Over the past few months we’ve been settling into our new head office here in Cape Town South Africa, where 7 of us work from. Only three doors down from our old one that we outgrew in August last year… It has certainly taken a good amount of time to design, decorate and renovate the office, but we are finally happy with the end result.

A couple weeks ago a good friend of mine, the multi-talented Mr Andrew Schär offered his film skills to showcase our new offices and our day-to-day activities. He’s done a stellar job of documenting WooHQ in an epic cinematic style. We really appreciate his time and effort in trying to make us look good, and really recommend his services.

Best viewed fullscreen and in HD.

Andy has written a blog post on his new site detailing the process and technical details of his SLR videography experiment.

Our next challenge – documenting all 17 team members spanning the world!

Our first business theme in 2012 is a beauty! We wanted to let Chris Rowe have another chance at out-designing his previous top seller at WooThemes; Simplicity. So it goes without saying that we have high hopes that Whitelight will be our most popular business theme to date. In addition to being a very clean and great design, here are some of the reasons we think this theme will be big…

Responsive is the way forward!

Whitelight follows in the footsteps of our previous new releases and is fully responsive, meaning it works on any browser, be it on your computer, iPad or mobile device. The featured slider is full width and responsive, and also has an alternative normal width option if you prefer that.

The alternative normal width featured slider

Modular homepage for increased flexibility

We’ve also made an effort to make the homepage modular, so you can easily add or remove the sections you want, and also order them through a widgetized area.

Modular custom homepage

WooCommerce compatibility from the start

Whitelight also has a WooCommerce child theme which enables full compatibility with WooCommerce and adds a custom module to hightlight latest additions to your shop on the homepage.

WooCommerce compatible through child theme

That’s not all the features of Whitelight, so be sure to head on over to the theme listing page and also check out the demo!

Cre8tive Burst was developed by Shannon Dow of EightCrazy Designs, and can be found in the StudioPress Marketplace. As a reminder, these are quality themes from our community and not included in the Pro Plus All-Themes package, but we assure you that the design and coding of them are top-notch.

Theme Features

The Cre8tive Burst child theme includes the following features: 4 color styles, 3 layout options, custom background, custom menus, featured images, fixed width, theme options, threaded comments.

Take it for a test drive…

Screenshot of the Cre8tive Burst Theme

Version 1.4 is perhaps not a massively exciting release for the end-user, but for developers it’s a biggy. We’ve re-written large chunks of code, made all round refinements to the plugin for our plans going forward, and optimised performance levels. Of course we’ve added some more bells and whistles too, but a lot of the changes are under the hood.

New Functionality

• Support for multiple and stacked (compound) taxes
• Multiple taxes shown in order total tables

Compound taxes can now be added and are worked out on the fly on checkout.

• Option to re-order shipping methods
• Category widget improvements – ‘order by option’ and an option to show current children only
• Added local pickup and local delivery shipping methods (thanks Patrick Garman)
• International shipping method (based on flat rate)
• Locale options for country address formatting and checkout fields
• Random products widget, thanks to Geert De Deckere

Front-end + Theming Optimizations

For designers and developers using WooCommerce you’ll find 1.4 specifically useful for a number of reasons:

• Improved default theme
• Moved many shortcodes (contents) to template files for easier customisation
• Added a simple, basic method of adding woocommerce support to themes using a woocommerce.php file based on page.php containing woocommerce_content()
• Coupon entry form on checkout (optional)
• If there is limited stock, quantity input plus button won’t go higher
• ‘Chosen’ selects for country/state select inputs (optional) – a great script for improving usability

UI improvements with select boxes.

Backend + Integration

• Admin interface improvements

The product data has had a clean up and is now presented in neat tabs.

• Piwik tracking – requires http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-piwik/
• Option to ‘Delete all variations’
• Tweaked visibility settings and made them more clear
• Added address meta to users panel
• Added address data to edit users screen
• Enabled product custom fields panel

Geek stuff

If you choose to not read any of the below, read this – we’ve made many minor fixes and improvements.

