“The Man” – Jeffrey Way

First let me clarify what I mean by “The Man” in reference to Jeffrey. For those of you who may not know, Jeffrey is the editor of Nettuts+, as well as the site manager for both ThemeForest and CodeCanyon. So he’s the boss but he’s also particularly good at what he does. For this reason, I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask Jeffrey a few questions.

Q #1: You manage two successful blogs and two marketplaces (among personal projects). You’re obviously a very busy guy. How do you find time for it all?

Jeffrey: I get this one a lot. Truthfully, it just doesn’t seem that bad to me. Keep in mind that you’re being a bit generous with the word “successful,” in reference to my personal blog. That site is rarely updated, and I’m sure the content bores the readers to pieces! Postings on that site generally occur late at night, when I can’t fall asleep – so I can’t vouch for the quality level!

Now Nettuts+ and the other two marketplaces, ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, are my digital babies. The problem with developing such an attachment to a WordPress installation – in Nettuts+’ case – is that, even when I go on vacation, I don’t feel comfortable asking somebody else to manage the site for a couple weeks. As a result, I typically just continue to manage the site on the go; though sometimes, that can be difficult. I’m looking at you iPhone WordPress App!

I suppose it doesn’t feel like work…because I’d be hanging out on the forums even if I wasn’t a site manager. The key is to be in love with your job – and I certainly am.

Q #2: Everything you manage seems to become quite successful. Do you have any tips or advice you can share that you believe has contributed to your success?

Jeffrey: Though I’d love to take credit for the popularity of these sites, I unfortunately cannot. At most, I might steal credit for an assist!

Ever notice how Nettuts+ has a sister-marketplace in ThemeForest. What about Activetuts+ and ActiveDen? These things aren’t coincidences!

For example, when we launched CodeCanyon a couple weeks ago, a promotional blog post went up across every Envato site – that’s a huge number! Or, if you’ve read the last handful of Nettuts+ tutorials, you might have noticed that we’ve concluded every article with a quickie CodeCanyon promo. This is free promotion, and is vital to our success! That’s the wonderful thing about Envato; we’re our own advertising network!

Now to speak more generally about building a successful website, I believe our CEO, Collis Ta’eed said it best: “It’s all about good content.” While on Nettuts+, for example, we could offer our authors less compensation, and post a quick tip every day, we instead focus on high quality articles, and exclusive screencasts which cover the wide spectrum of web development.

So, if I was asked to offer advice to an up and coming blogger, I’d ask them to chart out exactly where they want to be in a year. If you want 10,000 subscribers, that’s perfectly doable, but you must put in the work, and create the content to warrant such a figure! Simple five paragraph quick tips won’t do, I’m sorry to say!

Next, find your niche. If there are hundreds of quick tip tutorial sites around the web, what makes yours stand out? Who knows; maybe you focus exclusively on a rarely covered framework, like Kohana. Or maybe you utilize screencasts to separate your content, as in my case. It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as you find a niche, and embrace it!

Q #3: At the ripe old age of 24, you have quite a bit of wisdom that you continually share. I assume much of this comes from experience, but do you have anyone you look to yourself for words of wisdom? Or are you just an uber genius?

Jeffrey: Ever notice how the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know? I’m the perfect example of this. I do have a fairly solid understanding of my field, but I’m continuously floored by the talent of our community – to the point of depression, sometimes!:)

Now who do I look to for advice (excluding the generic family reference, of course)? Take a look at who I follow on Twitter to find out! On a business level, Collis and Cyan (Envato founders) inspire me to an enormous degree. To review what they’ve been able to achieve in a few short years is astounding…really astounding! I’m honored that I’m able to learn from such brilliant minds.

On a more general note, I’m far more up to date on our community than many might think. I have an enormous blogroll that I keep track of every morning to stay current on the latest news/releases/tutorials in the industry. Most recently, I’ve found myself visiting Ben Nadel, and James Padolsey’s blogs; those guys are insanely intelligent – the latter being our PHP and JavaScript reviewer on CodeCanyon!

I’ve also been enjoying the recently launched jQuery podcasts every week, hosted by Elijah and Ralph. I highly recommend them, if you’re interested in the library.

Q #4: As you’ve seen ThemeForest grow, you’ve also watched authors from many skill levels become incredibly successful on ThemeForest. What would you say are some of the primary qualities responsible for their success?

Jeffrey: That’s an easy one: perseverance. Jarel, you’re quite familiar with the authors who upload a subpar item, are rejected, and immediately assume that we don’t know what we’re talking about. I suppose such a reaction is understandable. This is how we keep ourselves “safe.”

Now on the other side of the spectrum, we have authors who refine their items, and continue to resubmit. Often times, they’re rejected even again! But ultimately, when the item is finally accepted, the author has only himself to thank, and pockets to fill! The old saying that the best advice always hurts your feelings is beyond true.

Hugely successful authors like Epicera and iPad, too, were rejected at certain points! But they stuck with it, and have the sales to prove that their efforts paid off.

Q #5: As the ThemeForest site manager, you have a more detailed view of the “hot” areas (categories, item features, etc). What categories or what features would you recommend authors work into their next items?

Jeffrey: I won’t recommend any specific category, however, the most popular items are always the ones which offer the most options. Why submit a one page static template, when you could put in the extra effort to submit something really special? Why stop with just one color theme? Why not add multiple column structures. Yes – it requires more effort, but it invariably pays off!

Q #6: You’re a frequent writer and web developer. How do you overcome creative blocks and/or where do you find inspiration?

Jeffrey: Creativity blocks? That’s easy; I can show you a hundred tutorial sites that will provide an instant remedy. If you’re referring to how I come up with tutorial ideas, that all comes down to picking up a new book. I have an insatiable appetite for web development books, and have a large stack on my bookshelf. The biggest sin we can do is to allow our minds to become stale – if that makes any sense. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, stop learning.

Q #7: Can you give us any sneak peek information on any upcoming features for ThemeForest (or CodeCanyon)?

Jeffrey: Hmmm… Sure!

ThemeForest

We’re rapidly moving towards offering a system whereby two authors can collaborate on an item, and then have the profits automatically split between their two respective accounts. This has been a hugely requested feature, and one that I’m very excited about. But don’t tell anyone yet!

