We are announcing changes in the terms and conditions of the  ColorLabs Affiliate Program.

We are decreasing affiliate commission from 35% to 25% of sales value. Although that might sound like bad news to you, the good news is that you can now earn commission starting from the very first transaction you generate. This means that you will be able to make money faster than before.

This change will be effective on March 1, 2012.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact us.

Affiliate Forum

We are currently working on a forum for ColorLabs affiliates which should be active in the next coming month. We want the Affiliate Forum to be a place where people give and take advice, discuss their triumphs and failures, share information and tools. It will also act as another communication tool between ColorLabs and affiliates.

What do you think of this idea? Share your thoughts on the comment section below. :D

Why Basecamp?

A typical WordPress theme development involves a product development manager, a collaborative designer, a developer, and at least three beta testers, so there is potentially a huge amount of communication needed.

Imagine if we use email to communicate: an email message is sent out to several recipients, each replying to ‘all’, the thread getting longer and longer, making it difficult to keep track who said what. Eventually you’ll found yourself frantically searching for an email about a project in an inbox that is overloaded with messages.

With Basecamp messages are presented in a simple chronological order, with each message clearly identified with its sender. Most importantly, with Basecamp all activities, documents, discussions, data are in one place where all team members are able to access. This makes collaboration super easy since all team are literally on the same page anytime and anywhere so we can pay close attention to every single step within the project implementation stages.

I will walk you through on how we use Basecamp to handle internal management and also the team’s communication with external collaborators.

Milestones & To-Do’s

The Milestone area has to be my favorite part of Basecamp. It really helps us work towards timeline-based goals. The screen shot below shows our milestones in recent weeks. Setting  goal-oriented milestones alone in Basecamp has taken us from puttering around to being super efficient.

To-do lists can be attached to a Milestone, so you can list out what needs to be done to hit a milestone. The to-do list might be the easiest way to keep track of our project’s progress. Both Milestone and To-do can be assigned to a team member allowing everyone to be held accountable for what they are responsible for, and there’s no confusion.

As we start a new project we import the appropriate to-do list and start to check off the items that have been done. You can keep track of other members working on the project, share your work progress with them, discuss and make plans to complete the project in the specific time.

Share Documents with Colleagues and Collaborative Designers

Basecamp has a Files section where you can upload all the documents relevant to your business. In ColorLabs’s case these might include draft and final project briefs, project reports and images, such as banners, screen-shots, etc. Basecamp allows all project parties to upload documents, we use this to our advantage in the planning stages of a theme project.

We have 7 collaborative designers who are spread all across the country and still looking for more. So you can see how we will struggle if we assign designers to submit their work via email. Everything will get jumbled up and email attachment has a size limit.

At the early stage of WordPress theme development the designer will submit mock-ups by uploading the files to Basecamp, where he will explain my choices. This way everyone can have a look over the mock-ups and give their feedback.

Collaborate to Write Content

Creating content can be a really complex set of step and interactions. Basecamp offers Writeboards which you can use to collaboratively write a web page, a contract or a project brief. Just create a new writeboard, write your content, then send a message to your colleagues inviting them to review and edit. Every changes to the writeboard is saved as a new version and you can then compare the various versions easily.

How Do You Manage Projects?

What system(s) do you use to keep your creative team and projects on track? We’d love to hear from you.

To thank you for your participation, we’ll be giving away a Standard Pack License of Backbone Theme Framework to 10 randomly selected survey respondents. You do not need to be a ColorLabs user to take the survey, but you do need to complete the survey to be in the running for a prize.

Simply complete the survey by February 29, 2011 and you will be entered to win the Standard Pack License of Backbone Theme Framework. Chop chop!

Take the Survey

We designed this theme to cater two types of WordPress users – those who want to get a beautiful store up and running without coding a single thing, and those who want to get e-commerce stores up and running for their clients in a matter of hours using a combination of the comprehensive theme settings and don’t mind to delve into the well structured code.

So whoever you are, there’s no doubt Sneakers Addict will be the perfect eCommerce theme for you.

