Premium Themes: The Heat Is On
Posted on January 15th, 2008
Categorized as Blog
I would not say that the flood gates has opened for new Premium WordPress themes (yet anyway), but the competition sure is coming thick and fast. Usually I don’t take too much notice of new themes, as I feel that I’ve established myself as a Premium theme developer and ultimately I won’t change too many things with regards to my business model (unless need be).
So this morning I stumbled across Quommunication’s new premium offering, simply called News (live preview). Now having previously interviewed the designer of the theme - Bence Kucsan - I’m very familiar with his style and I’d go as far as saying that I absolutely love his work. Now the basis of any opinion that I might have of the theme, would be focussed on the fact that Bence is an extremely popular and well-established designer - which suggests that he could come into the Premium theme market and make his presence felt. This opinion is thus based on the fact that I really respect Bence’s work - yet I do not feel threatened by his entry into the market.
Why would I not feel threatened, when I’ve basically waxed lyrical about his design skills?
Well, even though Quommunication News looks great, I simply feel that it lacks a bit of punch and the theme doesn’t necessarily distinguish himself from the other themes available at the moment. To explain the distinguishing-factor, consider that when I first released the original Premium News, only Brian Gardner’s Revolution Themes were available - and what I did with Premium News was to offer a different look and a different set of features to Brian’s themes.
Furthermore, I think the overly minimalistic style of the theme (it doesn’t contain one single image file - just pure CSS) will prohibit the theme from reaching its full sales potential. I believe that buyers want something that’s easy to customize, but they’re only going to buy a premium theme if it looks slick and stylish - something which Bence’s theme seems to be lacking. Again, to the trained eye of a designer, the style is fantastic (I love it for example) - but users / potential buyer needs to be educated about these kind of things or they need to be blown away with the interface & back end features.
In terms of functions, I also feel that News is lacking a bit - but then again, with Premium News & NewsPress’ integrated theme options, I do believe that I’ve got an unique offering and selling point. Not many other premium themes has adopted this approach thus far and judging by my sales, this must be a competitive advantage.
But irrespective of my opinion with regards to the potential sales / popularity of this theme, it’s great to see that established designers are entering the market, as this will surely keep myself, Brian and all the other market players on our toes and push us to deliver better products to the community. I’m pretty excited to see where this will go… Aren’t you?
January 15th, 2008 at 1:13 am
WordPress Competition: The Premium Way
I just wrote quite a lengthy post over on the Premium News blog about a brand-spanking new theme that has just been released into the Premium WordPress Theme Wildnerness. I definitely think it is worth your time to hop on over to the Premium News site…
January 15th, 2008 at 1:22 am
[…] just wrote quite a lengthy post over on the Premium News blog about a brand-spanking new theme that has just been released into the Premium WordPress Theme […]
January 15th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I love competition! The News theme is simple and the featured section pops out which is the effect their most likely going after. To me, as a web designer/developer, I love it but I also understand what you’re saying adii.
However, looking at the landing page of the news theme, maybe he’s not going after your type of audience. His features seem very designer, developer friendly so I think he’s thats who he’s after.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Competition is good for prices, quality and whatever we, the consumers regards as important.
To me as a person that don’t know how to code, I still look to design and frontend functionality (like the cool tabboxes in your themes). I can always copy/paste code from plugins and other stuff into the places I want stuff to appear. For instance I see no need for the ability to make 4 different ads in the Premium News theme backend, but I love the little box with ability to put my OpenAds in.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Really? I would object and say it looks much better then any of your “Premium News Themes”… no offense.
It has subtle simplicity that any of your designs seem to offer… after all a news theme is about a user spending a bit of time on ones site actually… you know ‘Reading’.
Even this blog design here: needs to have the line spacing bumped up and the copy font changed to something more easily readable.
But then again thats just my opinion
January 16th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I agree with Jason. The Theme is “Apple-esk”, simple and clean, uhm, elegant is the word. Guess that’s more my thing.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
hey Adii,
I think you have a better touch. I bought Brian Gardner’s theme and when I tried to bring up the auto-thumbnail idea, he disappeared. I’m ready to buy the next theme that can generate these thumbnails for the main page for me and I like yours the best, hope you can make it happen. I didn’t think it was huge deal but apparently despite the fact that my designer did it 2 years ago for a custom theme (that I no longer use for other reasons), no other designer has that feature nailed yet.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Steven, I use Rev Mag now, and I used this theme before, and you not only have to use the custom fields key for the thumbnails, you also have to make a specific image size for the main photo in the carosel, and code into the custom fields. with any premium wordpress them you are going to have to do this, it’s just the way it is.
On topic, I like News, it kind of has that CNN, NY Times type feel to it. I think you guys are after two different markets. He is going after those people that update millions of times a day, like a newspaper, and your theme seems to be directed to the bloggers who don’t want the blog look.. His theme features 20 some stories on teh front page, so if someone was writing once a day, it would be totally impracticle to have his theme.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Steve, I just checked your site, with any theme that has a layout predetermined you are going to have to some photo editing. your top photo isn’t 290×200, so the layout looks messed up. Just like if you dont follow them with this theme, the layout will be messed up. There is a plugin that will generate thumbnails for you automatically, which was suggested to you in revolution theme forum…. http://www.alakhnor.com/post-thumb/?page_id=6
January 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
This is the theme that I’m eying right now, it’ll be interesting to see the finished product. I really like the story slider under the header. Darren is on the up and up..
http://www.darrenhoyt.com/mockups/mimbopro/
January 21st, 2008 at 2:37 am
Nick,
that thumbnail looks like what I need. I do notice none of the news themes have working auto thumbnail generation, but a custom theme i had made a year ago did have it and it worked well - but yes, you have to follow standard size restrictions for the main page. On topic, Adii’s stuff is nice, and this is his site so big love. My main constructive is that newspress shouldn’t be split down the middle, the main section should be bigger, it feels funny split 50/50 like that, otherwise its sharp.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Very Nice. I think it’s one of your better themes
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:55 am
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February 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Great looking themes…..
March 10th, 2008 at 8:04 am
I agree that having a professional look and feel for the users to read and navigate is critical for short term and long term success. Positioning ourselves as experts in our fields of study provides strenght in the marketing/news message.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Um, yes I think that the Quommunication theme you pointed out actually looks a lot better than any of your own and by pointing your readers to that link you are bound to lose some business… just a thought.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:11 am
19tLdj Hi from Russia!
March 20th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Amazing your designs!
Shedya
April 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Hi, great site. I’m waiting for new interesting articles and designs! Regards
April 24th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
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