CodeCanyon

As we’ve only just launched a few weeks ago, we’re still in the “see how it goes” stage! So far, I’ve been super happy with the progress we’ve made; though, I’m upset to see that the Java category hasn’t been contributed to yet. With that said, the marketplace is very young, and we’ll be growing in leaps and bounds over 2010.

Other than that – notice how CodeCanyon doesn’t have its own blog, like the other marketplaces? There is a reason for this. We’re currently in the process of migrating all of the blogs over to a more efficient, Twitter-like blogging system. More details to come early next year!

Thanks for the interview, Jarel!

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Jeffrey!

But where’s this week’s interview?

Our rockstar sitemanager, Jeffrey Way, has graciously agreed to answer this week’s questions. You can read that in the post “Interview With ‘The Man’, AKA Jeffrey Way“.

Great Additions to the Forest and the Nearby Canyon

This week I’ve included a few great items from over yonder in CodeCanyon to make an already great list, even better. We have a total of twelve amazing new items for you to look at and keep in mind, there are a lot more where these came from so be sure to do some more browsing.

[Email Templates] Seasons Greetings – Email postcard – NewsLetter

“The site template suits for any email marketing, designer, photographer, ecommerce, clean, seasonal, christmas, new year, santa clause, holiday, white, red, product email, sharp, modern, sleek.”

[Email Templates] Xmas email Template

“Xmas email Template is a professional custom Christmas HTML email template designed to send the best greetings and a periodic newsletter to your readers.”

[PSD] Business Template #08

“This is another layered .PSD template with Web 2.0 look & feel for Business Companies around a modern, sleek, gray+any color design. The file are good organized in folders with shape layers for easy to change color palettes or content.”

[PSD] White Metallic

“This is a mini site in a white metallic look – perfect for a sleek bio or event page or whatever you like.”

[HTML] Intense Business & Portfolio Template – 4 in 1

“This html is a valid XHTML 1.0 transitional is best suitable for a business, company, Blog, portfolio, or freelancer portfolio website as well as predefined classes used for the common websites. For the most part you can just follow the HTML with commented codes.”

[HTML] Spotlight Portfolio Template – HTML Edition

“Spotlight PSD template is clean, elegant and professional solution for personal portfolio and/or small business website. It comes in three different color schemes, so I’m sure everyone will find something interesting in this template. ”

[WordPress] Mardi – Business & Portfolio theme

“Mardi is a very easy to customize theme which best suits business or portfolio sites. This theme has a feature loaded theme options page with over 50 options you can play with, you can view the live demo using username “test” and password “test”. Mardi has a jquery featured slider where you can showcase posts in a specific category, you can use the flip or slide animation.”

[WordPress] INTERFACES – A Super Premium Theme

“Dellustrations is back with force. We have restructured our themes, bringing you support, and custom touch to every theme. All old themes will be updated accordingly. We are now supporting the themes, and we have managed to create a custom admin panel to our work with every one of them.”

[PHP] GLS – Webdesign Manager

“With our creative system you can start a new web project such as building a css template. Along the way you will want to discuss options with your client then just add them on to the project! This means both you and your client are can effectively collaborate together.”

[PHP] Contact Form Generator

“Contact Form Generator is a easy way to make your own custom form! You can control the validation rules, input types, icones and errors messages of a easy way. This script allows you to perform SMTP authentications, so do not need a personal SMTP server, you can, for example, use Live or Google (Gmail). This way you can send mail locally too, this and much more without touch in a line of code!”

[JavaScript] Sticky Nav Menu

“If you’ve ever seen those neat little bars that stick to the bottom of a website – like the one at Envato.com – this mimics that functionality. – View the Demo”

[JavaScript] Smart Menu

“Smart Menu is simple JavaScript driven menu, which is written on top of jQuery framework.”

View More Great ThemeForest Items (All Categories)

View More Great CodeCanyon Items (All Categories)

Chatter In The Forest

Here’s some notable forum threads you might’ve missed.

• The big ’show where you work’ topic!
• The Longest Sentence in the Woods!
• Show us your Christmas Spirit Profile!
• Microsoft Announces CSS3 for IE9
• Minimalist Envato Marketplaces HD Wallpaper
• TED – Ideas worth spreading
• Free font list

Web Roundup

Tools of the Trade: Web Development Frameworks that the Pros Use

New web development frameworks, promising rapid development and easy deployment, are sprouting out at a more rapid pace than you can keep up. In the last article, we looked at the various factors you’d have to consider when deciding on a framework. Today, we are going to look at the various frameworks available for each facet of web development.

35 CSS-based Layouts that Look Awesome

Creattica continues to be a great source of inspiration. Whether you’re there to spark the creative fuse or just browse through some amazing work, it’s well worth checking out what’s new over at Creattica. Recently, they’ve added a whole bunch of new categories – including one for top-notch CSS work. Here’s a rundown of some of the best work submitted so far.

Stronger, Better, Faster Design with CSS3

In our last article about CSS3, “Pushing Your Buttons With Practical CSS3, we talked about using new CSS3 techniques like gradients, border-radius and drop-shadows to create compelling, flexible and (in some cases) hilarious buttons.

In this second article we’re going to focus on using those CSS techniques (and a little JavaScript) to create some practical elements and layouts. As before, caveat coder — a lot of the CSS properties we’re going to use have limi…

Continue Reading

WordPress Themes with Unusual Uses

As any experienced blogger will most likely know, WordPress is a killer blogging platform. What many people aren’t aware of, except those more familiar with WordPress, is that the platform is capable of so much more than just blogging. In fact, most people refer to it as more of a content management system (CMS) than just something built solely for blogging.

There are some amazing WordPress themes available at places like ThemeForest and around the web, but most are blog-centric. WordPress is capable of so much more. Like what you ask?

Check out these 15 Awesome WordPress themes with unusual uses to find out.

20+ Tools for Quick and Clean Code Development

Developing websites is much more than just a pretty face, and depending on what typed of features you’d like to implement on the site, there’s a lot of coding that goes into it. Many times designers turn to a WYSIWYG tool, however tools of that sort are more limited to advanced code. Being able to code a site using a variety of tools lets you simplify the coding process while you take a big bite out of saving time.

Below we’ve hand picked 20+ Tools for Quick & Clean Code Development that will help you code much faster and in an efficient manner.

