The Digital Gallery theme includes the following features:

• NEW! Automatic Image Resizing for Thumbnails
• Upload your own logo online via WP Dashboard
• Search engine optimized
• Integrated blog component
• 3 Feature Areas

Purchase

Buy the Digital Gallery Multi-Use Pack for $49.95

Test Drive

• Check out the Black version
• Check out the White version

These WordPress tutorial screencasts are designed to help you train your clients in how to use WordPress … without having to do it yourself!

Here’s how they could help you …. you download the tutorials with your purchase, then upload them to your website, add in some logo branding and tweaks, and start sending links to your custom design clients for basic WordPress training once you’ve completed their project.

Here are the WordPress Tutorials included in the package:

• What is WordPress - Overview
• How to login to WP Dashboard
• How to write a Post
• How to write a Page
• How to edit Posts/Pages
• How Widgets work
• How to moderate Comments
• WordPress Settings Overview
• How to Upgrade WordPress Using the Automatic Plugin [Download plugin here]
• How to Add new Users
• How to Change/Activate Themes

Click here to get more purchase details on the iThemes Developer’s Pack

FAQ from the iThemes.com Community Support Forum

Scenario: You installed a brand-new, shiny copy of your iThemes premium theme and want to get your widgets installed in the sidebar(s). As soon as you add a widget in a sidebar to, say add a text widget above the existing built-in widgets, all of the widgets disappear except the new text widget you added.

Why Did it Do That?

What happened is a simple result of the code doing what it is told to do, which is to either show the built-in widgets (all of them) or show the widgets selected on the Widget screen under the Design tab.

I am going to get a tad technical here for those who are interested. If that is not you, then feel free to skip to the next section for what to do regardless of why things happen.

Looking at the code to the right, locate the “dynamic_sidebar” code. That is what you will find in every “widget-ready” theme because it calls out the function.php code included in the theme, which can include 1, 2, 3, or any number of widgeted sidebars or areas in the theme. This particular code is affecting a sidebar named Post Sidebar, which is created in the function.php file and filled with widgets by going to Design->Widgets and selecting the Post Sidebar area from the pulldown on the right side under Current Widgets.

The way to read this code in plain English is, “If the function.php file includes a sidebar called ‘Post Sidebar,’ then ignore all the code until the ‘end if’ statement IF there are widgets selected on the Design->Widgets page.” If there are no widgets manually selected in editing page, then the code below rules and appears. If only one widget is added, then it, and only it, will appear in the sidebar due to the nature of the If/Then statement.

How to Fix It

Navigate to the Design tab and click ‘Widgets.’ On the left side of the page, every widget included with WordPress and added by widget plugins that you have added is listed with and ‘Add’ button to add that widget to the sidebar selected in the pulldown on the right side of the page. Many widgets come straight out of the box fully functioning with no customizing options. Others allow you to edit items, such as the widget title, after you Add it and make the changes to it over on the right side. The Text widgets are able to be added numerous times to multiple sidebars to allow multiple text widgets throughout a site.

To review one property of widgets quickly for those who skipped the previous section, when you select a widget, all of the pre-coded widgets in the theme’s sidebar you changed will disappear. If you want to keep the ones already present and add more widgets, then you must include those already present to still see them.

Click the Edit button on any widget that you want to or need to change or add information to, such as a Feedburner ID or RSS feed address and click Save Changes to set that sidebar’s settings. From there, you can move on to other sidebars or leave them set as default, unaffected by this sidebar’s settings.

YES! They are … in fact, we’ve just updated our demo sites!

According to Matt, in the official WP release post, “2.6 is pretty much identical to 2.5 from a plugin and theme compatibility point of view, so upgrades from 2.5 should be pretty painless.”

By the way, if you want to upgrade and need a fast, easy way to do that, check out the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin … that’s how we’ve updated all our demo sites in about 20 minutes.

Another question: Will we update theme with WordPress updates?