More payment gateway extensions

Last, but certainly not least we have 2 more payment gateway extensions available as of today, with some big extensions in the pipeline nearly ready.

MercadoPago

The MercadoPago gateway plugin allows to offer your clients any payment method supported by MercadoPago, including credit card, Pago Fácil / Rapipago and much more. MercadoPago is the payment gateway behind MercadoLibre, the largest e-commerce provider in Latin America.

Moneris Gateway

Moneris processes more than 3 billion credit and debit card transactions a year, for over 350,000 merchant locations across North America.

Moneris is primarily used by Canadian merchants looking to accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and AMEX through a wide variety of options.

The reason for the price increase, apart from the obvious being inflation after keeping our prices constant since 2007, is that we now support a portfolio of 123 themes, the mothership that is WooCommerce, and have a team of staff of 18.

Existing active club members monthly subscription costs will not be increased

After much deliberation and number crunching the good news for active club members is that we are grandfathering you into the new pricing, meaning you will not be experiencing any prices hikes and will remain on the same monthly charge as you have been previously. Your monthly membership fees will remain the same until you cancel your membership.

The new club membership pricing.

Disclaimer: This is a long post, but we guarantee you it’s worth the read. This is a big theme release!

Today sees the release of a theme that us at WooHQ are hugely excited about – partly because we have a few musicians within the team who are passionate about creating something they’d personally want to use, and partly because of the innovative modules and thinking that has gone into it’s development. We present to you “Unsigned”.

Unsigned was initially designed by our friend Ryan Downie, given the brief to design a modern version of one of our older, popular themes Backstage, all the while keeping it hugely versatile in it’s usage, for individual artists/musicians, as well as bands – spanning all genres of music. A rather difficult brief, but one that we feel Ryan mastered.

Matt was tasked with it’s development, whilst Mike given the design to slice, dice and convert into a WooFramework powered theme. As a musician and former band manager and promoter, Matt approached Unsigned from that angle- what would a musician, band manager or promoter want out of the theme?

The Unsigned homepage, as customized on our demo. And boy can you customize it, thanks to complete widget and theme option control!

One of the major advantages of Unsigned is that the artist has full control over the technical nature of their exposure. Whether aware of it or not. The functionality has been developed to anticipate the needs of the artist without them needing to add any extra code. This same approach is working hand in hand with our modular coding approach, making the code both smooth for the customer and swiftly maintained by us. The Unsigned homepage is almost completely controlled by widgets and a comfortable amount of theme options, making it hugely flexible (something a couple users expressed interest for yesterday).

A run down of the various Unsigned modules

Let’s jump straight into the various theme modules as there is a lot to cover.

Events Module

Woo – Events caters for the management and listing of events (gigs, festivals, etc). Events can be grouped into categories (club, concert, gig, festival, etc) and tours. These are both custom taxonomies.

An event’s status (upcoming, right now, past) is determined by it’s start and end date/time. It’s also possible to select one of these types for display in the Woo – Events admin, making it easier to view snapshots of your events calendar.

The events module and the widget that controls it. Simple.

Woo – Events comprises 3 widgets as well as a custom “Tours” page template. The widgets are for listing events, tours and tour dates for a specific tour. The events widget has options to display all events, upcoming events, past events, events happening right now, events happening this weekend and events taking place in the current week. The “Tours” page template serves as an archive for listing tours listed on the website. These link to tour detail pages where the events for that tour are listed.

Venue listing, as well as links to online ticket sales and an optional price display are available per event.

Discography Module

Woo – Discography is where the artist manages their album releases. Albums can be sorted into categories and comprise a cover image, unique catalog ID and a release date.

Each album has an audio player facility, which uses tracks that are uploaded directly when adding or editing an album. The tracks can be re-ordered and managed using native WordPress lightbox windows.

The album widget placed on the homepage, and it's controls.