Interview with Christian (Kriesi)

Christian is one of ThemeForest’s most prolific authors with nearly 7,000 sales and a growing portfolio of nearly 20 items. This week I’ve asked Christian to answer a few questions and here’s what the 27 year old rockstar author had to say.

Q #1: When creating a new template for Theme Forest, what aspects are top priority and why?

A: “My 3 Main concerns are”

• Design – of course this is one of the main reasons why customers purchase a template.
• Quality of code (php, as well as HTML Markup, CSS and JavaScript) – I believe once you get a customer to purchase a theme, he will only return and buy if he was able to easily adapt the theme to his needs. This means that clean coding is mandatory.
• Features – Build a good amount of features into your theme. Slideshows, Lightboxes, Additional option Pages, Multiple Skins etc.

“Most customers wont need every feature you build into a theme but you can make your files more interesting (and also increase the price) by adding some valuable features. Just be careful to not overdo it. No one needs an WordPress option page for selecting one of 8 Lightboxes and 12 different jQuery Slideshows ”

Q #2: Can you briefly walk us through your process of creating a theme or template and the time it takes from start to finish?

A: “I almost always start with designing in Photoshop. As most of my fellow designers have experienced themselves, this can last anywhere from a day for a whole template if inspiration strikes me, to 1 or 2 Weeks till I am happy with a layout. When I am done layouting the front page as well as 1 or 2 sub pages, I start coding the HTML only Version.

Depending on the Template and the JavaScript involved, the whole PSD to HTML step usually takes around 20-30 hours. Sometimes a little more since during this step I still tend to play with the design a little bit and add or remove details. Thats why my HTML version almost never looks exactly like the Photoshop File

This is one of the things I like most when working for ThemeForest projects. Without a real deadline, these Steps always last longer than with a normal client but most of the time I am way more satisfied with the outcome

Then the HTML theme hits the Marketplace and if people like it I start building the WordPress Version. Again depending on the theme I would say my average HTML to WordPress step lasts 20-40 hours.

So as you can see I am not especially fast when creating themes, that’s why there are almost never more than 1 HTML and 1 WordPress template per month, but I try to deliver my absolute best with every new release.”

Q #3: The review process can seem tricky at times. As you’ve had quite a bit of experience with it, what are some tips you would give to authors just starting out?

A: “If you are new to one of the marketplaces chances are high that your first few submissions will get rejected. Don’t take it personally, it happened to most authors here, including me. Everyone knows that it’s not particularly exciting to get a theme rejected that you have crafted with passion, but you need to take this as a chance to step up your game. Do the improvements suggested by the reviewer and also make use of the marketplace community, which is VERY helpful (more than I’ve ever seen in any other forum). If you ask, you will always find someone who helps you out with some quick tips.”

Q #4: What are your top five pet peeves in design or web development?

1. Should I even name it? IE6 of course is the unrivaled #1
2. Clients who want everything for nothing and
3. Customers who use you as their pixel pushing tool of choice
4. Unstable programs – Hi Photoshop
5. “13-year-old arguments (e.g. liquid vs. fixed width) that will never be resolved because the right answer is, it depends on the project.” (by Jeff Zeldman, so true)

Q #5: What are three of your favorite features used in websites?

1. I love the rise of unobtrusive javascript and the possibilities that came with this. The things I love the most are features that make my browsing experience faster.
   Javascript/Ajax Tabs, Image Tooltips or Lightboxed Gallerys for example.
2. Social Bookmarking/Retweeting – cant even count the interesting articles I’ve read because others discovered them for me… thanks
3. I also love CSS-only tricks. Those which when you see them for the first time are so mind boggling that you would bet any amount that there is some sort of javascript involved.

Q #6: What do you usually use purchased items for and what are a couple tips you can share, from a buyers perspective, to help authors increase sales?

A: “I buy marketplace items for 3 reasons:”

1. To save time
2. To get something which I couldn’t do on my own, which leads to #3
3. To learn

“If a customer asks me for a feature for his website I would always consider buying it for a cheap price here, but only if it is well documented and if the author offers support. There is no point in spending 20 bucks and then needing to wade through undocumented code without any guidance, maybe in a script language that I barely understand (like Actionscript for example) and wasting my time.

So saving time is in any case an absolute necessity. I often buy stuff like flash files and after effects projects, most of the time for non- commercial projects, and I buy them because they are so stunning that I would need to spend 2 years of learning to do something equally amazing

And whilst I am working with these files I improve myself and most of the time also get new insights on how others work, that’s pretty near. ”

Q #7: What are some tips or words of wisdom you would like to share with our readers?

A: “I consider myself to be to young to spread wisdom, especially because I think I had more luck than judgement when I look back at the last year

I can only repeat what I already said when talking to Jeffrey for Nettuts: Learn from your mistakes, listen to reviewers and customers and improve with every file you release and you will succeed. It happened to me, it can also happen to you ”

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Kriesi!

Notable Additions to the Forest

This week we’ve got seven great new items to check out, starting with Email Templates. Don’t forget though that there are boatloads of amazing new items each week just as worthy of your attention, so be sure to check those out as well.

[Email Templates] Versatile Email Template – 7 layouts + 5 colors

“Versatile is a professional HTML email template!”

This email template has 7 pre-built layouts, 5 color schemes, layered PNG source files and many more options and features.

[Email Templates] TechOffers – Multipurpose Minimalist Newsletter

“TechOffers email template has been specially crafted with a clean and neat newsletter template in mind.”

[PSD] #1 Business layered .PSD template // adaptable.

“This is a COMPLETE layered .PSD template with Web 2.0 look & feel for business companies.”

[HTML] Durable Business & Portfolio Html Template

“The home page includes custom 3d style slider that allows you to change the slides using different transitions which can be editable via config.xml file. Highly customized About Page, Blog Page, Portfolio Page and Services Page, you are able to edit each block as i have well commented each code.”

[HTML] Chapter 26 – Minimal HTML theme

“Chapter26 is a minimal, clean and fresh HTML /CSS theme geared towards portfolio/marketing, although the layout can be used in many different contexts. This theme is packed full of features and subtle effects that really make it fun to use as well as view.”

[WordPress] Centivio – Business Wordpress Theme – 10 Colors

“Centivio is clean web 2.0 style wordpress theme for business, company and corporate website. This theme comes with 10 color options for this theme for you can easily choose the color base on your business brand.”

