowd, you’ll have them return for more. The same goes for questions they may have for you on twitter, your forum or through email.

Incorporate ‘Thank You’ into your marketing plan.

Stay in contact with people you used to work with.

Use your Signature on all emails with info such as you website address, your twitter and linkedin accounts or your skype handle and phone number, so you can generate awareness and be reachable at all times.

Twitter

Twitter is a great marketing tool for all Web Designers and Developers, as it allows you to express your interests, your personality, creativity and engage with other fellow WordPress fans.

Using hash tags is important. By putting the symbol “#” in front of the subject you’re tweeting about, your tweets become a part of a larger topic. For example, when you release a new WordPress freebie you could tweet it like this –

Check out this magnificent #WordPress #freebie I’ve just finished – http://goo.gl/sAeVj

Your tweet will be seen by people that are interested in either WordPress or freebies or both.

Twitter is fairly simple to use and there is no reason why you should neglect it. There are other twitter related resources where you can add yourself and find more of your soulmates, just do a search for twitter directories,

but…

Don’t rely too much on social media

A lot of people use huge amount of time for their social media campaigns, when they should be focusing on search engines. Your website is your throne. Do not put your efforts so much into social networks at the expense of your website, where audience expects to find the information.

Social media marketing strategies are very useful, but if you’re just getting started with WordPress and you’re short on time and money, your resources are better spent focusing on your website content and doing a good SEO rather than trying to gather an army of twitter followers.

• communication skills – blog, friendliness, transparency
• proof of expertise – credibility and availability

The final part, part 3 of this guide to internet marketing will tackle search engine bon ton and why this affects not only your articles’ rankings but their usability as well.

I hope I managed to shed some light on how to do marketing for all you web-developers, designers and WordPress start-ups. If you use an approach that I overlooked, please, do act as true friends and share it with me – I’m sure it’ll add to your credibility.

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If you’re reading this, you’re probably either making money developing WordPress themes, making someone happy by developing themes or working on making one of those two happen. Whatever it is it’s awesome, but are you thinking about the other side? What about people who want to buy a WordPress theme, use it to power their website and then someday find a new theme and want to make the switch. As WordPress theme developers who develop for a broad audience we should be honest to ourselves – a theme buyer is not going to treat our public themes the same way clients would treat themes you built exclusively for them.

Of course, everyone deserves a top-notch product, but a person that spends equal amount of money on his website design and development as he does on his hosting and domain name expenses should be expected to treat the theme you designed and developed the same way he treats his hosting company – whenever there’s a better deal out there, he will at least consider moving their site.

What exactly am I talking about? Anything that will make your buyers’ decision to move from your theme to another one regret he ever used your theme in the first place. There’s many ways you can make this happen but here are two most common ones.

1. Shortcodes, lots of fancy schmancy shortcodes

Trying to move away from a theme that uses a lot of shortcode is like waking up next to a girl with fake eyelashes, fake hair, fake nails, fake-anything (that you didn’t know were fake!). If you’re a girl reading this, list begins and ends with fake hair, I guess (ladies?). When she wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom, you will be laying in the room, alone, with a bunch of fake extensions, trying to answer these two questions: 1) What on Earth is this? and 2) Why does she wear all this, there’s nothing wrong with her without it? In WordPress shortcode world situation I described would look like this:

[fake eyelashes]$9.99 purchase[/fake eyelashes]
[fake hair]$49.99 purchase[/fake hair]
[fake nails]$19.99 purchase[/fake nails]

That’s what a post in a WordPress powered website will look like once the admin switches to another theme that doesn’t support exactly the same shortcodes. You don’t want to force your users into dealing with that mess just like you don’t want to wake up next to all those fake objects, do you? Then, unless you’re 100% certain they will be using your theme till the end of time, don’t do it. If you do and your user decides to try another theme, well, remember those two questions?

An alternative to this would be to either teach your customers how to do some basic HTML editing, or extend TinyMCE editor by adding buttons that will insert custom HTML into post editor, so rather than:

[cool_button_shortcode]Learn about WordPress themes[/cool_button_shortcode]

If they switch to another theme your cool button would look like this:

Learn about WordPress themes

Once your customer replaces your theme with another one, all that remains is a link and that causes no harm whatsoever.

I’m well aware of the fact that most customers’ opinion on shortcodes is “the more the merrier” but it is your duty to at least try to educate them and show them there is another, better way of doing it. Better for them. Ever checked number of shortcodes in WordPress beautiful default theme (twentyeleven)? ZERO.

