If you are a Gabfire client, then you know we frequently update our themes. Our clients knows how much we value them, and the effort we put into updating older themes with newer features.

NewsPro was our first theme released over three and half years ago. It has been updated several times since, and today, we have another great update for NewsPro users.

To keep it short, NewsPro has been completely revamped under the hood with re-written style files and integration of some of our newest features. This is great for NewsPro users who have been requesting a more optimized theme with the latest Gabfire framework. The latest update includes the following:

Updated theme framework giving you the option to use all the latest Gabfire widgets.

Category Templates – We have also received a lot of requests from our clients to implement category templates into NewsPro. Without touching any code, you can not define any of your category pages to be structured within 4 different formats:

• Default category archive [link]
• 2 column cat egory archive [link]
• Media category archive [link]
• Magazine category archive [link]

The update is available via your download link or the user dashboard. Go get the latest NewsPro and enhance your site.

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Stockholm is the latest photo magazine theme designed by our modest teammate Ceyhun. Even though Ceyhun joined our team back in mid-2011, he has worked on significantly improving our back-end and framework. A few months ago he shared a first draft of a photography-inspired theme and we immediately fell in love with the balance and simplicity of the design. We made it a priority to to implement the design and code into our framework so that it would be ready immediately.

When this theme was revealed, we decided Stockholm was the the perfect name for it’s light and dark personality. There are not many places in the world where darkness occurs for 24 hours or the sun never sets depending on the time of the year. This theme, and its name, is inspired by the beautiful Swedish capital. The minimalist design offers an unique and balanced layout for a magazine or photography theme. The contrast is perfect for showcasing high-quality images.

Solid Large Slider

As with most of our themes, Stockholm comes with an excellent featured slider to showcase your best photos or posts. From the theme options panel, you can edit the number of entries displayed on the slider.

Attachment Page

An eye-catching attachment page displays your photos in a neat layout. The idea behind was to mirror and at the same time will give the feeling a photo album.

Multiple Category Layouts

You love having the ability to change the format of category pages from boring lists into 2 column grids or a media gallery style, dont you? Well, category templates functionality is included in this theme as well. From the theme’s options panel, you can define any category to be displayed using any of these layouts.

• Default category layout (link)
• 2 column layout (link)
• Media gallery layout (link)

Multiple Header Layouts

Beside the regular header you see on demo, the theme comes with a single image header style and 3rd header style where log is aligned left and and ad spot is reserved for right spot. The switch between headers is a click on theme control panel only. There is no coding required.

Media Gallery Module

As a standard Gabfire Themes feature, we have implemented our awesome media gallery module into Stockholm too. You can post any media entries under multimedia custom post type and the theme will handle the rest.

Custom Query Widget

Need more ways to customize your site? If so, you’ll love our newest and extremely powerful Custom Query Widget. Using this neat widget, you can add more content areas throughout the front page, as well as within sidebars.

Demo Stockholm – Buy Now

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Designing and developing great themes is a fun process but nothing happens exactly as planned. Our initial vision of a theme inevitably evolves into something very different by the time its complete. Luckily, it always looks better than what we had in mind. This is exactly how our newest theme – City Desk – came to fruition.

Wish you had an all-in-one newspaper theme? That’s the thought process behind this extremely powerful. option-filled theme. When we started to design City Desk, we didn’t want to create just another newspaper theme. Instead, we chose to focus on the following:

• Leverage the power of WordPress to build a truly unique magazine / newspaper theme
• Implement features typically found only on sites with large budgets and staff
• Give users options to creatively display their news site

Some of the sleek features incorporated are due to our great community. Many members shared their expectations from a magazine theme and we went to work based on valuable input. The end-result is City Desk – an all-in-one WordPress newspaper theme.

Category Layouts

Blog layouts are boring! The big players in the online news world have different layouts for categories, and now you can too. We have redefined the concept of inner page layouts with City Desk. You don’t have to display all your categories/tags/author pages in the classic blog format anymore. You have the option to use the unique magazine style to give each category a magazine / front page layout.

In addition to that, we have included  2 columns and multimedia gallery category templates as well. From the theme control panel, you can define any category to be displayed using any of these layouts.

Smart Navigation

Want more than just basic drop-down navigation menus from a premium theme? Well, we spent a good amount of time discussing this with some of our most active users and even revising it several times during the development phase. Now you can take advantage of Smart Navigation designed not only to provide easy navigation across your site, but also to encourage visitors to stay on your site longer. The Smart Navigation is a two-dimensional panel divided into sub-navigation items and the most recent entries within that topic.