[WordPress] Delicious photography

“This theme gives a nice flash-like experience while browsing the site. Theme will suits best for photographers or other artists who want to showcase their work in a very modern and unique way.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

CodeCanyon

If you’re wondering where all the JavaScript and PHP Scripts ran off to, take a peek at Envato’s new marketplace – CodeCanyon. They’ve taken the popular and rapidly growing selection of scripts and programming related items and given them their own fantastic new home. Make sure to check it out and get in on the action!

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts (and last week’s review ).

• CodeCanyon, 3DOcean and Jason – 3 New Members of the Family!
• Holiday Giveaways, Freebies and More!
• ThemeForest Week In Review

Chatter In The Forest

Here’s some notable forum threads you might’ve missed.

• Buy Now – 1 Week Later
• The big ’show where you work’ topic!
• Updates to Email Templates "Upload Instructions"
• DeviantART Envato related group
• OMG CodeCayon Is alive!!!
• Your good intentions for 2010 ?!

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

Top 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code

Code readability is a universal subject in the world of computer programming. It’s one of the first things we learn as developers. Readable and maintainable code is something to be proud of in a finished product. We can share it with others, contribute to other projects, and reuse code from applications we wrote months or even years ago.

This article will detail the fifteen most important best practices when writing readable code.

JavaScript from Null: Video Series

Thanks to the wide adoption of libraries like jQuery and Mootools, JavaScript’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last few years. However, in the process, an interesting thing occurred: many newer developers are learning these libraries without taking the time to actually learn about raw JavaScript techniques. What percentage of jQuery users don’t know how to fade out an element with only raw JS? My guess is that it’s much higher than many would think.

If you want to truly understand the library you’re working with, and improve your skill-set, it’s vital that you learn the fundamentals of raw JavaScript.

This screencast series focuses exclusively on JavaScript, and will take you from your first “Hello, World” alert up to more advanced topics.

33 Must Read CSS3 Tips, Tricks, Tutorial Sites and Articles

Since previous article about CSS text effects got really big attention I decided to research and find more interesting articles and websites just focused on CSS3, teaching you how to use it, showing pros and cons and much more. To be honest it’s hard for me to keep up with technologies myself, but we really cannot not to use those new great selectors to make our designs even more beautiful, user-friendly and lightweighted. However since HTML5 is sort of tied with CSS3, I will soon continue with HTML5 article as well, so don’t miss it and keep coming back! Enjoy!

Best of CSS Design 2009

Since 2007, every year I do a round up of best of CSS from Best Web Gallery (check out 07 and 08 collection). Well, it is the time of the year again — Best of CSS Design 2009. This year I’ve selected another 50 nicely designed web sites. Among the list, I notice a lot of them are minimalistic design with beautiful serif fonts. The grungy and sketchy styles are still strong. However, the large background is no longer as hot as in 2008, instead, texturized background is popular in 2009.

Letting Go of John Hancock

As competition strengthens, every step is vital in making or breaking a deal. Because clients expect everything to be faster, better, and simpler, web professionals must take an instant, foolproof, paperless, modern approach to how clients approve proposals and sign contracts. These documents speak volumes: After all, they are often your first chance to showcase your approach to doing business. I have a way to allow clients to submit legally binding signatures through a web page or PDF file—preserving the classic “signature” aspect while eliminating the most archaic requirements of many modern proposals and contracts. Let’s see how it works.

So let’s get started with this week’s multi-author interview.

5 Author/Buyer Interview

This week I’ve asked 5 successful ThemeForest authors with different perspectives on buying and selling to answer two questions each. Hopefully their responses can give us all some extra insight for us to reach a higher level of success.

epicera

Q #1: With nearly 5,000 sales, you clearly know how to create high selling items. What would you say is your “secret”?

A: “I’m not sure if there’s any one “secret” behind a successful portfolio. All of the standard rules of design apply to stock templates; the only real key to developing high selling templates is to always stay a step or two ahead of what’s currently the “status quo”. It might be a new plugin that makes life easier for buyers, it might be a new jQuery trick that catches attention quickly, it might be a design that appeals to a new trend within the industry.

The bar for quality, code resiliency, and documentation has already been set really high over the past few months – so seizing on the little incremental improvements that you can include in your files is what really sets one file apart from the pack. If I were to put it into a word formula, it’d be: “Research what’s currently selling + Add your own innovation/flavor = Sales!””

Q #2: Having purchased 60 items, with more likely to come, you have a great buyer’s perspective. How do you use these items and what do you look for when you’re looking for something new to buy? Can you try to give us some insight on the mind of a buyer?

A: “I once read a great quote that said, “I used to smirk at stock art… then I got a job”. I’ve been a full time freelancer with my own studio for almost 8 years now. Even with ThemeForest, I still do a ton of freelance work and it consists of as much as 70% of my total work during any month. Finding ways to cut corners in the design process often saves me valuable time and allows me to excel in the areas that I’m really strong in and to spend less time mocking up designs from scratch. Starting with stock templates can cut between 10 and 20 hours from my design process, and often streamlines the amount of time it takes to get client approval, finish a project, and move on to the next one.

What I look for in a stock template is pretty simple. First, it needs to fit the basic style/layout of my project. Second, it needs to be coded as cleanly and elegantly as possible. Third, I need to know that it’s been built in such a way as to be easy to customize. I can always spice up the design… in fact, in most cases I’m going to completely reskin the template, so design details matter less than a solid starting layout and great coding. Designs that come with a variety of skins right out of the box usually clue be into how difficult they are to reskin. A quick peek at their source code (as well as a Firebug inspection) is what clues me in to whether they are coded well enough for me to use.”

jigowatt

Q #3: As a design agency, you have a unique perspective on ThemeForest. How has ThemeForest impacted your business?

A: “ThemeForest has given us the opportunity to work with clients who need a web site but don’t have the liquidity available to commission a custom design and theme build.

In the past we would have to turn these potential clients away who would then go to their “mate-in-the-pub” or “cousins-best-friend” who studied IT and can build them a web site for $250. Of course, we all know how that one ends..!

With ThemeForest we can offer budget web site solutions which not only look fantastic but also function flawlessly as we know they have been cross-browser tested and coded semantically thanks to ThemeForest’s scrupulous template review team.”

Q #4: Your portfolio shows that along with creating great looking templates, you know how to create fantastic PHP scripts that sell really well. What are a few tips you can share with authors just starting out in this category or authors who might be interested?