For further reading on this check out Dealing with Shortcode Madness by Justin Tadlock and An Alternative to Shortcode Madness by Luke McDonald.

2. Using custom post types unless they are a necessity

And they almost never are in a public WordPress theme. Let me get this straight, I absolutely love custom post types. If I’m developing a custom theme for a client I’m more likely to use them than not. Why? Because they are a great way of clearly separating the content and a client that’s willing to pay for a custom design is very unlikely to move away from that design and start using a public (free or premium) WordPress theme. If they ever need to make a change to their website it will either be an edit to current theme or another custom theme built from scratch, and in this case developer will be aware of existing custom post types and include them in new theme.

WordPress custom post types in public themes may not be such a great idea

But what if you develop a popular free WordPress theme, or sell one for $35 at ThemeForest and it has “Events” custom post type built-in? Your customer goes on to add dozens, even hundreds of events to her website and then decides she would like to use another theme. She makes the purchase, activates the theme and POOF – the events are gone. Not just from her homepage, but from the dashboard as well. So what are her options? She can either:

• Hire a developer to edit her new theme so Events are part of it and hate you for having to spend money on a WordPress developer, or
• Forget about the new theme, go back to your theme and hate you for the money she spent buying a theme she will likely never use and also for not being able to go away from your theme, even though she now hates it.

Either way, whatever you’re selling in the future, she’s probably not buying it. Not only that, but since she has a website, a lot of people are likely to learn about her experience with your theme. It really is like having to surgically re-adjust your spine before buying a new car, from another manufacturer, so you can fit in, at your expense. Not cool.

Let me conclude this semi-rant by saying that unless you’re building your WordPress themes with humans, rather than dollars in mind you’re doing a poor job. Showing off hundreds of different shortcodes will most likely mean more people will use your themes (unfortunately), but every time one of your customers tries to abandon your theme and install a new they will get disappointed, in your theme and in WordPress. Both of those mean one less potential customer, you don’t want that to happen, do you?

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This article is part of a series – Internet Marketing For Every WordPress Startup.

• Part 1 of the guide to marketing for WordPress fans explains why good communication skillsthrough blog, transparency and friendliness are essential ingredients of every successful WordPress startup and how all your efforts will be multiplied by the level of passion you show for your work.
• Part 2 turns your attention to things that will convince others of your quality service by demonstrating your credibility and availability.
• Part 3 is all about search engine optimization.

Having an online presence has become mandatory. It’s the easiest and most efficient way of establishing yourself within a niche of your interest and eventually finding your future clients. But having presence is not enough these days. You have to be able to communicate your ideas on a personal level with your audience and let them get to know you if you intend for those people to come back for more. In order to do this you apparently need something called – communication skills.

The ingredients for a successful WordPress Theme Building startup and every web designer or developer, for that matter, are the following:

1. Blog
2. Transparency
3. Friendliness
4. Credibility
5. Availability
6. Being polite to Search Engines – SEO

If you just woke up from your everyday routine and you want to change something, then get ready for the first three items on our menu – starting up a blog, why and how to be transparent, friendly and open about yourself and the things you do. Credibility and availability will be tackled in part 2 as your midday meal and I’ll leave SEO for the last part, when I intend to serve you a full course dinner.

Let’s begin with what should be the pillar stone of all your efforts – the blog.

1. Writing a Blog, Not a Brag

Start writing a Blog about anything and everything you do. Don’t think about search engines or promotion when creating your first copy. Don’t even worry about punctuation. If you’re using WordPress then toggle “fullscreen mode” in the text editor. It completely blinds everything except for the writing window. This will result in an undisturbed flow of your thoughts producing unique and quality content.

Web designers, you will have to think infographics, videos and tutorials, which can be uploaded on YouTube or Vimeo and embedded on your website later on. You can use your projects as an inspiration and talk about design process and problems you had to overcome.

Producing fresh and unique content is something search engines value, so consider your future blog the most important step toward making your website visible to others in your area of interest. Being a place of meeting new start-ups, you can turn your blog into a network of people gathered around one common idea, by following the guidelines listed below.

2. Transparency

You did something wrong, you messed up your code and you’ve just realized everybody’s going to find out. So what?

Instead of hiding a mistake, be open about it, admit an error and let everybody know you’re working on fixing it, making your product or service even better and greater than it was before.

Maybe you forgot about the people that got used to reading your articles?
Write a post about why you neglected your subscribers; They’ll understand. Everybody needs a break from time to time.