Low-key Cool is The New Glamour

As previewed on my previous blog post, Sneakers Addict is all about building an online shop for selling casual and comfortable attires which emphasizes comfort and personnal expression over presentation and uniformity. This theme combines the subtly-textured background, clean typography and with easy usability, creating subtle luxury and effortless edge that reflect your products perfectly.

Now let’s look at some great features that this theme has.

Homepage Slider

Easily upload images for your homepage slideshow. Each picture can link to any page or product you choose. You can even turn this whole panel off if you don’t need it.

Highlight Your Special Items and Campaigns

Sneakers Addict has dedicated space for your best products: the most popular, the highest rated, and the best priced. Customers can easily rate a product using a simple star rating system. Easily put a “Sale” ribbon on your product. No matter what you need to maximize the exposure of your most seek-out product, Sneakers Addict has it all.

Sneakers Addict also include a blog where you can promote your newly released products or publish a marketing campaign to increase the overall value of your brand. All you need to do is create a desirable and fresh content that suits the theme of the promotion and tempts customers into making a purchase.

Ecommerce Goodness

Sneakers Addict is compatible with 3 best WordPress e-commerce plugins: WooCommerce, WP e-Commerce, and Jigoshop. All the eCommerce features that you get in those 3 plugins you’ll find them too on Sneakers Addict including the ability to choose shipping and payment gateaways, shopping cart, order tracking and email confirmation. Your customers will be able to make their own account where they can enter their billing and shipping information so they don’t need to enter them anymore each time they check out.

Are You Liking It as Much as We Do?

Although we’ve made this one for casual fashion products, you can use it for other goods too. We’re sure that Sneakers Addict eCommerce WordPress theme is all you need to create your own eCommerce site you always wanted! Simply install the theme, add your products, their pictures, some description and you are all set!

Demo the theme here and head over to the landing page to find out more of its features and purchase the theme.

We know there are numerous paid and free WordPress magazine themes available out there, however they come in varying levels of quality. The demand for high quality magazine-style WordPress themes from our users is still very high last years and, we predict, still will be in 2012. We asked Monika Halim to make us a design and handed it over to the developers to create yet another feature-rich WordPress theme.

Introducing the Neu theme, a magazine WordPress theme for customers looking for a complete web standards compliant theme and one that will set their websites apart from their competitors. Neu is perfectly capable on handling and displaying a lot of content in a way that pleased the readers’ eyes, make it almost suitable to any type of web publishing, from commercialized blogs by a team of writers to news websites with an organized editorial team.

Let’s look at the front page of the Neu theme.

As a magazine-style theme, Neu offers good usability, clean typography, and professional interface. We chose white background for Neu which is for better content readability. The contents are grouped into one column, just like a blog, to keep them well-spaced and noticeable and its placement is adjustable, but we’ll get into that later.

Horizontal navigation on the top-most part of the page, just above the header will act as primary navigation. But with many collection of contents, it’s just logical to provide a vertical category-based navigation so visitors can find and read what they really care about.

Page Layout and Feature Posts Options

The homepage features a 3-column and you can alter the composition to your liking. Choose where you want to place your content: left-side or center-column.

With many contents posted on a news websites, we put featured posts section on Neu. Perfect to highlight the Latest News or Headlines to inform visitors and users on what the newly published articles on the website are. You can choose how you’d like to display your featured posts, one big thumbnail with a short column of small thumbnails or a row of small thumbnails.

You can do both content and featured posts settings, including many design settings, directly on the Theme Options. The ColorLabs options panel is very user friendly and extremely over the top, giving you almost unlimited flexibility without without the need to touch any code.

Tabbed Content Areas

With a dedicated team of writers, news website add contents very quickly and frequently, so showing links to articles that are currently popular is also an important part of usability. Neu uses a tabbed content area in the sidebar to show the most popular articles, recent articles, and the latest comments submitted by readers. This method is a great way to inform your readers on which are the most clicked without taking too much space.

Social Media Integration

The impact of social media on sending traffic to a website is now widely recognized. Encourage your visitor to follow you on online social platforms. You can easily manage your social networks and make the most of them so your friends can follow you on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, etc.

