News

Over the years a number of our members asked us to perform custom jobs but we had to turn them all down. Because of our hectic schedule, there is just no time for these custom jobs. Since we couldn’t complete the task ourselves, we always instructed you to use our customization site. While the site helped many to achieve their goal, there were also people that never received a reply. From now on the customization site won’t be your only solution, you can use tweaky.com

To start off this collaboration tweaky is offering a $10 discount (40%) on the first tweak for all Templatic members. This discount is valid until Friday – October 26th, 2012. Use the following coupon code to get the discount Code: TMPLTC Have fun customizing!

Last week we surprised many by announcing WooCommerce upgrades for all existing e-commerce themes. In the same blog post we mentioned a new theme (Catalog), boosted by a whole new mindset that will change Templatic e-commerce for good. The theme is finally here, it’s simple, responsive, clean and flexible, it’s Catalog! The number one thing that makes Catalog special is it’s compatibility. Instead of settling for one e-commerce plugin now you can choose two! Not only that, the whole theme has been designed to embrace the functionality powerful plugins have to offer. Catalog was designed with following plugins in mind:

• WooCommerce
• Jigoshop
• bbPress
• WordPress SEO by Yoast

All of these plugins are free and available in the WordPress plugin directory. To learn more about each one click on it in the above list.

Catalog is unlike anything we created before; back-end area is very minimalistic and wordpressy ensuring that everyone feels right at home from the moment they install the theme. Unlike previous Templatic e-commerce themes, Catalog does not come with a built-in selling system, you must install a plugin to enable that functionality. Our goal was to create the most unobtrusive theme ever. With plugins such as WordPress SEO by Yoast completely free and available to anyone, should a theme really have built-in SEO options? Once you install the necessary plugins the theme will simply get out of your way, letting you focus on what matters. Another novelty in Catalog are Shortcodes! Templatic shortcodes you’ve gotten used to over the years have been expanded and improved. Most notable inclusions are the progress bars, tabs, gallery variations and the accordion shortcode. All of these can be seen in action on the Catalog demo site, just open the shortcodes page.

Theme Support

Templatic staff will do its best to provide support for WooCommerce and Jigoshop plugins. Since we’re all new to the plugins it will take some time to take it all in. Your patience will be highly appreciated during this time. Templatic won’t attempt to edit (and redistribute) the plugins in any way. If any bugs are discovered, they will be reported to the plugin developers who will then do what is necessary. Support for WooCommerce and Jigoshop extensions will not be provided since every purchased extension comes with guaranteed support from WooThemes/Jigoshop.

Video Overview

Limited Time Offer Purchase Catalog in the next week and get a discount! The standard license will set you back $65 $45. Price for the developer license (unlimited domains + PSD) is $99 $79. No coupons, no hassles – just checkout like you normally would! This deal ends on October 24, 2012 so be sure to act quickly.

View Live Demo or Test Drive and Purchase this theme

So, did Catalog turn out to be what you expected? Let us know in the comments.

E-commerce themes have been a part of Templatic for years now and it’s one of the things that helped define who we are. But, times change and plugins such as WooCommerce started matching and even surpassing the features available in our themes. The awesomeness of WooCommerce caused it to become very popular in a short amount of time. This in turn made our existing and future members start asking for WooCommerce compatibility in Templatic themes.

Today we are proud to announce that every Templatic e-commerce theme is WooCommmerce compatible! This includes:

• Market
• DigitalBox
• StoreBox
• Emporium
• e-Commerce
• WP Store
• KidzStore
• eShop
• Store

Each theme will work with the built-in e-commerce system or with WooCommerce. It is not possible to use both solutions at the same time

Existing members, listen up…

Existing e-commerce users should definitely read the following article before updating. WooCommerce products are vastly different compared to the built-in ones so expect to perform a few tweaks. Another important change is in the way these themes will be distributed from now on. Until now, framework and child folders were provided as one zip file. Starting today you will have to download them separately (both are provided in the member area). This change was made so the framework can be uploaded faster. It will also enable you to access both change_log files right from member area.

Theme Support

Templatic staff will do its best to provide support for the WooCommerce plugin. Since we’re all new to the plugin it will take some time to take it all in. Your patience will be highly appreciated during this time. Templatic won’t attempt to edit the plugin in any way. All bug fixes will be reported to WooThemes who will then update the plugin. Support for WooCommerce extensions will not be provided since every purchased extension comes with guaranteed support from WooThemes.