A: “The most important thing seems to be to create something simple and unique.

Our strategy was to build a simple yet high quality product originally which would hopefully be sold many times for a low cost. We achieved this with our Simple Contact Form. Combined with a couple of templates it helped lift us in to the Popular Author section of the site where we remain today.

This helped us establish a strong foundation and a reputation in the community which really boosted the sales of our next set of products which again, we strove to make simple, unique and most importantly of the highest quality.”

ipad

Q #5: Along with being one of ThemeForest’s rising star authors, you’ve bought 30 items and counting. What do you use these items for and what aspects give you the urge to make the purchase?

A: “First and foremost thanks for this opportunity Jarel, I still remember my very first time in ThemeForest with the $10 per author giveaway by Collis. With this money I bought my first theme ever, it was a gorgeous PSD by Arun Kurian just to learn how to code a site from scratch and start my local business. Then I realized that the marketplace had a tremendous amount of high quality HTML templates and immediately ThemeForest became my main resource for my clients.

Later this year I learned enough to release my first file. And now I purchase HTML templates for quick clients’ sites or WordPress Themes to learn and improve my skills – I just love it!”

Q #6: When creating a new theme or template, do you try to keep the buyer’s perspective in mind? If so, what aspects are you targeting?

A: “Definitely yes! It’s hard to keep in mind every single buyer and that’s why my themes / templates come with a bunch of skins and / or layouts. Everyone wants to be unique – that’s why I try to learn from them. I still have a lot to improve in this aspect in my humble opinion.

My main target is the Corporate Sites. In fact I’m obsessed with corporates sites you can use this layout for almost everything, but right now I’ll try to change a little bit my target. I have 3 themes on the way – one ‘unisex’ portfolio, one simple and bold blog and one corporate application site with a bunch of pages ready to set-up. It’s a big audience, you can expect everything from the buyers, they are unpredictable and that’s what I love of this market.”

DDStudios

Q #7: You’ve come a long ways since you first joined ThemeForest and are now one of ThemeForest rising star authors. What has changed along the way and what advise would you give to new authors?

A: “Well, a lot of things changed. I submitted a few themes in January 09 for fun but really decided to do it full time August 1st 2009. I have to say that I put myself a lot of pressure to perform at that point because I really wanted to succeed. For a guy like me, who is really new to web stuff and design, it was quite a challenge to make good income and I have to say that I am surprised that everything happened so quickly. When I look at other guys that have tons of experience, I feel small but that doesn’t stop me at all because I think I bring something else .. something fresh. So like I said, I had a lot of pressure but today I’m a lot more relaxed because I make a ton of money, I’m joking. It’s just that now I am more confident with my capacities and I’ve met some really talented people to work with and that is a great feeling.

My advice is really simple.

Work hard – I deleted my Facebook account, I almost never look at my Twitter and I don’t play games anymore. I can’t afford to be on the computer and not working because if I do, my GF will leave me.

Do what you are good at – That is usually the stuff you love to do
Be smart – Sometimes I see guys who try to do everything alone and end up being average in everything they do. There are exceptions, some guys can do everything well but it’s a minority.”

Q #8: With each new item your work is more impressive than the last. This suggest you learn quickly and spend time teaching yourself. What have you focused on learning since becoming an author?

A: “Thanks for saying that, it’s really nice.

The main difference is that at the beginning, I was trying to reinvent the wheel. I didn’t look at the other design because I didn’t want to copy, I wanted to be different. I realize that it was good and it was bad at the same time because what I was doing wouldn’t sell because buyers want what they see on the web you know. So I began to really look at other designs and study them, asking myself why I love a design in particular. Now every time I see something I like, I take a screenshot and I save it in a folder.. I have tons of menus, logos, color schemes, etc., etc. and I look at them daily. I’m not scared to be inspired anymore because I know at the end, it won’t look like anything else because at some point in the design, I get really inspired and excited and this is where the fun begins. This is why I try new colors, new layouts, etc., etc. Now like I said, I will focus my energy only on design because I am working with 3 awesome developers so be ready for 2010, DDStudios is going to be HUGE !”

jonathan01

Q #9: You’ve created some great new templates for the new Email Templates category. Is there anything you’ve learned or any advise you can give to authors interested in creating templates for this category?

A: “I’m quite lucky because I originally learned HTML back in the day when, dare I say it, tables were acceptable. It’s hard for those who learned using CSS for layout to wrap their heads around tables and why we use them for email templates. It’s basically that tables are tables, they don’t float, they don’t have divs and margins etc they are what you make them, and, email clients prefer to display things in tables. As for advise, learn the basics first, create a completely empty wireframe HTML email – put in some content and test until things are fully working, then work on the design of things. Also don’t use background images and take some time to read-up on HTML Email standards with regard to what information is mandatory when mass emailing. My only other advise is to test, test and test again.”

Q #10: Although you haven’t bought a large number of items, you have bought more than many authors. How does your buyer’s perspective impact your work?

A: “It’s really interesting to see how other authors compile their documentation, help files and how they package everything together. By becoming a buyer I have been able to improve my documentation, improve on ideas I have seen from other authors, and introduce a few things that I believe my buyers really appreciate, such as my Photoshop Quick Edit files which provide a super easy way to replace the majority of items used in the design without having to re-splice everything again. Also an author that will answer questions under their product, reply to emails and update their files when there is an issue proves to their buyers that they listen, care and are pro-active in insuring their product is a quality one.”

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions authors! This information is very helpful in getting a better perspective on ThemeForest to better succeed.

Notable Additions to the Forest

This week we’ve got six great new items to check out, starting with Email Templates. Don’t forget though that there are boatloads of amazing new items each week just as worthy of your attention, so be sure to check those out as well.

[Email Templates] MultiMail – Multi Purpose Highly Customizable

“Multi Mail is multi purpose highly customizable email template.This product comes with 3 Layouts.”

[Email Templates] Holiday Mail

“Send your subscribers some Christmas cheer with Holiday Mail. Easy and fun to customize.”

[PSD] Folio web 2.0 style

“This is a layered .PSD template with Web 2.0 look&feel for agencies, architects and motion media designers.”

[HTML] SiliconApp – Desktop / Mobile Software product

“Silicon App template has been specially crafted with a software application theme in mind, be it a mobile* or a standard desktop product*.