Featured Slider

Some of our users wanted to take advantage of large photos to showcase their articles, whereas others preferred a more conservative use of the featured area. We listened. With one click on the theme control panel, you can swap the large featured slider with an equally effective slider of a smaller size. You decide – no coding required!

Post Templates

If a beautiful front-page isn’t enough, and multiple category layouts haven’t got you convinced, then how about the ability to choose from two different post layouts? City Desk allows you to switch between two types of post layouts by simply adding a tag to the post. You can even decide what tag to use as the trigger to display posts with a Big-Picture layout which has a built-in function that will automatically retrieve all the photos in a post and display them neatly along with their captions. See examples below:

• Big-Picture layout
• Default layout with inner-page slider
• Default layout

Header

While our demo shows one header type, City Desk actually has five (5) header types. You can choose between the following:

1. Entry + Logo + Entry (as shown in demo)
2. Ad – Logo – Ad
3. Logo – Ad
4. Full-width Logo
5. Logo + Entry + Entry + Entry

Simply select the header type you want from the theme’s control panel. Easy – no coding required.

Contribute and Author Badge

Running a news site requires content no matter where it comes from. We have taken into consideration that having your visitors involved in writing or submitting articles is a great way to create more engagement between your site and visitors. To make that easier for both parties, we designed a simple Sign Up and Contribute pop-up window along with a neat Author Badge widget. Both the Contribute and Author Badge widgets are optional and can be turned off with a single click on the theme options panel.

Columnists

Got writers? The Gabfire community requested that columnists be recognized in a separate area on the front page. After all, credit should be given to your writers for their contributions. In that regard, we implemented a slider which is configurable to display a post of selected author(s) or standard entries.

Media Gallery Module

As a standard Gabfire Themes feature, we have implemented our awesome media gallery module into City Desk too. You can post any media entries under multimedia custom post type and the theme will handle the rest.

Wish you had an all-in-one newspaper theme? City Desk is your answer. Competing with large online publishers privy to large budgets and staff is tough, so let City Desk give you the same website features and advantages. For less than the cost of a round of drinks, you can have a professional news or magazine site in no time.

See City Desk in action or purchase your copy today..

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Christmas is here! Since our last promotion was announced, we’ve received dozens of emails and requests for another promotion so users can get their hands on quality WordPress themes. To provide the Gabfire community something to celebrate, our Christmas promotion is now officially available.

4 Themes for the Price of 1

That’s right – buy any theme and get 3 more FREE. If you missed our previous specials, this is what you’ve been waiting for. There won’t be another promotion for quite a while, so get in on the action now.

This offer has been extremely popular in the past, and we’ll only be able to extend it until midnight Saturday, December 31st EST. That gives you plenty of time get in on this Christmas promotion.

We’ve made it easy for you to create your website with 17 themes to choose from. Browse through the themes and choose your favorites. Here are some of the most popular choices:

• Advanced Newspaper
• LinePress
• Source
• and more…

This special lasts only until Saturday December 31, so grab your themes now for all your websites. There’s a wide range of themes available so claim your 4 themes for the price of 1.

To take advantage of this special offer, just do the following:

1. Buy any 1 Gabfire theme.
2. Along with the email confirmation of your first theme, you will receive instructions to claim an additional three (3) themes.

See you on the inside. Merry Christmas folks!

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By now, you’re well aware (hopefully) that WordPress 3.3 was released on Monday to the masses. If you haven’t gotten around to it yet, download the latest version from WordPress – or directly from within your dashboard – and experience the cool new features.

So what’s new? Some others have already written informative posts on this topic, so I’ll stick to quickly highlighting my favorite WordPress 3.3 features:

Drag and Drop Media Uploads are now much easier. Of all the improvements, this is my favorite hands-down! You can now drag and drop your uploads directly into the uploader. It’ll save you a small amount of time, but it sure makes blogging much easier. Image heavy sites, such as magazines and newspapers, will love this feature.

New users will like the quick reference links shown in the Dashboard welcome area. I know that doesn’t sound like a mind-blowing feature, but for those who support new users on a daily basis, this is a godsend.

On the subject of new user experience, there are some neat feature pointers that help users navigate new features. You can bet this feature will be advantageous to theme developers as well.

You’ll notice the dashboard design has been tweaked quite nicely as well. The admin bar has a new toolbar and hovering over menu tabs will reveal fly-out menus. Very sleek!

There’s a long list of other features that are just as impressive such as responsive design. Go download version  3.3 and let us know what you think about the release in the comments below.