Custom Widgets and Widget Areas

We provide Neu with lots of custom widgets and widget areas. This way you have many opportunities to customize your content display and add/remove your favorite sections.

View Live Demo and Purchase

View Live Demo of the theme and head over to landing page of the Neu magazine theme to check all the awesome features of this theme and once you like it, purchase it.

What’s Next?

We are working on a blog and a newspaper-style theme. Here’s a tiny sneak peek.

We have updated all ColorLabs WordPress themes to be compatible with WordPress “Sonny” 3.3. So if you are planning to upgrade your WordPress install please update your ColorLabs themes first to the latest version. Download the latest version of your themes from the member area. Remember to back up your site before upgrading your WordPress.

Theme Sneak-Peeks: An E-Commerce, a Blog, and a Newspaper Theme

We have received 3 new theme designs from our co-designers. In fact, one of them is undergoing coding right now. So we will release  at least 2 more themes on February and the other one will be released on March. For early screenshot of Sneakers Addict, an e-commerce theme, go to this blog post. And some teasers are also available for Momentum (blog) and Reportage (newspaper) over here.

How ColorLabs Web Developers Stay in Tune with Today’s Coding

On this article we share some methods that ColorLabs developers use to enhance their WordPress skills and keep theirself updated with best practices and techniques in today’s coding. It involve everything from keeping up on what’s landing on browsers, following resources and references, to meeting other people with the same profession.

Theme Launch: Indulgence and Neu

On the last two weeks, ColorLabs released two WordPress themes: Indulgence and Neu. Indulgence is a restaurant theme, designed specifically for restaurant, cafe, pubs and bar owners. Neu is a magazine theme most suited for both proffesional web publishers and bloggers.

ColorLabs Valentine’s Day Promo at 1stwebdesigner

To celebrate Valentine’s Day we are providing you with over 70% discount on our two most lovable theme: Adam & Eve and Invitora. With the Valentine’s Discount Coupon you will get each for $14 for the standard pack and $28 for the developer pack. Coupon code is valid from February 10, 2012 up to the 17th and only available at 1stwebdesigner, so check their announcement over here.

Theme update: Eureka, Arthemia, and Wardrobe

We’ve updated Eureka to 1.3 and now it supports WooCommerce, the e-commerce plugin by Woothemes.

Arthemia was also updated to version 3.6.0. The update includes new theme panel design and new page template.

Wardrobe was updated to 1.2. Added to the theme: redirect login and  register page; and captcha feature.

Recent Additions to ColorLabs Showcase Page

Every now and then our users submit their modified version of our themes and each week we proudly featured the best ones on our Showcase Page. This post covers the 10 websites that we added to the showcase recently. Browse through them to find inspiration for your next project.

SEO Tips: Optimize your Images

Image optimization is a great method to grab targeted traffic and it works for many businesses, and it never hurts to optimize your site. This article lists 4 most important aspects to concern yourself with when optimizing your image for better search engine result. The best part is they are very easy and if you are using WordPress, they will only take 2 minutes top.

For the first time ever, meet Momentum and Reportage.

Momentum

The first theme lining up in the pipeline is a blog theme called Momentum. Designed by Muhammad Zulkarnain, Momentum has clean and sleek design which delivers sophisticated feel. The big slider on top and the circular-shaped post thumbnail are part of the cool things you can have with this theme. Momentum will include all brilliant features that our other blog themes include.

Reportage

The next theme is a newspaper style theme designed by Firman Firdaus, called Reportage. Just like Momentum, Reportage also has a more sophisticated design than its predecessor. If you look carefully, Reportage is built in such a way that will emphasize every necessary element at the right place and grab right amount of attention. Reportage offers a clear, explicit and direct overview of your content, by professionally making use of typography, layout composition, colors and breathing space. It is also a theme ideal for almost every industry and all kind of topics.

What Do You Think?

Would love to know your thoughts, critics on the teasers we shown above. Questions? Post them right away in the comments below.

In honor of this special celebration of love, and since we love you all so much, we are providing you with over 70% discount on ColorLabs love-and-celebration related WordPress themes, the Adam & Eve and Invitora. The regular price for each theme is $49 for the standard pack, and $99 for the developer pack. With the Valentine’s Discount Coupon you will get each for $14 for the standard pack and $28 for the developer pack.