With its professional look and feel your application will stand apart from the crowd, whether it is destined for Windows / Mac Operating Systems or for mobile platforms like IPhone / Android.”

[WordPress] Picco Wordpress Portfolio and Blog

Theme Options Page, jQuery Graphic Slider, Blog/Portfolio/Services pages, Featured Posts on Home Page, Twitter Implementation Widget Enabled and more features.

[PHP Scripts] Ajax Store Locator

“A fully featured Ajax Store Locator that uses Google Maps to find the nearest Store given an address or postcode. Has a password protected admin panel that is used to list all Stores in the database and the ability to add/edit/delete Stores.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts.

• Marketplace API Round-up
• Free File of the Month: December, 2009
• IE 6 Compliance Now Optional for Authors
• New Featured Author of the Week: Imaginem

Chatter In The Forest

Here’s some notable forum threads you might’ve missed.

• We’re Hiring a Java Reviewer
• Buy Now, Better Deposit Expiry and Fees for Bank Transfer Payments
• Got that urge to buy something… right now?
• Super Important: Do You Have A Safe Password?
• IE 6 Compliance Now Optional for Authors
• Top Secret Info Regarding CodeCanyon
• How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
• Envato, Launch Gear Garden?

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

Use Sprites to Create an Awesomeness-Filled Navigation Menu

CSS sprites can dramatically increase a website’s performance, and with jQuery, we can implement awesome transition effects easily. Let’s get started.

Minimalist Web Design: When Less is More

As designers, we all know that a minimalist design can achieve beautiful results.

Still, many designers have trouble creating one; either they have a hard time making a page with so few elements look good or the final result just doesn’t look “complete.”

There are many articles on the Web about minimalism and this article aims to help you achieve a minimalist design that is beautiful but not bare.

To top it off, we’ll present a small showcase of minimalist designs, so that you can analyze why some designs work and others don’t.

20 Professional jQuery Image Gallery Plugins

jQuery is not only a fairly easy javascript language to work with, it is also, when in packaged in a plugin, very easy to install on any web page, making them perfect for non-developers as well. Image galleries, without the spice of js, tend to be bland and featureless. Throw in a little jQuery and you can have a easily customizable feature-rich image gallery that will present your images professionally and beautifully.

50+ Fresh CSS Techniques, Tutorials and Resources

Learning CSS and how to use it effectively can be a reasonably easy thing to do for a beginning web developer. In the hands of a seasoned professional, CSS can be stretched and pushed it to its limits where it can seem complicated and yet perfect at the same time.

Being able to adapt to new ideas and different techniques, as well as seeking new solutions to old problems is part and parcel of being a web designer. And with the speed at which CSS development is constantly moving, keeping up with new developments can be challenging.

In this article, we’ll bring you up to date with the latest in CSS development through a collection of fresh CSS tutorials, techniques, and resources. We hope this extensive list will teach you something new, or else remind you of some methods you haven’t used for a while.

Subtle Details: Taking Web Designs to Another Level

Have you ever looked at a web site and immediately been impressed with it’s design? Then you take a closer look and discover what really makes it amazing. It’s the subtle details. Some designers are great at including this in their designs. These types of designers are border line perfectionists and aren’t afraid to make full use of the zoom tool and 1px brush size in Photoshop. In this article, we will look at several ways subtle details are being used in web designs to take them from great…to amazing.

Scroll/Follow Sidebar, Multiple Techniques

Really simple concept today folks! A sidebar that “follows” as you scroll down a page. There are a number of ways to go about it. We’ll cover two: CSS and JavaScript (jQuery) with a bonus CSS trick.

Interview With Author and Buyer Hein Maas (Hein)

Hein is one of ThemeForest’s quickly rising rockstar authors, while also an author for GraphicRiver with a combined portfolio count of 20 items and growing. While Hein creates some really great work, the author also has a bit of an addiction to buying items.

I’ve asked Hein to answer this week’s interview questions as the author and buyer has a unique perspective on things at ThemeForest. Here’s what Hein had to say.

Q #1: When creating a new template for Theme Forest, what aspects are top priority and why?

A: “Firstly, I want to thank Envato and all its staff and reviewers for giving us Freelancers the change to make some nice passive income besides our clients work and other things we do.

When I design a new template for ThemeForest I’m trying to pay close attention to typography, still have a lot to learn but Iʼm getting there. I’m also keeping it as clean as possible for my ThemeForest files as well as for my clients work.

So I would say typography and a clean design are my first priority.”

Q #2: Can you briefly walk us through your process of creating a theme or template and the time it takes from start to finish?

A: “Of course, my first thing on the list is to investigate other themes on ThemeForest, which are selling and which one arenʼt selling. With this I’m getting a better idea of what’s going on inside the mind of a potential buyer.

Second thing on my list is to browse some css galleries for some inspiration, not to copy it but just to see the current trends and styles of the top guns. After this I fire up photoshop and start working on the design I had in mind. It mostly comes out different than I had in mind but mostly in a better way .

When the homepage is finished I contact my partner in crime with a screenshot and a briefing for this project.

‘Yes, I’m outsourcing as much as possible to save me time. I would recommend this to anyone, when you outsource your work then you save a lot of time. The time you’ve saved could be spend on your clients work or on more ThemeForest items.’

While waiting for a response from my partner I start working on the other pages. Once those are finished, I’ll send them over with a very detailed briefing and the functions, scripts etc. I want to implement. Then my partner starts the magic on the HTML/WordPress part. When this is done I’ll run some browser tests to see if everything looks fine. When I’m running into errors then I try to fix them myself, if they are taking me to long I’ll contact my partner and discuss them with her.

Once the HTML/WordPress is ready to go I start creating the different color versions of this theme, writing the help file and start uploading all the items which are necessary.

The time to complete these steps will take something like a few days for site templates and 1 or 2 weeks for WordPress themes.

I do have a small thing to say about outsourcing your work. Make sure you’ve got basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and WordPress and make sure to understand the theme functions before releasing it to the public, because the support will fall on your hands and you do need to know these things whenever a buyer asks for support.”

Q #3: The review process can seem tricky at times. As you’ve had quite a bit of experience with it, what are some tips you would give to authors just starting out?

A: “Indeed, I’ve been through every review scenario that’s available, but I almost never give up. My experience with the reviewing is that it has improved my way of submitting my items, better help files etc.