We also get the question often wanting to know if we’ll continue to keep themes updated with WordPress.

The answer to that is: “Yes, we will … for the life of the theme.” Obviously, some themes will be retired at some point. But as long as the themes are active and being sold, we’ll keep them updated …

Customers will get new updates emailed to them at the email address where they purchased.

If you missed an update for some reason, please just email us with the PayPal email address used (or better yet, your receipt) and we’ll get it shipped to you ASAP!

Are any of you tired of logging into FireFTP or your host’s admin panel to put a new plugin on your site or add a document for download? I sure am, and now there is a solution in the form of a plugin called WP Easy Uploader. Just in the last week alone on all of sites i manage, it has shaved about 45 minutes of logging in and archive extraction time. Before I get into the actual how-to, here is what I think is so great about this new plugin:

• no need to navigate to the correct folder within your installation(s)
• no need to extract every archive that has an acceptable folder structure - it does it for you
• simple updating tool for plugins or themes

Once you upload and activate the uploader (hopefully the last manually installed plugin you do), a new option appears under the Manage tab, Upload Files. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect for the layout and function of it, but I difiniitely think that it is as streamlined and functional as I could have hoped for.

Almost without saying, the first area of the plugin screen prompts you to enter where the file being uploaded currently resides: online or locally. One very nice advantage to this is to avoid clutter on your computer by copying the theme or plugin shortcut directly from the source.

The Destination area allows you to install the file or archive to your WordPress Upload (default /uploads), Plugin, Theme, or manual folder. The manual folder is from the level containing your first level WP files above the wp-admin, wp-content, etc. (e.g., images). As for the Plugin and Theme options, they are the absolute easiest way to install new themes and plugins, made even more powerful from the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

At the bottom of the uploader screen, the ultimate options about file handling are modified, such as how to handle duplicate file names and archives. The settings default to the view shown, but I usually select for the upload to overwrite the file rather than rename, based on my purposes. I also often upload the archives themselves, do not usually extract into a folder, as it will use the folder structure within the archive, and select to remove the archive after it is extracted.

I hope this has all been helpful to you, please feel free to comment or get any clarification on something I glossed over.

We’re pleased to announce that our Ecommerce WordPress Theme now comes with styling ready for the plugin! As part of the plugin theme styling, we’ve also purchased some iStockPhoto extended licenses that add some flair to the design.

• Check out the Theme Demo with the Plugin styling here … whenever you purchase the Ecommerce Theme, it comes with the Plugin theme options.
• Purchase the theme here for just $49!

Please note: You’ll need to download and activate the Ecommerce Plugin from Instinct. Base CSS styles for their plugin have been added to the Ecommerce Theme, but all support issues involving the plugin, including how to use the plugin and troubleshooting, will need to be directed to Instinct Entertainment.

One of the things that makes blogs and sites created on blog platforms so powerful is the ability to get your content and products indexed by search engines very quickly, and often highly ranking. Few things will help your business or movement more than getting repeat traffic from the search engines by people looking for exactly what you offer.

The old way of adding a bunch of hidden (or not) keywords all over (or in a big body at the end) of your pages in order to get the biggest rating from a search engine no longer works. In fact, that can blow any chance of your page or site getting ranked at all. The search engines, Google in particular, have improved their algorithms to ignore and demote blatant attempts to overshadow other sites.

As a result, a new breed of search engine optimization (SEO) has been born: tags. Tags are essentially keywords for each page/article you create. They are purposefully sought out and indexed by search engines and other Web 2.0 sites, such as Technorati.com, who gather these terms and often sort them by date rather than popularity, though Google concentrates on relevance and popularity.

It is possible to get instant traffic by using a blog or blog-based site by using tags for an empty niche on the Internet or by creating new content for a popular topic. I have two proofs of the success of harnessing the power of tags from my own use.