Which system should I use?

It’s up to you to ultimately decide but we recommend using WooCommerce in case you just purchased an Ecommerce theme (or are planning to). Users with a small number of products should also consider switching to WooCommerce. The built in selling system will still be supported but new features will not be added. This is because we are hard at work on developing a brand new system which will replace the current eCom framework. First theme based on this system will be Catalog. Catalog will feature an amazingly simple, clean and responsive design with support for not only WooCommerce, but Jigoshop as well! Here’s a quick teaser:

Update Catalog has been released on October 15th. Click here to read more about the theme

What do you think about this change? Looking forward to using WooCommerce? Let us know in the comments below!

Though rarely, WordCamp has started happening in India now. Last year, it was Jabalpur, this year it’s being held at Mumbai on 20 and 21st October, 2012. (Rumors are, it’s happening in Baroda, Gujarat as well in January 2013). Though the final schedule is not posted on the website yet, this event will have a User track and a Developer track. Explanation on this could be found on registration page of the website. Choose the one that suits you. If you are using WordPress professionally in any way, this is a wonderful opportunity to network with like minded people. Visit: http://2012.mumbai.wordcamp.org/ The organizers has been kind enough to share a coupon for templatic users who wish to attend the event.

Coupon code: Get INR 500/- discount when you use “Templatic” coupon code at WordCamp Mumbai registration page.

We are pretty excited for this event and will be present there. On a personal note, we will be speaking at this event, sharing some insights and questions on templatic journey so far. If you are around that day, don’t forget to say “hello” :)

Even though it was always feature packed, GeoPlaces never boosted a responsive design – until now! Mobile friendly design is by far the most common request for GeoPlaces v4 so we couldn’t be happier to finally show it to you guys. The new update will also feature a couple of new settings and a few patches, but nothing worth mentioning individually.

This GeoPlaces update is available in member area for all existing members

Another thing we are extremely happy about is the GeoPlaces community inside our forums. The customization thread already boasts around 40 customizations which make customizing GeoPlaces a breeze. This is all thanks to our awesome members who often go out of their way to help others. Once again, thank you for everything! :)

To make content easier to find on Templatic site we are introducing the Docs Center. This center will include theme guides, tutorials and even videos. Included Instant Search will help you find what you need quickly and without hassles. Theme Guides have been excluded from search so be sure to read your the theme guide before searching for other content. With this docs center we’re also looking to change the flow of the general support. This is what you should do to get the best support experience:

• Visit the docs center and read the theme guide
• In case of an issue use the search bar to find a solution. Also, make sure you read the recommended tutorials, they will come in handy when you start tweaking and customizing your theme
• In case you haven’t found a solution inside the docs center visit our community forums and search the forum of the theme you purchased
• If you haven’t found what you were looking for simply submit a new topic and explain in detail what’s going on. To get acquanted with forum rules please read the support guidelines topic

All you existing Templatic members are now probably wondering, “What about Helpdesk?” Templatic Helpdesk will continue to be operational and you can all still use it. That said, our community forums are booming with good content, awesome users and will be treated as the primary place to get support. The newly introduced forum reward system just sweetens the deal. I should also mention that response times will likely be lower in the forums since more support members will work there compared to the Helpdesk. That, along with loads of helpful members will ensure that you never wait too long for a solution. Of course, complex issues, the ones that require us to connect to your site will still be handled in Helpdesk. You’ll be prompted to create a ticket whenever that will be necessary. Because the docs center makes new support content so easy to find we’ll work extra hard on new tutorials and even videos. Feel free to use the comments below to suggest new tutorials for us. Try to suggest ones that are not theme-specific since all theme-specific content will be inside the theme guides.