If WooCommerce is installed, each album displays an option to link the album to a product. If there is a link made, an “Add to cart” button for that product will be displayed alongside the album on it’s detail screen, as well as in the Woo – Albums widget. View the shop page here.

An album page with WooCommerce enabled allowing you to sell your albums.

Woo – Discography contains two widgets: the Woo – Albums widget, to list either all albums or albums in a specific category, and the Woo – Album Player widget, to list and play tracks from a specific album using an HTML5 audio player.

Photos Module

Woo – Photos is where the artist manages their photo galleries. Galleries can be sorted into categories and comprise a cover image and photo management section.

The photo management section is a clear and easy to use box in the admin that allows for the quick uploading, management (re-ordering, etc) and inclusion of images in the gallery. This is then applied on both the gallery detail screen and the Woo – Photos widget.

Woo – Photos comprises two widgets: Woo – Photos and Woo – Galleries. Woo – Photos displays either all photos with a limit count, or X number of photos from a specific gallery. Woo – Galleries displays a list of the photo galleries available, either in a specific category or across all categories.

Videos Module

Woo – Videos is where the artist manages their embedded videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Videos can be sorted into categories and comprise an optional posterframe and an embed code field.

Woo – Videos consists of a single Woo – Embed widget which, similarly to our standard widget, displays videos from a specific video category or all videos, allowing for the quick switching between videos.

Band Module

Woo – Band Members is where the artist manages their band member profiles. This section consists of a “mugshot” image and a “role” field, for the band member’s role in the band (eg: guitarist).

Woo – Band Members also consists of a single “Band Members” page template, which lists the band members in the order they are set to display in. This can be re-arranged via the “order” field when adding/editing a band member.

Their band biography is added via the content area. View the biography page here.

Homepage slider

As has become a favourite within our themes, Unsigned includes Woo – Slides. This module displays a large background image on the homepage, as well as a slider content area above the content on the homepage. When navigating through the slider, the background image fades to the appropriate image.

These images are added using the slider image field.

Soundcloud integration

Woo – SoundCloud is a bridge between Unsigned and SoundCloud. When a username is specified, the system connects to SoundCloud and retrieves the user’s tracks and playlists.

These two content types are outputted via a Woo – SoundCloud – Playlist widget for specific playlists and a Woo – SoundCloud Tracks widget to display individual players for specific tracks.

This data is cached for a month to avoid speed issues and high load. It is possible to force-refresh this data via a “Refresh SoundCloud Data” button, made available under the “SoundCloud” tab in “Theme Options”.

Changing to a light style is as simple as flicking a switch. As is changing the logo. Transforming the look.

Adding a different background image, and using some different homepage widgets further demonstrates the theme's flexibility. All done in 5 minutes...

Spend another 5 minutes with the theme and can you imagine the possibilities? You have to view the theme listing for more information on all the functionality packed into this theme. Trust us!

Let us know what you think! Any feedback is welcome in the comments below.

P.S. Thanks to Captain Stu for letting us feature them and their awesome music in our demo.

WordPress theme development has, over the years, become a much more involved industry than it was during years past. Themes have gotten more intelligent, more feature rich and, to sum up, far more robust in their offering. It is not uncommon today for a theme to, for example, include an advanced theme options screen for tailoring a theme without code, or a selection of custom-developed widgets to showcase content is a specific manner or of a specific type.

As with scaling in any context, expanding one’s offering is vital to maintaining the status quo and “keeping up” with industry competitors. At WooThemes, this expansion is generally handled within the WooFramework (the engine that powers all of our 120+ themes) by creating and adding features such as a shortcode generator (along with a wide collection of popular shortcodes), a collection of popular social widgets, SEO settings via WooSEO and a system to create custom sidebars via the Sidebar Manager. This expansion is also, at times, handled using our popular “Theme Options” screen, where settings specific to your WooTheme of choice are controlled.

As one can imagine, adding theme option after theme option could easily get out of hand, creating a long list of settings you’d need to run through to customise your theme. This brings us to the question we posed during a development discussion at WooHQ last year- “are theme options always the answer?”.