First up is from my personal blog, which I purposefully targeted the most popular Google trend of the hour one morning. I wrote a post, linked a video, and used appropriate keywords for my subject. That day, my traffic was triple that of the day before and the hit trail continues today. Keep in mind, this was THE most popular topic of the day on July 8th, but it managed to get an immense amount of traffic despite the competition. I have used this technique to successfully build a string of “flagship” content on various sites, including untapped topics. If you already have an established site, implementing tags on your most unique or powerful articles will enhance your site’s visibility.

For instance, if you realize that there is a void of a particular piece or set of information, often all that is needed to become #1 in the search engines is to write a post with carefully-selected tags. To this day, my two most popular posts happen to be the first ones on the subject that Google mapped.

The second proof of the effectiveness of tags is based on my brand new site. We had essentially zero traffic because we only had 35 articles on a very narrow subject. Despite the whole Internet being stacked against a new site, using tags has the ability to level the playing field, so to say. With only a few days of being indexed by Google, these searches were already getting ranked high enough to get traffic, clearly indicated by the landing page, that it was because of the tag associated with the search query. To be sure your site is indexed to begin with, be sure you don’t miss the best Google tool available: Google XML Generator.

Tags are intended to be words or very short two or three word phrases, as you can see to the right that “warner brothers” was picked out as the tag from a very long search string. The more tags you have that are accurately representing the post or page, the better chance that it will get its due traffic.

Thankfully, WordPress 2.4 began incorporating full tag support as a much-anticipated built-in feature. It is no longer necessary to use plug-ins to achieve amazing search engine results, though it doesn’t hurt to double up and use the All in One SEO Pack plug-in because it updates your titles, too. I use it along with filling in the tags field with every article I write. There are also plug-ins and widgets that display tags in either cloud form or pull-down lists; however, those will likely become overwhelmingly long before long, especially if your site covers a wide array of interests.

As you would expect, iThemes’ premium themes are optimized for harnessing tags, categories, and page titles for the absolute best search engine results by following the site tweaks and tips found here: 7 STEPS TO OPTIMIZING WORDPRESS.

• Download it here
• Test drive it here

Click here to see more free WordPress themes offered by iThemes.

The first thing to do, of course, is to create an account in order to purchase credits. That is pretty straight-forward, by clicking the ‘Sign up’ button on the home page of the site. Your login is also your site “screen name” and identity for any files you might want to upload for sale in the future, so choose your login wisely. It is a rather quick sign up process, as you only need to pick a username and enter a valid e-mail address. They will send you a login key to activate your account. The next step is actually kind of exciting, because iStockphoto has added a new option for purchasing credits.

Until now, the only way for non-corporate account users to purchase credits was to pay-as-you-go, with discounts applied for purchasing in greater quantities, up to 47% more credits per dollar. Credits are non-refundable and expire after a year, but those are the only regulations on credits. Files range from 1 credit to 10 or 15 credits, depending on the file size. Illustrations are often more “expensive” because they are scalable vector graphics, making them essentially the largest size possible. They do offer free images, illustrations, and videos of the day, week, and month to allow you the opportunity to take advantage of some great works - if you can make them work for your site.

The recent addition to the credit purchasing plans is a subscriber option for 3, 6, or 12 months. You pay for a variable number of credits per day, based on your estimated usage for a short or on-going project. You don’t need to use all of the credits each day, but it is structured that way to allow you to account for normal operating costs at a much lower rate than the per-use credits. As with the per-use credits, the longer you subscribe and the more credits per day, the better discount they offer.

For purchasing the correct size without wasting credits, the general rule of thumb is to get the smallest size that has the image or area of the image you need without any resizing. For example, if you need to create a header for your site that is 1000 pixels wide, don’t skimp and get the x-small size that is only 600 pixels or the small size that is 800 pixels. You will only be buying the next larger size and end up wasting the 1 or 3 credits on the smaller image.