“Now where is this coupon?”

Unlike usual, you won’t find it here or over on Facebook, because this time we partnered up with 1stwebdesigner, a graphic and web design blog, and you can get your Valentine’s Coupon over on their blog.

Coupon is valid from February 10, 2012 up to the 17th so get your Valentine’s discount today!

Now you can make that couple blog you’ve been wanting or surprise your future bride with a wedding website by Valentine’s! And if you order a Valentine’s present for yourself, I won’t tell. ;D

A picture speaks 1,000 words but does that picture can drive 1,000 visitors to your website?

Images not only improve user experience but, if used correctly, can also be an asset for organic search by helping your page shows up higher in organic search result. By providing an optimized image you are providing search engine with a better understanding of what that page is about. Google also has a section dedicated to searching for images and this can bring traffic to your website or blog.

But, just by having an image won’t bring you any result. Although advances have been made on image searching method, search engine still can’t “see” an image so you have to surround your image with descriptive hints on what it is about.

Image SEO is something that people neglect to do. People either forget to do it, have never thought about it, or don’t see the value in it. Image optimization is a great method to grab targeted traffic and it works for many businesses, and it never hurts to optimize your site.

This article lists 4 most important aspects to concern yourself with when optimizing your image for better search engine result. The best part is they are very easy and if you are using WordPress, they will only take 2 minutes top.

1. Image File Name

Before you even upload the image to WordPress make sure it has a name that describes itself. All file names have to be descriptive and informative. Just like keywords in post urls are important for pages, the same is true for images.

You can proof it yourself. Do an image search on Google and take a look at the top results. You’ll find all the top results have the keyword in their file name.

For example, one of the top results on my recent image search for “colorlabs initiator” (Initiator is one of our WordPress themes) was named “initiator-wordpress-theme-screenshot.jpg”. Separate words with a hyphen since these are treated as spaces in the major search engines.

Keep the file name related to the page content where the image is on and don’t make it too long. I personally always try to keep it no more than 5 words.

2. Alt Text

Alt text is meant to be an alternative information source for search engine or for people who choose to disable image on their browser. Search engines have to rely on alt text, file names and other surrounding text to determine what the content of the image is. The alt text essentially replaces an image so you should describe it well.

With WordPress, you can enter the alt text on the “Alternative text” box that will shows up right after you upload the image or you can enter it later from the Media Gallery.

3. Relevant Page Content

When you are doing an image search for something you will be presented with a lot of results but you will soon realize that some of the images are not visually related to what you are looking for. Yet these images are still showing up, because they have related content surrounding them on the page where they are on.

The content around your image should speak in the same voice with it and able to give the search engine a good idea of what the page is about.

4. Don’t Stuff Keyword Stuff Image

Even though you should have your file name and alt text as descriptive and informative as possible, never stuff it with too many keywords or Google will end up discounting your page rank. Keep them descriptive but short and relevant to your page content.

Every now and then our users submit their modified version of our themes. Each week we go through each one of them and publish the one we think will give value to our users. If you have created a site using one of our themes, please provide us link to that site and we will try to include it in our showcase.

This post, will cover the 10 websites that we added to the showcase recently. Browsing through examples of beautiful website designs can provide inspiration that can be put to good use in your own design work.

Click on any of the screen shots to visit these awesome ColorLabs WordPress Themes customizations!

1. Motorsport Retro

Based on: Arthemia Premium

2. Paard & Lifestyle

Based on: Arthemia Premium

3. Asian Trade Magazine

Based on: Arthemia Premium

4. Media Ide

Based on: Arthemia Premium

5. Poppy Treffry

Based on: Arthemia Premium

6. Michael and Hanna

Based on: Invitora

7. La Voix des Habs

Based on: BloggingNews

8. Allography

Based on: Arthemia Premium

9. Derecho en Red

Based on: Arthemia Premium

10. The Wicked Noodle

Based on: Arthemia Premium

A top web developer is supposed to keep updated with any updates and developments that occur in web development as an industry. This in other words is to say that they should be highly flexible, adapting to any changes that occur. There has never been a successful web developer who feels he know enough and just stop learning at some point.