Don’t hide behind your website, but rather use it as your résumé or even more personal, use it as your working diary or write about principles of work in your manifesto. People are so intrigued by these things, that they just love the opportunity to peek inside somebody’s head.

3. Friendliness

Being friendly goes a long way. Try to make people feel comfortable and important when you talk to them. It’s one of those things that applies to anything you do. Whether you’re replying to a blog comment, an email or you’re just trying to reach out to your future clients, being friendly and open about yourself is crucial.

Linking To Similar Blogs

If you link your quality content to others, others will link back to you. Not to mention that people who read your blog posts will benefit from having an opportunity to perceive the topic from multiple aspects. Focus on providing value even if it means rerouting visitors to someone else’s blogs.

You will be appreciated for your good intentions and unselfishness. Keep doing this, remain patient and you will see results.

Guest Blogging

If you have great things to write about, you should spread your knowledge across multiple blogs. Find people that are interested in WordPress development or design and offer them a free blog post.

Start building a relationship first by following them on twitter, reading their blog, commenting on posts, etc. Once they notice you and see that you have valuable content on your own blog, you can ask them to write something for them.

You can link to those very posts, as a display of your good work, in your future articles.

Commenting On Blogs

Make sure to visit similar blogs and post helpful comments that will ensure your on-line presence and get people to notice you. Few things in life feel as good as helping others, so use this opportunity to be valuable and make new friends along the way.

Commenting gives you a chance to link back to your content. I suggest linking to a similar post on your blog, instead of always linking back to your homepage.

You know how people often talk about the importance of being professional? Well, things changed long time ago in the world of internet and dare I say, in the world, period. Nobody likes those uptight guys anymore. People are looking for someone genuine and someone they can relate to.

Eventually, you will be recognized in your niche if you’re personal and unreservedly passionate about what you do, but this is not something you can gain from reading some internet marketing guide. Your will, determination and sweat make up 90% of your success, the other 10% is just us, marketing guys, writing about how to put all that energy to good use.

If I forgot to mention something, please feel free to comment and share your ideas. Hope to see you soon in part two of this series when I continue with our list of internet marketing techniques for WordPress startups.

Until then, stay passionate.

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Things have been awfully quiet here for past few months and joys of summer are not the only reason for it. We never expected starting a WordPress theme shop from scratch would be easy, but we also never guessed how hard it would be turn three freelancers (who all had, and still have, their own assignments) into a team that would be able to spend majority of its time building great WordPress themes and trying to help others do the same thing. It’s just not easy to say no to cool people you enjoy working for and to money that work brings you, so we decided to cut down on client work a little but and, to quote the great Gary V, hustle, or work our butts off, in plain English.

I’m pretty sure we’ll see not working harder on dedicating more time to ThematoSoup as our HM#1 (Huge Mistake #1) some day and the only reason it ever made it into a blog post is because of what we happily agreed we’d be – a fully transparent WordPress theme shop. If we screw up, we want to tell the world about it, if it can help just one person in the future avoid the same mistake, we did some good, while doing bad.

So here’s a breakdown of where we’re at:

• We’re back to developing Ahuyama, our first free WordPress theme. It’s close to being done, majority of remaining work has to do with developing theme options pages (more on this in another post) that will be using WordPress Settings API. After developing our own custom theme options panel I realized (thanks to Chip Bennett) that doing it that way leads to poor UX for your theme users and now I’m re-writing all of the code.
• Goran, our designer is working on another amazing freebie. More on that soon, but let’s say it has to do with pricing and tables. Since we want our freebies to be used by fellow WordPress theme developers, we’ll try to make all of them as easy to insert into your themes as possible, whether that’s by using shortcodes, custom functions, code snippets that you’ll be able to insert into your page templates or anything else.
• Dragan, our SEO and social media guru – and I’m only saying this because he hates it when I call him that :) – will be a lot more active blogging, tweeting, facebooking, plusing, linkedining… He’s also working on series of posts covering Marketing for Web Developers and Designers, specifically geared at those that make their living working with WordPress.
• All of us agreed we should work together more often. Remote teams can work just fine, and they usually do. I’ve been a lone remote member of a great team for years and, other than me having to stay up late every now and then because of a 9 hour time difference, there were never any problems. But having a 100% remote team when all team members are within walking distance is lunacy. Make that our HM#2.

It’s true, we could’ve easily done a lot more by now, but we are on the same page and we’re looking forward to what future holds.

P.S. Damn, I love IA Writer.

