Eventually WordPress will be running with this idea on their own, but until then, I thought some of you might want something like this…

A few months ago I started hating the color scheme of the WordPress backend. I know this is a completely subjective opinion, but since I work in the WordPress dashboard on a daily basis, I couldn’t help but think that it would be so much easier on the eyes if the main content window were the only part that was white. I just felt the sidebar and main window were too similar.

With that in mind, I just decided to take a few hours and created this new plugin to redesign the dashboard. I didn’t want to go overboard as that would cause some problems with all of the plugins that make use of the dashboard. However, I think I did just enough to give it a fresh appeal.

First, I update the color scheme of the sidebar. Nothing fancy, just a darker color with lighter text.

Next, I got rid of all the application icons. I did this because most of the third party ones are HiDPI ready anyway. I used an icon font instead and hand-selected each icon from Fontello so that I didn’t include a bunch of icons that we didn’t need.

I picked a generic icon to represent all third party plugins, but also started the process of targeting some of these plugins and giving them their own font. To date, I have icons for eCommerce systems like WP eCommerce, WooCommerce and JigoShop as well as other widely used plugins like JetPack, BuddyPress, BBPress and even Gravity Forms.

Finally, I gave the toolbar at the top a new look when you’re in the admin side. I did this because my original intent was to provide a way to give WordPress a more custom look so that each of my clients would see something unique on their site. If anyone else doing freelance work would like to use it and modify it for their own use, that’s great

So there you have it…if you have any questions, please let me know. This is my first free plugin I’ve released so I hope that some of you find it useful! Download it here.

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In addition, we are in the process of redoing all of our video tutorials to help serve your support needs better. Here’s to a lot more help from us in the future!

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2013.03.18 - version 1.5.7
 *Fixed gridview titles so they don't overlap
 *Single product pages now back to the way they are in the demo with product on left and thumbnails below
 *Fixed cart-widget remove button
 *Fixed comment template bug
 *Fixed comments for products
 *Fixed errors in carousel

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In addition, we’ve performed some much need maintenance…

• moved all scripts to the footer for better performance
• rewrote the add to cart feature
• replaced the thickbox with fancybox like in our other themes
• upgraded the jQuery version
• moved additional product images to below the product description
• added in automatic updates!
• fixed a ton of bugs

We may make additional adjustments over the next week, but thanks to the automatic updates feature, you won’t have to worry about those anymore! We wanted to get it into your hands ASAP as we know a ton of you have waited patiently. We hope you enjoy this version even more. Existing customers can download the new version immediately from their members homepage.

For everyone else, this is a sign of things to come…Elegance is our flagship theme and we needed to get it right so we could make the same updates to the rest of our themes which also were affected by the 3.8.9 updates to WP eCommerce. We’re working as hard as we can on it.

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Effective immediately we are running a huge sale that will benefit new customers and current members alike. If you’ve never bought a Storefront Theme before, NEW CUSTOMERS CAN GET ALL 10 OF OUR THEMES FOR ONLY $99! This includes every theme available on our themes page…we’re even including Storefront Echo (which is currently only available on ThemeForest) as a special bonus!

Also, we really didn’t want to leave our existing customers out on this one…most of the time these sales only benefit new customers. Well not this time! Here’s the deal…if you already have a storefront themes account with at least one purchase, you AS A MEMBER YOU CAN GET THE REST OF OUR THEMES FOR ONLY $40! That’s a huge deal no matter how many themes you already own.

Rest assured all of our themes are top quality (see them all here)…in fact, the big reason we’ve been silent over the last few months is that we have been going through all of our themes and making them more secure and stable than ever before. Plus, our support is top-notch so you can buy with confidence!

We’ll give you a whole week to take advantage of this awesome offer! The sale will end at 11:59pm MST on July 7th. Thanks for being the best customers in the world!

Matt Jones
CEO, Storefront Themes

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I’m pleased to announce that Storefront Echo has just been reduced to $40 on ThemeForest to make it more competitive with the other ecommerce themes there. So let’s see…by my count, you can now get Storefront Echo, another theme of your choice and the Storefront Insights plugin all for only $40! If you haven’t yet, head over to ThemeForest to pick it up today!

Also, we put out an update to the theme just yesterday. It is available for Echo customers from your Members’ Homepage on Storefront Themes. Changelog looks like this…

=1.4.0 = 3.01.12
*Fixed duplicate mobile search bars bug
*Fixed Add to Cart problem in WPEC for both variations and IE
*Removed duplicate call to fancy box script
*Removed duplicate BuddyNav js from fancycart
*Fixed missing price in woocommerce and jigoshop product pages
*Fixed margin error for images with IE8
*Fixed woocommerce filter by price widget

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Now, let me get some sleep and I’ll get the videos up in the next couple of days!

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The delay is basically because we couldn’t get a major piece of the music functionality to work as well as we wanted, but we’ve got it now and are finally on the home stretch. Hang in there because they’re coming!

