There are benefits to checking out as much of the competition as possible (where/when affordable) for a legitimate period of time. Cart66 was that for me as I began eCommerce. WooCommerce is that for me now.
I like what I am experiencing. Read more
It’s easy to see these guys have been hard at work.
The All-in-One Event Calendar is a
…user-friendly, flexible, and feature-rich plugin for publishing and promoting events on your WordPress website.
Learn how they sync Facebook Events, theme the calendar, import .ics feeds, and display the Posterboard format. We’ve been enjoying it.
Though not a “marketplace”, such as ThemeForest, with multiple theme authors, Elegant Themes is well established and worth checking out.
With access to over 75 themes for $39/yr, a growing feature list and eye for design, they are worth checking out.
For the all-inclusive price of $39, you are only paying $.50 per theme!
You are also free to use their themes to build websites for your clients.
Lots to learn as you get started – $39 is hard to beat. Check out their Gallery and see if anything strikes your fancy.
It’s hard to limit what can be said about Orman Clark and the team behind Themezilla. Why? Because he is also the guy behind PremiumPixels.com (free stuff for aspiring designers) and overall good design.
I’ve personally used or worked with a number of Orman’s themes (now “Themezilla’s Themes”) and can vouch for their ease of use and customer support.
It’s a good place to start if you want to start somewhere other than ThemeForest.
They also have some plugins worth checking out.
ThemeForest, and the entire Envato Marketplace family, has changed the way many build, access, and approach web construction, design, and extension. It’s a win-win, for users and designers, developers and owners.
In their words, you can begin your search for:
Site templates and themes to skin popular CMS products like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, starting at $5.
It’s a great place to start for WordPress Themes, and I recommend it.
Web-based Forms can be semi-cumbersome, if not daunting and detailed to make, especially for a new designer.
The WordPress community, of which I am most familiar with – as opposed to Drupal or Joomla – is active with making things like building forms easier.
Contact Form 7 was the first contact form plugin/builder I was introduced to for WordPress. It had a great following and wide use. Previously I had used (and loved) JotForm, the “first web based WYSIWYG form builder” which, like WuFoo, lets developers visually build forms while storing the collected information in the user’s account (don’t forget Google Forms). This “offsite” setup and collection was (and for many still is) great. It was easy to build and embed, but I wanted to store collected responses in our own site’s database visible in the WordPress backend.
Well, as is often the case with me, options sparked my exploration. I eventually settled on/with Gravity Forms and have been happy ever since.
For those working with and/or supporting multiple WordPress sites, I have found ManageWP to be a helpful service.
From their site:
All your sites under one dashboard! ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one dashboard, keeping them updated and secure.
I don’t get anything for telling you about them, I just like them and appreciate what they’ve permitted me to do and accomplish a little more easily as I support and manage multiple WordPress websites.
DISQUS Comment System
It’s not that the WordPress comment system has anything entirely lacking for a basic site, but that the DISQUS comment system adds much more.
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