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Time is rarely on your side so you must find ways to make it your teammate.
If you’re in a stage of developing a premium WordPress theme consider offering the HTML template to the public so you’ll know what to expect and how to adapt to ever-changing design trends.

You know how you always plan on creating something special and you’re all hyped up about it. You’re ready to take on every challenge that faces you, gathering resources, spending time on research, discussing tiniest of details with your colleagues, thinking that’s exactly what’s going to set you apart from everybody else.

Everything is going silky smooth, but you don’t feel like you’re moving forward because you haven’t accomplished a milestone yet. This is the perfect time to take a step back and evaluate what you have done so far and how you can use it to your immediate advantage.

Sell your HTML code, even if HTML is not your final destination

ThemeForest seems like a reasonable place to sell your HTML template if you’ve already decided that this is going to be the birthplace of your first premium WordPress theme. If you’d like to know more about ThemeForest or why I think this is a right place to promote your premium WordPress template, you can read it in some of the previous posts.

Pushing your HTML template will come out fruitful for several things:

1. You’ll get public opinion on levels of your success in creating a visually appealing and functional design
2. You’ll be able to determine and isolate errors in the design, and thus improve it
3. It’ll add to your branding efforts and create some buzz if you’re just starting up
4. You’ll earn some money that will keep you going

You can expect reasonable exposure and some return on investment, but the most valuable thing that you’ll look for is – opinions. Every opinion is a breadcrumb that will bring you closer to your ultimate goal – a usable premium WordPress template. Look for negative ones and don’t get carried away by positives.

Make yourself a stranger to the template, and see if that’s something you would buy. Ask yourself – What would anyone want to use this HTML template for? Be critical now, so you won’t have to worry about it later when the stakes get high.

It’s important to use and monetize on everything you’ve got, on every sketch, every byproduct, every pixel, every single thread in your digital fabric. Time you’ve invested in creating those things passed and you deserve something in return.

Everything is usable. Don’t ever discard things and possibilities you think are worthless, because somebody might be looking for just the thing that’s in your Recycle Bin.

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Selling premium WordPress themes can be done in a variety of ways and there are many online markets which can help you do just that. You might consider submitting your theme to WordPress.org if you’re looking for initial exposure, backlinks and brand recognition, or you can use your own website for WordPress theme marketing purposes, if it’s already well established.

Providing that you want to build and sell a theme that will be rich in features and have outstanding design with all the little details cleverly thought through, I highly recommend ThemeForest.

So, what is ThemeForest?

ThemeForest is Envato’s most profitable marketplace that specializes in selling premium WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Shopify, Tumblr, PSD, HTML, email and other templates. Envato is an Australian based company founded in 2006 which committed itself to producing high quality items, so be sure that you match their criteria before you decide it’s time to make some money for the time and hard work you’ve invested. They also have a wide array of blogs where you can find tutorials on how to develop and use your creative skills to your full potential.

ThemeForest - Premium WordPress Themes and Web Templates

ThemeForest ensures that your work will get the visibility it deserves since they’ve established themselves as a go-to marketplace for the vast majority of template-loving clientele. You can focus on your work and not worry about transactions or your WordPress theme marketing. Envato marketplace authors make between 50% and 70% on every item sold, which means that you are deprived of at least 30% of your earnings, which may seem a lot, but when you think of the marketing exposure ThemeForest provides it doesn’t seem to be so wallet hostile anymore. Prices range from $12 to $60 for WordPress templates, based on the overall quality and complexity of a file and determined by Envato staff. If you want to purchase any of the ThemeForest items you must first register and then select what way you want your templates sorted.

You can sort templates by:

• Popular Files
• Top Authors
• Collections
• Featured Files
• Category List

or you can search for a specific template using keyword search which is basically entering the name of the theme or author you’re looking for in the search box.
Payment is done by PayPal and after it’s concluded you may download your chosen item straightaway.

If you’re considering building a premium WordPress theme yourself, ThemeForest will be invaluable source of inspiration, knowledge, and an overall reference point. It’s such a vast community that most of the times you won’t have to look elsewhere, as you’ll be able to extract the best out of multitude of templates, improve the things you think others could have done better or simply discard what you think is mediocre.

The thing I found most interesting about ThemeForest is that it helped me gain a certain perspective on the functionality and design of websites. Once you start developing that perspective you can dive into your own endeavor.

If you wish to read about my perspective in detail, about the authors, designs patterns that capture your eyes at an instant and about most sought after features that make certain premium WordPress themes do better that others, then stick around for my future posts, as I’ll go up close and personal with this unique marketplace.

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