NOTE: Before upgrading your existing site, it is highly recommended that you backup your site and deactivate all plugins. Please be advised that some plugins may not yet be compatible with WordPress 3.3.

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Happy Thanksgiving to the Gabfire community. To celebrate Turkey day, Black Friday, and of course Cyber Monday, we’ve just launched the following promotion:

4 themes for the price of 1.

That’s right – buy any theme and get 3 more FREE. If you missed our previous specials, you’re in luck. This offer has been extremely popular in the past, and we’ll only be able to extend it until midnight Monday, November 28th EST. That gives you all weekend to get in on this fantastic promotion. We will not be able to extend this special after the Monday, so don’t wait!

We’ve made it easy for you to create your website with 17 themes to choose from. Browse through the themes and choose your favorites. Here are some of the most popular choices:

• Advanced Newspaper
• LinePress
• Source
• and more…

This special lasts only until Monday, so grab your themes now for all your websites. There’s a wide range of themes available so claim your 4 themes for the price of 1.

To take advantage of this special offer, just do the following:

1. Buy any 1 Gabfire theme.
2. Along with the email confirmation of your first theme, you will receive instructions to claim an additional three (3) themes.

See you on the inside. Happy Thanksgiving folks!

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Just a quick one today. In our aim to continue bringing you more value and powerful themes, we’ve been busy on improving our most popular theme. On that note, Advanced Newspaper owners will be glad to see the following updates in version 2.1:

New and/or Relevant Updates:

• Theme control panel update
• Custom Query widget added
• Implementation of Fancybox slider
• Alternative inner-page gallery
• Improved presentation of overlay objects on media gallery via Fancybox
• Updated Gabfire-media function
• Permalinks for featured thumbnails
• Updated Facebook Like widget
• Timthumb script update

Bug Fixes / Adjustments:

• Tag-based inner-page slider fix
• Featured slider navigation fix
• Mid tabbed slider cleared after 4th post
• Loop-media custom taxonomy display fix

You can retrieve the latest version of the theme from your original download link. Go get it and send us your feedback on the forums. If you don’t own this theme, you can buy Advanced Newspaper here.

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We’ve been quiet the past few weeks working on a number of things on our to-do list. Some of the items we’ve been researching are focused on enhancing our themes even further. We do this so that as each new theme is released, we can confidently claim that not only is a higher level of functionality delivered, but also that users have even more options to run professional sites.

That being said, you will absolutely love the new features in our next theme. I am not going to describe in detail the specifics of the new features baked into our upcoming newspaper / magazine theme but here are a few keywords: Multiple Headers, Category – AND – Post Layouts, Large Images.

Following the release of our newspaper theme, we have two more wonderful themes in the pipeline – one of them focused on real estate. Stay tuned for more announcements or sign up to RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

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I was particularly interested in attending the WordPress Optimization session presented by Ben Metcalfe of WP Engine during WordCamp Philly. Considering that most of our end-users are on shared hosting and not well-versed on technical jargon, it’s common to receive questions on the support forums related to slow sites / servers / and optimization tips.

Ben provided a list of to-dos for WordPress optimization. Some are a bit technical and you may need a server admin to perform them, however others are do-able right from within WordPress. If I find a link to Ben’s presentation online, I’ll be sure to link directly to it. For now, here’s the quick list to consider depending on your setup and circumstances:

For all users:

• Keep WP Updated – Always stay updated.
• Use a Cache Plugin – WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache work for most users. Even WordPress.com uses a cache plugin.
• Deactivate Unused Plugins – If you have plugins you are not using, deactivate them. If you’re sure you do not need them, delete the plugins. Note that in some cases, even if a plugin is deactivated, it may still be loaded into memory. In short, be a neat-freak about your plugins.
• Avoid Bad Plugins – I provide a list of some of these on the support forums.
• Review Your Theme – roughly 1/3 of all optimization problems are due to theme code. Ensure it validates. When possible, place CSS at top and Javascript at bottom (not inline). If you see any weird code (i.e., making requests to other sites on the internet) then abandon that theme.
• Hosting – Check your hosting solution. Who is on your server? Use YouGetSignal’s Reverse IP Lookup if you wish to see other sites on your site. If you have non-kosher sites on the same server, ask your host to move you to another one. If you have a thousand other sites on your server, you have quite a packed server (or said differently, a terrible host).
• Offloading (poor-man’s CDN) – If you have the ability to offload your images or other large files (videos, etc.), do it. Flickr is a great solution for serving images.
• Feedburn your RSS Feed – Let Google’s FeedBurner handle your feed. Check your logs to see how many requests are made to your /feed url.
• Repair your MySQL Database – Be consistent in repairing your MySQL database. Once a month is fine for most users.
  • OptimizeDB plugin by Joost does this for you without any overhead
  • Use PHPMyAdmin – only if you are tech and db-savvy
  • Manually – only if you are tech and db-savvy
• Load from Multiple Sub-domains – To bypass limits on simultaneous processing, if you understand domain mapping and server administration, then look into using multiple sub-domains for serving files. Even better, try using different domains.