In this post, I will share some methods that ColorLabs developers use to enhance their WordPress skills and keep theirself updated with best practices and techniques in today’s coding. They involve everything from keeping up on what’s landing on browsers, following resources and references, to meeting other people with the same profession.

1. Read Online Tutorials Regularly

There are a lot of great blogs and news/tutorial sites around that don’t require registration or subscription to learn. A good way to find out which website suits you is to subscribe to all websites you find interesting. Have a look at what comes in, and soon you’ll develop a feel for which sites you want to read regularly. Here is a list of resources ColorLabs developers read daily and recommend:

• Smashing Magazine – one of the most popular blogs around. They have amazing advice, techniques, tutorials, and resources with dedicated team of experienced authors, research assistants, expert advisors, editors and proofreaders.
• SitePoint – has some great edtech resources. SitePoint is an online media company that has some great articles and resources on their site. They also published very high quality books, produced by expert’s in their fields.
• PHPMaster – is a great site that collates the best PHP Articles across the web. From novice PHP tutorials to advanced PHP tactics. PHPMaster has everything you could possibly need.
• CSS-Tricks – Chris Coyer, the owner of the blog, delights the web design community not only with “CSS tricks” but also jQuery and other cool implementations. A must follow.
• Codrops – is a web design and development blog that publishes articles and tutorials about the latest web trends, techniques and new possibilities.
• Addy Osmani – a JavaScript blogger & UI Developer for AOL. His blog provides practical and useful tutorials and articles to jQuery and JavaScript developers.
• Cats Who Code – is a weblog dedicated to Web Development, with a focus on topics as such as WordPress, jQuery and CSS, Cats Who Code will help you build better websites.
• Speckyboy – offers insightful tutorial, time-saving techniques, fresh and useful resources and inspirational art, covering web design and development.
• Noupe – delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and Web developers.
• Tutorialzine – created by Martin Angelov, Tutorialzine delivers the highest quality web development tutorials and resources.

2. Just Google Everything

This statement is self-explanatory. Just a quick google will reveal more than enough resources. If you Google any specific problem you have, you are sure to find an answer. If you want to find random WordPress tips, just Google “WordPress tips” or other phrases like that.

3. Work on as Many Project as You Can

Working on new projects will force you to be flexible and to constantly look for new and better ways of doing things. Some skills our developers acquired are self-taught based on necessity. If a WordPress theme needs  fancy new slider, they learn jquery. When a project needs traffic, they study SEO and analytics. It also exposes us to subjects that are outside our comfort-zone, forcing us to learn new and often challenging skills.

4. Meet the Other Geeks

A great way to accelerate the growth of your technical skills is to join a group, forum, or network, people of the same interests gathers. Whether you find technical difficulties or simply just seeking for feedback, a forum will always be a great learning resource.

We visit forums quite frequent, not really to chat but rather to check out what’s new, what’s in trend or the hottest topics discussed. Participating in forums discussion not only allows you to share your interest and techniques with fellow peers, but as well as mutually gaining in terms of skills and knowledge. Many of those knowledge have proven invaluable in developing awesome functions and features for ColorLabs WordPress themes.

Get connected on these sites, and they might help you land some work, or at least expand your network. Here’s a list of forums our developers have come across or been really active in.

• CodeCall
• WebmasterTalkForums
• LinkedIn Group: PHP Developer Network
• LinkedIn Group: End to End Web Developers

5. Create Your Own Website

We are a fan of experimental learning because we know the best way to learn is by doing it.

Register a domain, get a hosting service, and come up with an idea. Put a site together. See what problems you run into. Go nuts. Look up those problems. You’ll probably have fewer than you fear.

What’s Your Learning Method?

How do you improve as a developer? What do you do to learn new things and keep up-to-date on the latest trends, and how do you improve as a professional? Feel free to add your own learning methods in the comments section!

View Live demo and Buy this theme. Start your restaurant website today.

WordPress makes it easy and inexpensive to create a professional and attractive website and Indulgence is the perfect WordPress theme for restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars. Indulgence homepage showcases your featured foods, menu items, business/open hours and your Google Map location.