Docs Center Community Forums

For a while now we’ve been thinking about our forum community on how to make it stronger. There are a lot of users that go out of their way to help others so we felt compelled to reward these people. Even so, we never got around to it – that is, until the cake! Today was a day like any other; programmers were coding, designers were designing, support guys were supporting until…a cake arrived! Usually when cakes arrive important questions arise like “Who sent this?”, “What does this mean?” and most important, “Is it chocolate?” :) We took this cake as a hint that it’s time to implement some changes! Starting today all Templatic members who actively participate inside the forums will get a chance to win a free theme of their choice every month. In case you’re a club member we’ve prepared an extra 6 months of membership for you. We’ll be giving out a max of 3 rewards each month. Click on the link below to read more about this (login required)

http://templatic.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=11323

After some digging around we established that the cake was sent by Queerine. Thank you Queerine for inspiring us and making our day! Goes without saying that the cake itself was awesome as well. Upendra (support leader) wrote this on Facebook

  To see more cake pictures open this Facebook album. Please be careful, the pictures will likely make you start craving cake :)

View Live Demo or Test Drive and Purchase this theme

Events, one of our most popular theme continues to dazzle both new and existing members. We decided it was time to include some of the features you have asked for the most during these past months. Existing Events users are probably now thinking “Does it have recurring events, does it have recurring events?” Wait for a moment. Let’s take a quick tour on what’s new and find your answer. This upgrade has been in development for several weeks during which dozens of new features were added so it’s quite possible we’ll leave some of them out (from this blog post). Head over to events theme sales page to learn more about this upgrade.

Make More Money

Recurring events, Subscription packages & PayPal Pro

• While submitting a new event you’ll be presented with an option to select a regular or recurring event.
• With price packages you will be able to monetize your events site in ways that simply weren’t possible earlier. Price packages in Events v2 also feature a subscription based option meaning you don’t have to charge for each submission individually. For more on how these features work be sure to watch the video overview available on this page.
• PayPal Pro is available as one of the payment options in Events

Front End upgrades

• Yup, it’s responsive! Events v2 is designed to look good on all devices, no matter the screen size!
• In case of recurring event, it’s future dates are also shown on the events detail page.
• Your event visitors can now RSVP for the particular event.
• Own an event? You can now Claim event ownership from the events detail page.
• Map page template is added wherein you can show all the events on your site on a single map. Cool ha?
• On events listing page, a new tab is added that will show “Current” events.

Custom fields and Advanced search 

• Easily edit all fields seen in the Submit Event form
• All existing and new fields can be shown on the event detail and listing page!
• Using “User profile fields” section you will be able to customize your Registration form
• Custom build your advanced search (available as a page template)

As usual, all Events V1 users can upgrade to Events V2 absolutely free!

Better security

• Anti-spam security on every form!
• Two anti-spam solutions provided: WP-reCAPTCHA and PlayThru
• Supports user permission plugin (link)

Facebook everywhere

• Let your users login with Facebook. Feature enabled by Social Login plugin
• Users can now leave Facebook comments on your events using the following plugin
• Stream Facebook events directly to your theme using Facebook Events page template. See the template in action on the demo site
• Events streaming functionality is available inside user dashboard as well. Every user can connect their profile to their Facebook page and stream events

Video Overview

Watch the video below to see Events v2 in action and also to learn more about features mentioned here as well as those that we might have skipped in this blog post.

This list could go on but we’ll stop here and let you explore the theme further.

View Live Demo or Test Drive and Purchase this theme

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Want to help us spread the word? Just click on Facebook or Twitter below and let the world know about Events v2!

It’s been around four years since we released our first theme and since then we’ve covered pretty much every niche with a WordPress theme. Change happens and several really good things have happened in the WordPress community. Its about time we embrace this new, exciting wave and leave out the old one.

Adopting change is never a smooth sail and we need to make some hard decision which some of you might not like. With that said, we firmly believe this is a crucial and necessary step in the long run. Here’s some of those decisions.

Discontinuing Following Themes from
August 15th, 2012

Having lots of themes in our store is certainly a good thing for you guys, the customers. It’s also good for us since it provides a great incentive for joining our Theme Club. However, maintaining & upgrading all these 60+ themes is not easy. It becomes a big barrier when we wish to introduce new changes and bring in some awesome features.

So, from August 15th, 2012, the following themes will be discontinued from our store and member area.