My advice would be to beginning authors, keep on going and never give up, even if it takes you forever. Listen to the reviewer and work on your theme/design/script, donʼt think I like it and that’s it, you still have to put yourself in a buyers position when your watching you own work, and you need to be open for critics. If you can’t stand criticism then I think it’s best if you stop what your doing and lookout for a different profession ”

Q #4: What are your top five pet peeves in design or web development?

A: “Only have two ”

• IE6 and IE7 are a real pain in the neck.
• Clients which are telling you how to do your job.

Q #5: What are three of your favorite features used in websites?

A: “My favorite features in web design are typography and jQuery enhancements.”

Q #6: Not only are you an experienced and successful author but you’ve bought between 50 and 99 items. What do you usually use purchased items for and what are a couple tips you can share, from a buyers perspective, to help authors increase sales?

A: “Haha, yes. I’ve got a addiction with buying ActiveDen, ThemeForest and GraphicRiver files. No particular reason for most of these purchases, just to check out how they create things to learn from. Once in a while I buy a WordPress theme for a low budget client’s project.

My advice to authors would be presentation. I do suck at this point but I believe when you’ve got a cool thumb and preview image, a buyer would by it sooner than when you’ve got a plain, boring and simple one.”

Q #7: What are some tips or words of wisdom you would like to share with our readers?

A: “Well, not much advice or tips to give. Just for my fellow authors – make sure you’re not depending completely on ThemeForest. Make sure you’ve got a few other sources of income. This way you can invest in a better future.

As for the marketplace buyers – I just wanted to say ‘Read the documentation before installation and before asking for support’. ”

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Hein!

View Hein’s portfolio here.

Notable Additions to the Forest

The Email Templates category continues to grow with fantastic new items which are selling like hotcakes! Keep up the great work authors! Here are two new Email Templates you should definitely check out.

[Email Templates] Holiday HTML Email Template

“This premium HTML Email Template is specifically designed to help you or your clients to promote a product, send seasons greetings or to just use for your company newsletter during seasonal times. The template comes in 2 flavors, a multi column design with full width header, 3 column, and feature area plus a simple full width version for larger simpler layout. Also included are the same templates with added tags for Campaign Monitor.”

[Email Templates] Cielo Newsletter

“Cielo is a stylish custom created HTML email newsletter. It can be used for a wide range of purposes and will help both the freelancer and the businessman in their communication with clients, partners or friends.”

Six More Fantastic New Items

Of course, there have also been some really amazing new additions to our other categories as well. Here are six more fantastic new items that have been added to the ThemeForest marketplace over this last week.

[PSD] Kabatubun Business Template

“A perfect template for business or portfolio.”

[HTML] abc business theme

“The ‘abc’ theme is a clean & stylish layout designed to promote anything from a corporate business to a portfolio site. It can also be used for more complex sites. The design contains 6 pages – Home, About, Services, Works, Blog and Contact page. Each page has its own PSD file with intuitively named and grouped elements. The layout is set to be 940px wide.”

[HTML] Under construction – Twitter & animated progress

“If your site is under construction or development is in progress what better way to keep them in the loop with a clean and simple coming soon template like ours.”

[WordPress] Sintagma – Premium Elegant WordPress Theme

“‘Sintagma’ is a Clean And Elegant WordPress Theme. It is great for any business, portfolio or personal sites . It includes different skins and page templates in order to present your information in a professional style.”

[WordPress] WordPress Terminator

“Perfect for a portfolio-based site or just a regular blog, WordPress Terminator is inspired by the original nintendo and classic 80s sci-fi movies.”

[Misc] Vintage Scrapbook

“Vintage Scrapbook is a whimsical, highly detailed theme inspired by the colours, styles, and textures found in old documents. Along with supporting all Tumblr post types (each displayed with its own unique formatting style), this theme features a highly customizable sidebar space and displays your blog title in a gorgeous distressed typeface.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts.

• New Featured Author of the Week: MetaLab
• Buy Now, Better Deposit Expiry and Fees for Bank Transfer Payments
• ThemeForest Week In Review (11/16/2009)

Chatter In The Forest (Forum Discussions)

Here’s some notable forum threads you might’ve missed.

• [Must See] IE is Being Mean to Me – The IE Song
• The Unofficial Google Wave Invitation Give Away Thread
• Buy Now, Better Deposit Expiry and Fees for Bank Transfer Payments
• Envato Chatroom – No 3rd Party Apps
• Download the "Follow Me" Graphics

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

20+ Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins

With more than 7000+ plugins, WordPress is the most extendable Content Management System available; in fact, “WordPress is infinitely extensible” as Matt Mullenweg says. In this post, we’ll examine twenty-one really useful plugins to take your blog to the next level.

Top 20+ MySQL Best Practices

Database operations often tend to be the main bottleneck for most web applications today. It’s not only the DBA’s (database administrators) that have to worry about these performance issues. We as programmers need to do our part by structuring tables properly, writing optimized queries and better code. Here are some MySQL optimization techniques for programmers.

The Key Ingredients of a Great Single Page Website

Every now and then Inspect Element will be looking at a specific style of web design and picking out the best examples in that field and what makes them so great so you can learn from them and improve your own work.

The first one we’re looking at is one page website designs. By far the most common use of single page websites are portfolios but they can be suitable to just about any business type. However, there are a few things to take note of before going down the single page route.

How to Evaluate What CMS to Use

Content Management Systems (CMS) have evolved into more than just publishing content, but managing your workflow as well. CMS’s nowadays allow you to easily conceive, edit, index, and publish content, while giving designers and developers more flexibility in customizing their look and functionality. Although there are many that require advanced skills to operate successfully, this article is going to cover a select few that offer a balance between design, code, and end-user usability.

Fresh Web Development Goodies Bag

Over the last decade web designers managed to come up with a plethora of useful techniques and design solutions that make today’s web development process much more straightforward and simple. Some techniques were simply applied to the Web, while others were developed from scratch, helping developers to use off-the-shelf-solutions to problems quicker and in a more elegant way. However, finding little slick tricks to fix your site takes a tremendous amount of time, and that’s not counting the time to implement them. We have put together a list of resources for developers and designers, to save you time so you can have enough time to have some fun too.