A word of caution, though, for big publishers: be sure that you read the licensing agreement to ensure that the image’s use complies with the cheaper agreement, or they could come after you for extra money if they find their image plastered all over when they only got $3 for it.

iStockphoto has a very comprehensive, yet intuitive search feature. All of the content is tagged with keywords to allow you to find an amazing array of results to pick the best photo, illustration, Flash, or video for the job. The search will even prompt you to be more specific if the database contains slight variations to your search terms, and is often spot-on. If you are looking for a certain color scheme or image placement (copyspace), content is also marked with that important meta data.

One final feature to love about iStockphoto is the social media aspect of the site. Artists and users have profiles with avatars and profile e-mail messages. Files are tracked for download statistics to determine if an image is trendy or untapped. You can review and read reviews on files and rate them from one to five cameras (fittingly). Go ahead and start or join a creative user network and start collaborating for even more use from the site and their users.

I wanted to take a moment to help explain the back story of iThemes … and how we got to where we are today … so here’s the iTheme story, which is also my story too:

After editing my personal website for several years using Dreamweaver and dealing with the hassle of updating each individual page on my site when I added new content (this was before I found out what a CMS really was), I found this cool free online software called WordPress.

I started using it for my first blog almost two years ago now and found it made it so incredibly easy to manage my blog that I decided to use it for my website and every new website or blog I started.

With WordPress, I could write new posts, or static pages in minutes … and tweak my site anytime I wanted. And when I needed to change things, like a copyright date in my footer, I made one change in that theme file, and click “Update” and viola, done … on every page on my site!

Because I’ve always considered myself a guerrilla, bootstrapping type of marketer, I naturally began to see the value of using WordPress as a simple, easy and cheap (free) content management system for every new website I created too.

At the time, I was working for an organization (a church in fact) with a limited, nonexistence web budget, so I converted our organization’s website into WordPress so I could manage it online from anywhere in the world (or maybe just my home on a Saturday morning), provided I had a web connection. Then when each new unit started asking for new websites, I created them in WordPress and gave them the keys to manage it themselves online.

What a relief!

After all this, I began to think: “Small businesses could use WordPress to create and manage their sites too.”

And after seeing the search engine value for using WordPress, with a few optimization tips I learned along the way, and a good Theme … I knew they could leverage all this to develop new prospects for their business through online marketing, while also putting the power to update their websites in their hands.

Eventually, we started iThemes so we could focus on all this full-time.

And from the beginning at iThemes, we wanted to produce high-quality, search engine optimized WordPress web templates for small businesses, professionals and organizations — from real estate agents to churches to photographers, and thousands of niche industries in between — to help them create and manage websites in an affordable way.

Hopefully, if we’ve done our job, it saves you time, money and hassle!

If you look through our Theme Store, our Themes are not built strictly for blogs or to even be blogs. They are built to be and run entire small business websites that might want integrated blogs to develop an interactive community around their products and services and find new customers via the search engines. Of course, you don’t have to use the blog function, but it can certainly become a great marketing tool in your arsenal.

One thing we’ve focused on as well is investing in high-end, professionally-designed templates. We’ve sought out and hired the best web designers to build themes that would normally cost well over $2,000 for a comparable custom design. In fact, it costs between $3,000-$5,000 on average for us to build just one of our theme series.

If you do the math, when you purchase one of our iThemes, you’re paying a small fraction of that cost.

On the backend, we aspire to produce the best, most well-designed code — the CSS stylesheets, XHTML and WordPress options — into our themes. Neatly organized, so you, the do-it-yourselfers, can find and tweak your designs to get them exactly the way you like it.

We’re also improving and adding features to our themes so you don’t have to touch the code either — like being able to upload a custom logo straight from WordPress.

In addition to building an extensive WordPress video tutorial section, to help you with your questions, we’ve also got an active user-to-user support forum, with two moderators who peruse the boards each day to help answer your questions or point you in the right direction to find them.

We’re doing all this simply because … we want to build the best WordPress themes for small businesses.

So that’s it … the iThemes story in a nutshell!