  good:

  foo1.yourdomain.com, foo2.yourdomain.com

  better:

  foo1.otherdomain.com, foo2.otherdomain2.com

• Browser Caching – W3 Total Cache will take care of this – HTTP cache-control, expires header, and entitry tags.

For Advanced Users and High Traffic Sites:

• Log Slow MySQL Queries – check your logs! What’s taking the most time? Dig into it.
• Good How To:
  Check Site with Profile Tools- use any of the tools below to dig into your site’s performance.
  • WP-Tuner
  • WPDB Profiling
  • WP Engine’s Speed Test
  • YSlow
• CDN – Use a CDN. It can be used all the time – OR – just in “emergencies.”
  • MaxCDN (used by WP Engine)
  • Amazon CloudFront
  • CloudFlare
• Smush Images – Let’s face it – you don’t sit there and optimize every image before uploading it to your site. The plugin below will do it for you.
  • WPSmush.it plugin
• APC / Opcode cache – PHP-APC + W3-Total-Cache
• Apache Optimization – your server admin should be able to optimize your Apache server. When possible, disable .htaccess and use httpd.conf instead (central library that Apache uses). Do NOT attempt this unless you know what you are doing! It is not for beginners.
• Dedicated MySQLDB Box – Consider moving your MySQLDB Box to another server in the same data center.
• Reverse-proxy with nginx – Run Apache on port 8080. Cache static pages.
• Varnish Cache – Ideally, do not run Varnish on port 80 (even though some tutorials tell you to do so on port 80). Varnish cache doesn’t like cookies. Send cookies to nginx.
  • Update (Jake’s Comment)
    Varnish VCL should be configured to destroy cookies when unnecessary (not logged) and to destroy cookie of static content.

    http://blog.brigato.fr/2011/12/24/wordpress-performance-guide-from-5-to-6100-requestssec-on-a-1vcpu1gb-ram-vps/

• Memcache – Ideally, run Memcache on a separate box in the same datacenter under the same subnet.
• HyperDB – multiple database servers – not intended for the standard user.
• Static Site on Amazon S3 – If you can generate your site as static pages, Amazon can host them. Do not do this if your site requires any dynamic widgets or data processing.

Finally, here’s something that should be reinforced by everyone, do not edit WordPress core files. It’s not good practice and will be overwritten when you upgrade your WP installation.

Now, go optimize your site!

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Ever look around for a quality theme for your personal site – something that isn’t just a portfolio site or blog, but really focuses on the individual? Look no further. We’ve been peppering our newest WordPress theme – Personality – with all the right details and features.

Your site is your identity. The Personality theme was designed with this principle in mind. We wanted to escape the traditional blog as some users may need a professional web site to inform their audience of their skills, background, or just who they are as a person. The focus is completely on YOU. In addition to the balanced layout, we came up with an unique design that is versatile enough to satisfy almost any individual’s needs.

It needs to work your way. Functionality is key and the Personality theme includes features typically not found in similar themes. Here are some notable examples:

• A custom query widget allows posts from any category to be added to any widget area on the site. (no coding required!)
• Media Gallery (in case you need it or plan on using it to showcase videos and/or photos)
• Multiple Category Layouts (that’s right, you’re not limited to boring blog layouts)
• Fully controllable slider to display videos (can use blog entries or pages – you decide!)
• Mid-bar to display either mail subscribes or twitter updates
• Custom Post Type for Testimonials and Video/Photo Media Gallery

It needs to be flexible. Yeh, we heard you. The theme is built with dozens of great features (some are not even seen on the demo), as well as several widgets that will allow you to shape the site in many ways.

For example, to really kick the tires and demonstrate its flexibility, our demo creatively uses the Personality theme for a politician. However, the theme is integrated with all the bells and whistles to be used for a company or portfolio site, general blog, professional figure (lawyer / real estate agent), or just an individual’s site.

Ok, enough chatter. Start building a site with Personality!

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