Optimized for social sharing, including testimonials from satisfied customers on Foursquare, your website is sure to reach all foodies through viral marketing. Indulgence also include an online reservation system so you can bring customers to your table by offering reservations right from your restaurant’s website.

Today’s restaurant customers expect a fresh and stylish dining experience. Indulgence has strong, attractve and proffesional design that reflect the sophistication and personality of the restaurants very effectively. Often restaurant websites are so busy and flashy that online customers turn away. Not Indulgence. With images being showcased in the most attractive ways, Indulgence serves your food as the main focus accompanied by a few selling points.

The key to a successful restaurant website is to reflect the personality of the restaurant while at the same time making it as user friendly as possible, exactly what Indulgence delivers. All you have to do is take some great pictures and write inviting content, upload theme all to Indulgence, will make your online viewers both hungry and motivated to see your restaurant for themselves.

Offer your customers the freshest ingredients and amazing restaurant website experience. No more leaving your restaurant’s fate to sites like CitySearch or Yealp. Set up your website easily with Indugence and you can send your own message to your customers right away!

Enough with the rambling. Happy time!

The Site5 Giveaway that we started last Wednesday has ended and now it’s time to announce the winners of One Year hostBasic Web Hosting Plan from Site5. So, without further ado, the winners are:

1. Jeff McClellan – @jamcclellan
2. Reza – @ghenaat
3. Eko Priambodo – @mnemonict
4. Yuni Ardita Sari Dewi – @arditasari
5. Pradeep Bhandari – @pradctgign

Congratulations to the winners! We will be in touch with you soon to fill you in on the details of collecting your prize. The winners was picked randomly with the help of Rafflecopter who integrate the power of Random.org.

To those who did not manage to win this giveaway, stay tuned as there will be next giveaway in the future and also there will be more surprises from ColorLabs. Thanks to all who participated in this giveaway.

The wave of selling online is just starting and we believe e-commerce themes have a lot of prospect. So in case you’ve been looking for a nice e-commerce theme for your website or any ongoing projects, we’ve got something coming up for you. We are going to work on yet another e-commerce WordPress theme called  ”Sneakers Addict“, designed by Andre Septian.

Sneakers Addict is very simple by using more white space and a dark theme on menu navigation. The design doesn’t highlight only the content, it also put the products in the spotlight by using subtle effect and images. Backed by a cool color scheme and beautiful typography that nicely fits the overall feel of the theme. The ribbon placed on the left upper corner of the product is a nice touch and it’s interesting how Andre also add cool effect on the product details.

Good website navigation is essential for any site, but much more so for e-commerce sites interactive. So we’re going to provide a sophisticated product filter this time where customers can filter based on price, materials, categories, brands and even colors.

Here is a first peek at Sneakers Addict’s homepage. As always, feedback is welcomed with open arms. :D

We had been testing our themes on 3.3 since the release and had found some minor problems. We have fixed the problems and everything works perfectly fine now. We’ve updated all themes to include all the fixes and all is well.

If you want to upgrade to WordPress 3.3, you have to upgrade your themes first to the latest version. NOTE: Before upgrading your existing site to WordPress 3.3, it is highly recommended that you backup your site and deactivate all plugins. We cannot promise that all of your plugins are compatible, so make sure you check those for compatibility before updating.

The latest version numbers are listed below:

• Backbone 1.0
• Vidio 1.0
• Sakura 1.0
• Wardrobe  1.1.0
• JobJockey 1.3.0
• Initiator 1.1.1
• Eureka 1.2.0
• Invitora 1.1
• Travelous 1.2
• Directory 1.2
• Minuet 1.2
• Adam & Eve 1.2
• EstateExpert 1.2
• Entreprenium 1.2
• Modernizm 1.3
• Tumblepress 1.2
• Allegro 1.2
• UnoPress 1.2
• BloggingNews 1.6
• Narcilicious 1.4
• SimpleReader 1.4
• Equilibria 2.6
• Wireline 2.5
• RPG.cod 2.2
• Wellblog 3.1
• Arthemia  3.6