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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What are the new features in WordPress 3.1? Many of you have read the WP 3.1 release and some have upgraded but don’t know what the big fuss is about. Let’s go over some of the really neat features introduced in WordPress 3.1.

Post Formats

This will be the most talked about feature in the WP 3.1 release. Post Formats support definitely takes WordPress to a new level of CMS capabilities, and we’re quite excited about it here at Gabfire Themes. In short, Post Formats allow you to choose a format that determines how the post is displayed. In concept, it is similar to Page Templates, however there is a standardized set of options that can be used. Available formats can be found on the WordPress Codex here and are shown below:

• aside – Typically styled without a title. Similar to a Facebook note update.
• gallery – A gallery of images. Post will likely contain a gallery shortcode and will have image attachments.
• link – A link to another site. Themes may wish to use the first <a href=””> tag in the post content as the external link for that post. An alternative approach could be if the post consists only of a URL, then that will be the URL and the title (post_title) will be the name attached to the anchor for it.
• image – A single image. The first <img /> tag in the post could be considered the image. Alternatively, if the post consists only of a URL, that will be the image URL and the title of the post (post_title) will be the title attribute for the image.
• quote – A quotation. Probably will contain a blockquote holding the quote content. Alternatively, the quote may be just the content, with the source/author being the title.
• status – A short status update, similar to a Twitter status update.
• video – A single video. The first <video /> tag or object/embed in the post content could be considered the video. Alternatively, if the post consists only of a URL, that will be the video URL. May also contain the video as an attachment to the post, if video support is enabled on the blog (like via a plugin).
• audio – An audio file. Could be used for Podcasting.
• chat – A chat transcript, like so:

WordPress Admin Bar

The one feature you’ll notice right away after upgrading to WP 3.1 is the new Admin Bar at the top of your site. See a screenshot of my admin bar below:

This is a great enhancement which lets you access all the most used functions in the dashboard. The administration bar gives you one-click access to adding new posts or pages, to Menus, or to your comments. I’m already using it quite extensively, and you’ll certainly find it speeds up publishing of posts and basic administration of site content.

Easy Internal Linking

Ever spent time tracking down the URL to a previous post on your blog? We all have, including me. Luckily, this handy feature gives us quick and easy access to internal links so we can better navigate our readers. Simply search for a term and select the corresponding post or page you wish to internally link. What’s more is that internal linking helps your site from a SEO perspective as well. We’re sure this is certainly going to be well-received by everyone. See below for a screenshot:

Less Panels in Write Mode

You may be wondering where certain panels have gone from your Edit Post screen. Less frequently used panels have been hidden from the screen so you can focus more on writing good content. But if you want them back, just click on Screen Options at the top right and check off the panels to be shown. Here’s a screenshot of the Screen Options drop-panel where you can select the panels you want displayed:

Advanced Taxonomy Queries

The average user will not care much about this, but advanced taxonomies will allow greater flexibility to developers for running complex queries using custom fields, tags, or any combination of data points.

Conclusion

The team at WordPress.org did a fantastic job on this release. We congratulate them on the accomplishment and look forward to what they have in store for WP 3.2. Until then, there are several more great features not discussed here and you can read about them over at the WordPress Codex. In the meantime, we at Gabfire Themes will be thinking up creative ways to incorporate these features into future themes.

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We are in Christmas festive season, and at Gabfire Themes, we got some mouthwatering offers in wait for our customers. Yes! We have lined up some awesome Christmas promotional offers to top up the great themes that you typically recognize us for.

This time, we also don’t offer the typical “buy one get extra free” scheme as we had realized that most of the times, you, the customer, need only a single theme for your website(s). To compensate for that, we’ve brought down the price tag of the themes drastically to only $14.90. This offer will last until the last minute of 2010, on 31 December 2010 – 0:00 hours.

We welcome you to the New Year 2011 with a never-before-seen cash discount offer of on our themes. As opposed to the regular price tag of $59.00, now you save $44, when you purchase the theme from our website before 31 December 2010 ends.

Why waiting? check out our themes page to pick your theme, and the cash discount that comes with it as your Xmas present on behalf of us.

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It is sometimes hard to replace a theme that is quite popular among users with a new one. From a client-customer relationship perspective, it can be potentially suicidal, especially if the replacement theme fails to garner the same amount of popularity as its original does. Smart move while updating an old theme is to come up with its enhanced versions without altering its core concept. Perhaps, now you realize why the third version of WPShowcase theme has been released, the same which you could find out yourself from the layout of Newspro and Suvi Magazine themes. Clearly, the layout is better when compared to its earlier editions.