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Having said that, we just couldn’t in good conscience promote this deal for a long time because we felt it was rewarding newer customers more than anyone…don’t get me wrong, we’re a business and need new customers to survive, but we are so appreciative of our existing members that we wanted to make sure that we looked after them as well. To that end, we have come up with an idea…if you’re already a Storefront Themes customer, you will automatically receive 15% off of our regular theme packages! All you need to do is login with your exisiting account info and then head to the purchase page…once you select your items, you will see a special member’s only price applied when you checkout on the next screen. It’s our way of saying thank you for supporting us. This is not a limited time offer! This price will be in place indefinitely.

Hope you all enjoy the new pricing! There’s a couple of great new themes that you can get while taking advantage of this offer!

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So…let’s go over these 3 additions in better detail…

Storefront Echo

We first teased Storefront Echo at WordCamp SLC by giving out free beta copies to everyone at our talk and after a couple of months of development, we finally released it last week. This has been my favorite theme to work on so far because of the unique functionality we put into it…It’s completely responsive! No matter what screen you’re using, (desktop, laptop, ipad, mobile phone, etc) this theme adapts and looks fantastic! I’m particularly thrilled with how the theme operates on an iphone. Even the homepage slider and carousel are responsive and the carousel is even touch-enabled so you can swipe through the products using your finger!

Storefront Gridport

Gridport is another gorgeous design by George Ortiz (Designer, Instant, Edge) and once again, the visual aesthetics are very evident in his work. The homepage and products page grids are very minimal and show the product title and price when hovered over. Also, the grid has a nice animation when changing your browser width to snap each item into place. The blog has a unique way of laying out posts and a subtle little shopping cart icon triggers the cart to pop out onto the screen whenever it is clicked or when a product is added to the cart.

Mark Gason

Mark is a professional web designer, web developer, animator and print designer. He has a wealth of experience in flash and other things, but we caught him on our forums over the summer, answering in great detail nearly everyone’s questions there. We started talking with him and realized that we just had to have him with us so we hired him in October. Mark will be available on the forums for a few hours each day from Monday to Friday and will cover the bulk of all support requests.

So that’s it in a nutshell…er..a blog post. What’s next? Expect another blog post this week, but it will focus on some things behind the scenes. Till then, keep making some great shops!

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Because that’s where the value is, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working on Boutique the last couple of weeks and today, Boutique is now compatible with the latest version of BuddyPress, otherwise known as BuddyPress 1.5 (otherwise known as “Lombardi”)!

We’ve rewritten a lot of the template files so not only can you now take advantage of the new BuddyPress platform, but we’ve integrated all that fancy ajax goodness that you normally only get in a buddypress default child theme…only this is not child theme! It runs completely on its own as a standalone theme, bridging the gap between 2 of the most powerful WordPress plugins: BuddyPress and WP e-Commerce.

In addition to these changes, we’ve also increased the performance and compatability by making sure all our jquery and ajax files are being properly enqueued in our functions file in no-conflict mode.

So there you have it…Storefront Boutique may just be our most stable theme in spite of the plethora of technologies that it runs. You can check out the demo now, which is actually running 3 plugins…BuddyPress, WP e-Commerce and BuddyPress for WP e-Commerce-3.8 which allows you to display specific products in a BuddyPress group as a “Group Store”. See it here!

So that’s it! Existing customers can download the new update (version 1.2) from your members’ homepage. Now back to my cave where we’re coming up with some great new stuff!

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Last week, immediately after raising your affiliate commission to 35%, we launched a new promotion with the best deal we’ve ever offered. However, over the weekend, it came to our attention that there may have been a problem with how we created the promotion that negatively affected affiliate sales…we finally confirmed this, found the problem and fixed it on Monday morning. The bad news is, that any sales of the promotion made during the week before that would not have received any affiliate commission.

We discovered a second error on Tuesday…some of our older affiliates were unaffected by the recent commission level increase and therefore were still at a 20% commission level. We have since raised everyone to the standard 35% level.

I am terribly sorry about all of this…the last people I’d want to hurt are the people helping to spread the word about us. Here’s what we’re going to do to fix it…effective immediately and for the next 30 days, we have raised your affiliate commission to 50%. We have also left the promotion up and will keep it up until next week. We also have a new theme that will launch VERY soon and it is our best ever. It is our hope that these promotions and the increase in your affiliate commission for the next 30 days will more than make up for any sales that you may have lost in the last week. Hopefully, we’ll all come out on top when all is said and done.

Thank you for being the very best community in the WordPress kingdom. We promise to do better for you.

Sincerely,

Matt Jones
Storefront Themes

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Don’t fear however, as even if you aren’t one of the lucky ones to nab a tshirt, we have a special surprise for everyone attending our talk late in the day…stay tuned!

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The title basically says it all! We spent August rewarding our current members with a special deal and now we’re launching a new promotion this month that just so happens to be our best deal ever! You can all 6 of our themes as well as our Insights plugin for only $75! This is obviously a great deal if you’re a new customer, but existing customers can benefit as well – If you already have a single, double, triple or even quad pack of our themes, you can complete your collection and still save as the $75 price tag is cheaper than the price of our Double Theme pack! Use the button below to access the promotion…

See Promotion Now »

We also just announced an increase in our affiliate commission, and we hope that they can take advantage of this sale as well! Enjoy!

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