The approach

This question has caused us to take a slightly different approach to our theme options and how we approach them. Rather than going through and adding options as we see fit, we’ve taken a stance on adding options as sparingly as possible. This allows us to analyze the theme in full and decide which settings require specific theme options and which settings are, for want of a better word, redundant. Certain settings may not apply in all contexts or to all users of the theme, while others (such as, for example, the ability to activate or deactivate a specific section of the theme’s functionality) is something that applies in all cases.

Along with this approach, we’ve taken a slightly different angle in terms of how the functionality itself is developed. By creating small components and bundling related functionality into either a single file (for small components) or a class (and object) for larger components, we are able to focus on each component individually, ensuring that the specific component in question is approached from the most accurate context.

A practical example

Lets take our Wikeasi theme as a practical example of how we’ve applied these principles.

The Wikeasi default homepage layout

Wikeasi is a WordPress theme based around the creation of a wiki system, built on WordPress. Wiki’s themselves tend to lean towards specific functions such as a table of contents, revision management and display and being able to create bibliography or source references. Wikeasi handles all three of these functions, as well as many more.

In our approach to Wikeasi, we left the theme options to the very end, right after all the functionality was developed, tested and firmly in place. With revision or reference management, for example, it’s quite easy to get carried away and add theme options for every possibility. Is this the answer to an attractive and ultimately, more usable, product? We don’t believe so, no. Fewer theme options allowed us to focus in and ask, “what would I, as a user of this theme, want to change and setup?”. The majority of theme options in Wikeasi (organised into component-specific sections) allow for the activation/deactivation of the specific component and possibly a short notice explaining a feature of that specific component. This means it’s possible to get in and out of the theme options screen quickly, having easily setup and customised your theme without being overwhelmed with theme options.

Enabling The Table of Contents

Other functionalities, such as the customisation of a component’s output, for example, are handled using carefully placed WordPress filters. Using filters, it’s possible to customise the theme to your needs with a short snippet of code, rather than a complex theme option that, perhaps, 8 out of 10 users won’t benefit from.

Has this approach worked?

Yes, it has.

This approach can also be seen within WooCommerce and other popular WordPress plugins. For example, why create a whole interface to add tabs to the “Product Details” box in the WooCommerce admin, when a simple WordPress action hook will produce the same result with a leaner code base?

How do we know this? The numbers speak for themselves.

Wikeasi is, according to PressTrends, powering some 528 websites currently. The number of support queries Wikeasi has received in our forums is roughly 11% of that. We can, therefore, ascertain that this approach works. Scale back on unnecessary theme options in favour of a code-based solution.

Lets not forget the fact that Wikeasi is a feature-rich theme.

Hold on, are we losing functionality?

Quite the contrary. This approach affords greater functionality and flexibility, without the limitation of a theme option. For example, what if we wanted to turn the filter bar in Wikeasi off on a specific section where it was displayed previously (for example, on search results)? With the theme options approach, this would need to be a selection of theme options to enable/disable the filter bar in various cases… this is boxing you in as the user. By changing our approach ever so slightly, we’ve just opened up a whole spectrum of new possibilities.

The “golden age” of theme options is over

To sum up, our approach to theme development is evolving and changing as the industry develops. Minimising theme options used in themes, coupled with careful consideration of a component’s application in the theme and a selective placement of WordPress filters, allows for a richer theme setup experience for our users while still adding a level of flexibility that is possible to hone in on, should you wish to do so.

WordPress itself is about making publishing easy for the end user. Why not echo that ideal within your theme or plugin? Make the initial setup process easy. If the user wishes to delve deeper, add the functionality to allow them to do so.

“Just add a theme option” is a phrase that is steadily becoming somewhat of a “curse word” at WooHQ. Why stick to using theme options when we could do so much more by slightly changing our approach to the code itself?

WordPress actions and filters have been a long-running standard within WordPress itself. Why not hone in on that and take full advantage of the functionality possibilities it offers?