While designing a new theme, or updating an existing one, we generally fall back on the communications we had with our clients, and take into account their valuable feedbacks in different aspects of the business. Here is a short road map of how WP Advanced Newspaper had 3 different editions in such a very short time.

Together with our latest theme, WP Advanced Newspaper theme, we have decided to do something different and ask user feedback for the layout and functionality. What we did was basically first to provide it for our WordPress Newspaper theme users only, and ask for their opinions. We must admit that garnering user feedbacks helped us a lot in enhancing the functionality of the theme, and fix any existing bugs in the first version, by the time the second version was released. This time, the new theme was open to be downloaded not just by our old clients, but also new people who are interested in a change.

We are really happy to see a lot appreciated clients around. Following the second release, we again received lots of feedback from our users, the majority of which were related to featured post slider. We considered all these aspects when we worked on a third edition, the one that was released recently.

It has been a great challenge for us so far, to listen to all our clients and incorporate the changes they suggested on the themes we release. However, this is the way we are going to work in the future, and is looking forward to associate ourselves with more users in the future.

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What is a premium WordPress theme?

A premium WordPress theme is any theme for the WordPress online blogging engine that comes at a price. In other words, if you have to pay for the WordPress theme, it is known as a premium theme. If you do not have to pay for it, it is known as a free theme.

Why should I purchase a premium WordPress theme?

This is a question that requires its own discussion absent the general discussion about premium WordPress themes. That having been said however, premium WordPress themes are worth purchasing for a number of reasons which briefly include their comprehensive nature, their support and the fact that you can often end up purchasing a theme without having to link back to the theme’s creator and therefore saving some of your link juice when it comes to the Google Page Rank information that your website has.

Support is another major advantage of buying a premium WordPress theme. When you buy a premium theme from GabfireThemes, it comes backed with extensive support offered by our WordPress experts. You can contact us at any time when you have any questions regarding the premium themes or you can visit the Support forum in our website.

Another plus point of premium themes is Theme Updates. WordPress releases new updates frequently, so do GabfireThemes! We update our premium themes to incorporate the new WordPress add-ons along with our own extra tools and features to make your website or blog perform the best for you.

Is having a premium WordPress theme really necessary?

In the long run, the answer to this question is a resounding yes. While you can certainly get started with a WordPress theme that is free. If you want your blog to become recognized as a source of information on the internet that is worth visiting, you are going to need to brand it with a high quality WordPress theme. In other words, you will need a premium or custom WordPress theme.

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There are two main types of WordPress themes. The premium WordPress theme category used to lack popularity because of the cost associated with it, but now that people have realized that becoming successful online takes either a commitment of time or money within the WordPress themes category, it is starting to become more popular with each passing day. In any case, something has to have value in order to be popular and here are some advantages that WordPress premium themes bring to the table that might contribute towards their ever increasing sense of popularity on the internet.

Advantage #1: Time

One of the biggest advantages that WordPress premium themes have is their time factor. Because you are actually willing to pay for the theme, the person that has created the theme is generally able to put quite a bit more time into what they do. The end result of this extra time commitment is a higher quality. This might not be seen right away by your customers, but when you take a look at things like link placement, detailed color schemes and the logical placement of different elements on the page, what you are going to see is that the extra time that has been put into the premium WordPress themes ends up paying off in a way that very few people would have been able to imagine before these theme types became popular.

Advantage #2: Uniqueness

Another advantage that some premium WordPress themes bring to the table is their uniqueness. In other words, some WordPress themes will allow you to purchase them and in doing so remove that theme from consideration by anyone else. Not all do that however, but even those themes will have a lot less to do with the original creator of the theme. There will be fewer link requirements and fewer credit boxes to deal with.

Truly unique WordPress themes (custom themes) are quite expensive, but these top notch premium themes will also ensure that your blog is a unique one. Nobody else will have your particular theme and in an industry where branding is absolutely everything, that can be a huge contributing factor to your success.

Advantage #3: Seriousness

One final advantage worth considering from the premium WordPress themes is the sense of seriousness that they bring to the table. You have to pay for premium WordPress themes, but that extra cash incentive might be just what you need to get going on a blog project that could easily become a nice business for you in the long run.

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