Academy
Article Directory
Consultant
Destination
Enterprise
eProduct
Gourmet
Grace
Hello Magazine
iBusiness
InspiredBits
iProduct
Magazine
MagFolio
Mini Magazine
Mini Magazine – Dark
Mr. & Mrs.
Musician (ecommerce)
NewsFlash
NewsTime
Organic
Photocraft
Plus One
ProductFolio
Productz
Reinvent
Restaurant
Simple Site
Snippet
StoreFront (ecommerce)
The Daily News
WikiBase
WPLocator

If you own one of these themes please note that:

• No new feature upgrades will be released for any of these themes
• Small, patch updates (in case of an issue) will be released until December 31st, 2012. After that no updates (no matter the issue) will be provided
• Theme support will be provided for every user until the end of his/her 1-year license. License for deprecated themes cannot be renewed.
• There is no limit on just using the theme. Feel free to use it even after your license expires

Club Membership price drop
from $15/month to $9/month

You likely noticed that new theme releases have slowed down in the last few months. That’s because during this period lots of new things have happened and the amount of work each theme requires is a lot more substantial than earlier. Also, portfolio themes do not “work” for us anymore and we wish to create more complex and unique products in the future. In short, this means that we don’t know exactly how much time the new upcoming products will take and simply can’t commit to releasing one theme per month.

To make it up for club members, monthly renewal price is reduced from $15 to $9, beginning today.

While this is a setback, it will allow us to bring important upgrades to existing products while creating new, unique products the way it should be created.

Unfortunately, this renewal price change can’t be done automatically. If you are an existing club member here’s a guide on how to enable the new renew price: http://templatic.com/theme-support/changing-the-membership-renewal-price

20 people strong

Over the last four years our team has grown to a considerable number. What started as a 3 person team is now a full blow company with 20 people working full time, focused 100% on Templatic growth plan. 18 of our team members work from 2 offices in India while Vedran and Russell work from Croatia and USA. While we could write several blog posts about the team and how it’s all coming together all you should know is that Templatic is stronger than ever with a clear plan on how to make it even better!

Plan ahead

As described earlier in this post, our plan is simple. Upgrade existing products and create new, meaningful and unique products. Version 2 of Events theme is coming up next week and some new products are coming then after.

While this can be considered a setback, we are taking few steps backwards to take a giant leap forward. Since these changes are two weeks away feel free to use the comments below to talk about these changes, we’re always open for discussion.

What do you think? :)

Back in May four theme upgrades were announced. JobBoard v3, the first of those upgrades is now ready! This next-gen Job Board is a mix of old design coupled with new and awesome functionality. If you got a chance to test some of our more advanced themes like GeoPlaces v4 or Realtr than you know what to expect from JobBoard v3. Advanced features like price packages and custom fields have all found their way into JobBoard v3.

View Live Demo or Test Drive and Purchase this theme

Probably the first thing you’ll notice in JobBoard v3 is the ability to submit resumes as well as jobs. One of the bigger changes in JobBoard is the inclusion of Job Provider/Job Seeker system. In a nutshell, all users that register on the site choose whether to be a job seeker or a job provider. Depending on their selection the theme will show or hide content on the site. For instance, job providers will have access to all resumes posted on the site but they will not be able to upload their own. Job seekers on the other hand will be able to upload their resume but not jobs.

Both Jobs and Resumes are a separate post type/taxonomy in JobBoard. As you probably suspected, regular WordPress posts will be used as blog posts. To make the transition from JobBoard v2 easier an update query was included that will automatically transfer all your jobs (currently listed under Posts) to the Job post type.

All Templatic upgrades are completely free for all existing members and this one is no different! If you’re running JobBoard v2 head over to member area to get the latest version! Also make sure you read the theme guide’s section about upgrading

Monetization options in the last version were fairly lacking and left a lot to be desired. All that is changed in JobBoard v3 which features the most advanced monetization system yet. What sets it apart from our other themes is the ability to switch to a subscription based model. So far users had to pay to publish each individual listing, if you turn on the subscription model users will be able to upload an unlimited number of listings in the time-frame you set inside the price package. Don’t worry if it sounds too complicated, the theme guide will explain everything in detail.

Even though all this new functionality was added you might have noticed that the design has stayed pretty much the same. No changes were made so that the upgrade process for those already running Job Board theme could go as smooth as possible. In case you made some css changes, chances are they will stay intact after the upgrade. Because of it’s responsive design Job Board will look great on your laptop, tablet and smartphone!

Helping you showcase useful information are the good ol’ custom fields. “Manage custom fields” section in JobBoard v3 allows you to create/edit custom fields for both the Jobs and Resumes custom post type. Custom fields you create in this section can be added both to the back-end and front-end submission forms. Job/Resume detail pages will show these fields at the top alongside the company logo/user image.

Video Overview

View Live Demo or Test Drive and Purchase this theme