In under two months Socket has surpassed the 200 purchase mark. It’s still selling more than twice as fast as our first theme, Caulk, which has itself seen a surge of popularity recently (we thought Socket would have passed it in overall sales by now). Here are a few of our notable numbers from ThemeForest: [...]
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 6 months since we uploaded our first premium Wordpress theme for sale at Theme Forest. It was a cold, dark December day when we introduced our contrastingly bright, peppy magazine-style theme that changed the global marketplace as we know it. Who are we kidding, we wish we had the sales volume that Kriesi has (the dude has sold upwards of half a million bucks in gross sales). However, even a guy like that had to start somewhere, and we’d like to think we are on pace to break his records. We’d also like to think Hollywood is going to stop ruining classic cartoon franchises with terrible remakes, but that’s not going to happen. Seriously though, let’s break some records. And let’s start with our newest milestone:
We here at OSWC are students of the newest design trends in the biz. We love shiny new things. If there is a new toy out, we have GOT to get our hands on it. We don’t know why, but that’s how it works with us. The same goes with web design trends. jQuery is very hot right now, and we’re getting out hands on it and playing with it like it’s the newest smart phone. We already employed some of the hippest CSS2 trends when we built this site, like image sprites, background image hover effects, and purely CSS drop down menus. Since then, we’ve leveraged a lot of the newest jQuery techniques too, beginning with the Twitter plugin, continuing with a validated AJAX contact form, adding in some nifty portfolio sliders, and rounding it out with some cool quote rotators (e.g. the Outer Spice Buzz panel on the Services and Portfolio pages, as well as the bottom-right panel on every page). So, we’re continuing that trend today with a few more features.
Today In Development: Blog In The Spotlight. Today’s blog is Function Web Design. With articles focusing on, you guessed it, web design, Function specializes in Wordpress theme and plugin development. I particularly like Function because they definitely live by one of our core philosophies here at Outer Spice: Less is More. For instance, Function seems to post an article no more than a few times per month. As a result, each of their articles are well thought out and of very high quality. Their articles are relevant, insightful, and original. Today’s article really caught my eye since Socket version 1.1 was just released, featured a revamped theme options page. The article is entitled Wordpress Theme Options Overload? A Judgement Call and it brings up an interesting topic, once again, in the “less is more” category.
In just 18 short days, Socket has already hit 100 purchases. To put that in perspective, our popular and successful first theme Caulk hit 100 purchases in about 2 months. So that means Socket is officially selling more than twice as fast as Caulk. We’re very proud of this success and we’re glad that so many people have been able to benefit from Socket’s awesomeness. Pick up the theme for a mere $37 from Theme Forest today!
We are pleased to announce that the HTML (PHP) version of our Socket Wordpress template has been approved for sale at Theme Forest. At only $17, it’s definitely a steal. It’s got all the glorious features of the original Socket, but without the limitation of having to use Wordpress. 34 page templates, jQuery enhanced, Piecemaker 3D flash slider, font replacement, fancy menu dropdowns, and AJAX contact forms are just a few of the features that round out Socket. Best of all, the code is intuitive, commented in-line, indented, spaced, and accompanied with a documentation help file that explains how to use it. Check it out on Theme Forest. Here is the description:
We have released our latest theme at ThemeForest. It is called Socket, and the tagline is “Power up.” I know, sort of corny, right? Wrong. It’s perfect. Socket is a full-fledged CMS template built for corporate and portfolio use, and you can purchase a copy for only $37. It is forward engineered to work with the upcoming release of Wordpress 3, uses valid XHTML/CSS, and it is cross-browser compatible (except IE6). Check out the live demo here, and make sure you check all the pages to see the different color options and page layouts. Socket was about 3 months in the making, so hopefully it is as successful as our first template was. Speaking of, Caulk is currently sitting at 236 cumulative sales between the Wordpress and HTML versions. Here is the full description for Socket:
We recently did some customizations of our Caulk theme for the Blogger’s Bug website started by Mike Wilkerson of 2GuysTalking fame. In return, he gave us a huge shout-out in his weekly 24 series podcast (listened to by tens of thousands of people each week!) which you can Listen to here – you’ll hear the Outer Spice plug at 4:50. If you’re into 24 (I used to be until around season 6) then you should definitely give his podcast a listen. Here’s the official website: 24podcast.com. This is the official podcast of the Fox television series 24, so you can also get to it by going to Fox’s website and clicking on the 2GuysTalking podcast. Thanks for the shout-out, Mike!
We often get asked when gathering requirements if we can make sure the page shows up high on search rankings. Most of the time we politely state our company rule about SEO:
We will build your website according to best industry practices for search engine optimization. The code will validate and the content will be easily [...]
Here is a website I came across with over 100k icons. The problem I’ve found with other free icon websites is that it’s hard to browse through the myriad of icons available, and when you do finally come across a set you like, you discover it is not free for commercial use. The great thing about this website is how it lists the icon sets out thumbnail style so you can easily view many at once, and it lists the license directly below each thumbnail. The only thing it’s missing is a way to sort by license, instead of just sorting alphabetically by icon set name. Check it out for yourself: FREE ICONS!.