Keep an eye out for this one, folks. The days of “just add a theme option” are slowly moving behind the WordPress community.

Simplify. Work out the kinks. Re-focus.

That’s our plan for 2012, discussed in meticulous detail over the past couple weeks during Magnus’s visit to Cape Town. Exactly what that entails remains top secret for now. What we hope will increase happiness levels amongst our users is our quest to make our support structures more efficient. Working out the kinks.

With 123 themes and 123 theme docs, and other support resources including a knowledgebase, FAQs, a support forum, tutorials and a video library catering for over 130,000 users it’s very much a daunting work in progress that we are tackling one resource at a time. Below details some of the work going on behind the scenes recently.

Talking 2012 strategy with our latest board member - Adii Junior.

Email

Mid last year we implemented Assistly, a customer service system, to manage our pre-sales and administration email. Previously, we simply used Google Mail and thanks to IMAP between myself, Adii and Ryan we managed to keep the mailbox under control and synchronised. We still use Google Apps to deliver our mail, but thanks to Assistly we now have a sexy, fast interface to use, we can assign mail easier, track response times and draw all sorts of interesting reports on customer interactions, resolve email threads, as well as manage our social media channels, like Twitter, without worrying about numerous staff members replying to the same tweets. There are a wealth of other facilities we are yet to tap into, but hope to explore soon.

Capacity wise we now have Ryan in the United States, Sven in China, and Adii overseeing the inbox here in South Africa – covering all time zones helping us deal with the 150+ emails we receive and keep our response times impressively fast, averaging under 3 hours.

Reports gathered thanks to Assistly.

Support Forums

With the launch of our own custom membership system late last year we re-developed our forums. In the short term that meant lots of small bugs and hassles as we took the database structure of bbPress, stripped the unnecessary code and built on top of it. In the longer term it is now meaning we have far more flexibility in terms of how our forum threads are presented, managed, answered and assigned.

The team can now assign topics

Previously we used Lighthouse to track bugs/feature requests and assign to our developers/designers, but that meant logging into another system and no direct automated correlation between a user reported issue and it’s fix. We now have the assignment of threads and conversion into bug reports automated within our forums.

We also have various admin views for quick access to support threads that need attention, and a ninja leaderboard to help encourage the team when they aren’t performing as well as the rest of the team know they are capable of, so we  can pat team members on the back and reward them when they are doing well, and keep track of their targets they have to meet each month.

Useful forum tools and stats available for the team.

We’ve also implemented strict controls on who can post on a user’s thread – only the support ninjas and the user who started the topic. This may seem impractical to some, reporting the same query again, but it helps us keep track of what is resolved, with only the original poster able to open the thread again. Having a closed forum also avoid answers that might be wrong or off topic from other members, which in return ensures that we can deliver proper support from our WooNinjas.

Only topic author can reply to a topic.

A user also needs to wait for a support ninja to reply before they can comment on a thread again. They can of course edit their post, but by limiting further replies allows the support queue to stay in order. Our ninjas try to reply to the oldest posts first and as soon as a follow up post is added to the mix it goes to the back of the queue again = unhappy customer.

After posting, members are asked to wait to avoid bumping threads.

These revisions may sound rather minor, but they’ve had significant results on support levels. We are still struggling with overwhelming numbers of support queries at the moment, but have hired a new support ninja we hope to introduce soon, as well as headhunting a more senior support manager which we have no doubt will help increase capacity and customer happiness levels even further.

Videos

Some of the WP101 titles available to all our users in the support section of the site.

Video tutorials are an important part of our support resources, a more visual learning experience. We’ve recently updated our video library with our good friend Shawn Hesketh’s latest WordPress101 series that can be used by our users to train their clients, or even themselves. The WordPress101 series is geared for WordPress 3.3 so is up-to-date and hugely helpful in getting to know the WordPress system.

And there you have it, a small glimpse into the recent behind the scenes happenings at WooHQ in trying to ensure happy customers, and the often hard graft that entails.