Building WordPress Themes You Can Sell [via SmashingMag]

LandonWilson said
How many sales does this guy have on TF? None? Oh. Hm. There are plugins for literally everything, if a user has to have 1000 plugins to have your theme working as they want, they’re not going to choose you. It’s simple, have a nice set of options, but not too many.

Man you beat yourself with arguments…he don’t have sales..do you have?

ewizz said

LandonWilson said
How many sales does this guy have on TF? None? Oh. Hm. There are plugins for literally everything, if a user has to have 1000 plugins to have your theme working as they want, they’re not going to choose you. It’s simple, have a nice set of options, but not too many.

Man you beat yourself with arguments…he don’t have sales..do you have?

Not what I was saying. Parallelus themes have all the power you need, but the simplicity to where you don’t need to add 1000 plugins or have 1000 options. Parallelus has more sales than I can shake a stick at. This guy doesn’t.

And duotive – I’ll send you an email in like a week explaining how my theme works so you’ll understand what I mean. ;D

LandonWilson said
And duotive – I’ll send you an email in like a week explaining how my theme works so you’ll understand what I mean. ;D

contempoinc said
Although I haven’t included plugins into my themes, for those that do they should be using an activation class like the below — allowing the theme on activation to download the necessary plugins either from the theme folder or WordPress repository and notify the user to activate each: http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/intro-to-tgm-plugin-activation-class-for-wordpress/

I’m using this with both SuperSkeleton and Reaction already… highly recommend it, although it’ll get better with time.

B

The only time a plugin should be included in a theme is when it needs special customization to blend in nicely with the way the theme works and/or looks, keep in mind to always ask the plugin author permission on, if you may or may not make the necessary adjustments the their plugin .

You can always build a custom plugin (with all the bells and whistles) and sell it on CC. Making it integrate really well with your theme(s).

Another thing to point out is the amount of jQuery Plugins being used on themes… Most themes tend to abuse jQuery plugins to much! If you can code using jQuery try to drop the plugins, and you’ll start seeing the benefits of doing this, e.g more unique FX on your template(s).

Theme options: People think options sell (perhaps they do, in some cases), but is the amount of headaches that come with all those options really worth the effort? I believe that a unique design sells more then a bazillion options do… Adding to many options puts your design in a box and makes for a VERY limiting creative design.