Here we present 45 very useful development tools such as grids, image solutions, typography, iPhone tools, HTML 5 helpers, testing resources, WordPress tools and helpers, CSS code tools and other further useful tools, time savers and resources. Enjoy this web development goodies bag!

30+ Podcasts for Web Designers, Developers and Freelancers

Most designers and developers follow at least a few blogs from the design industry, but podcasts and video podcasts offer even more opportunities for learning and for staying up-to-date in the industry. In this post we’ll feature more than 30 podcasts and video podcasts that are excellent resources for designers, developers and freelancers.

Freelance Freedom #132

We’ll get started with our buyer interview, check out some awesome Email Templates and catch up on much more you may have missed this last week.

Interview With Buyer Annie (chickscanfly)

Annie has purchased over 150 items from ThemeForest from a wide variety of authors. I’ve asked Annie a few questions to help authors get a new perspective on their buyers to help optimize their offerings and achieve more sales. Here’s what Annie had to say.

Q #1: You’ve purchased over 150 items from ThemeForest. What is your primary use for these items?

A: “I should mention that I am ‘addicted’ to themes, all themes… I have been buying them for a few years as way for me to learn. I play with one for a few days, tear it apart, try things around and often mess them up..lol then go on to try something new. Buying themes has definitely been the best ‘school’ I could go to.”

Q #2: When searching for a new item to buy, how do you go about the search process and what do you look for?

A: “First the theme has to appeal to me right away, the moment I read the description and hover my mouse over the image. I always look for the new special ‘IT’ feature, mostly in the WordPress category, the more integrated options in the theme the happier and excited I get!”

Q #3: What kinds of items, in terms of design and features, would you like to see more of at ThemeForest?

A: “Well I sure would like to see more ECOMMERCE themes, like in WordPress. One of the best and most complete estore template I ever purchased is by SRHNBR that woman is incredibly talented and her ESHOP are so detailed, not only in instructions but in her theme options and features. I about fell off my chair after buying ‘The Clothes Shop’ and saw the set up of the purchasing process… No need for any other plugins etc..”

Q #4: Which three items, of all the items you’ve purchased, are your favorite and why?

A: “Simply put, the best themes I ever purchased are from these designers and all their themes are incredible…All of the themes have incredible features, and these designers always come up with something NEW. Of course I haven’t purchased ALL the themes on ThemeForest and I am sure many authors are also very talented, and to those I say ‘Don’t worry, I am sure I’ll end up buying someday the way I am trending…lol’ ”

1. KRIESI: That young man is OUT OF THIS WORLD. His designs are clean and unique and he always comes up with something new every theme he delivers. What I like a lot about his themes are the amazing PSD files he includes, properly layered etc… I don’t even preview them anymore, when he has something new I just buy it. He also is very thorough in responding to questions on ThemeForest, and even when emailed directly for directions. If he lived nearby I’d marry him ;0)
2. AKAY: Have you guys looked at his themes? WOW! The latest one “CONTRAST” is just wicked, with it’s flash full background…amazing! He is another WP genius who comes up with new features every time, and also very kindly replies to questions etc… I am a fan.
3. SRHNBR: When it comes to ECOMMERCE, details and option filled features, Sarah ROCKS! I have to say that the time she puts on her instructions and details alone is worth the price of her themes.
4. FEELEEP: His SOFA themes, which I think I have bought them all, have amazing features, he is one of the few that comes up with “hybrid” themes, or is taking the risk to test new things. SOFA real estate is a good example.

Q #5: What are five tips you would give to authors to help increase their sales, from a buyers perspective?

A: “Can I do more than five ?..lol Ok here they are, not necessarily in order..”

1. Some authors spit themes every week, and what you end up getting is basically Deja Vu, a close carbon copy of a previous theme just with a different name or color… That isn’t fun and sooner or later people figure it out and quit buying. Most of us can modify theme colors etc… Produce less often but be UNIQUE. It will pay off more in the long run.
2. When you sell a theme on ThemeForest, I assume it’s cause you want to make some revenue right? Well, you make a commitment to the buyers so just don’t put it on and vanish or reply to your questions once a month. There is no bigger turn off when you are excited about a theme and you can’t get answers. When I buy themes and ask for directions and get ignored, you can be sure I won’t buy again, even if the theme looks great. What’s a great theme good for if you are stuck and can’t make it work?
3. Try new things! Even if it is “experimental” and may be bugged a bit. I will buy a theme anytime that has some kind of experiment going on or feature that hasn’t been done yet, and I will gladly be tolerant to “glitch” and “fixes”, as long as you authors are tolerant with us buyers asking for help. So many themes out there are just “The same”… Push It!
4. Try to include PSD files, they are always a big PLUS and it is something that does influence my decision when buying a theme.
5. Remember that a well detailed instructions PDF will save you a lot of time and questions from us buyers. Also be clear and what kind of support you are willing to provide with that purchase. I have read countless of comments on themes and many times I see buyers asking for help over and over about customization etc, and if you don’t make it clear as far as how much you are willing to do, you can’t blame people for asking… There goes the old saying “if you give them an inch they want a foot” Of course we should get some help, but on the other hand we shouldn’t expect you authors to customize too much for a 25-45 dollar theme. Seriously, a custom theme can cost hundreds of dollars so if you are clear with buyers they will “I hope” respect that, and it will save you some aggravation. Also if you are willing to do customization on the side etc, say it.
   A big attraction is also a recommended “plugins” selection to make your theme more functional, or any other insights you may have, even if they are only preference of yours. You guys are the experts so we trust what you do or say.

Q #6: Why would you choose to buy from ThemeForest over another template or theme marketplace?

A: “No insult Jarel but I think this is a NO BRAINER… I have purchased many THEME PACKS, where you sign up and pay a certain amount then you get all of their themes, which is good with some but THEMEFOREST is the MOTHERLOAD! There is no other place where you can find such a huge group of talented designer. What I love about it also is the variety of choices that you have all at the same place or a mouse click away. Being a theme addict and a self learner, ThemeForest is to people like me what Harvard is to Law students…get my drift ?”

R: I certainly do get your drift and I agree! ThemeForest is “the MOTHERLOAD”!

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Annie! All our readers and especially our authors really appreciate it.

Notable Additions to the Forest

The long awaited Email Templates category has been launched and there are already some awesome new templates available. Designers! This is a brand new, untapped category. Now is a great time to submit an Email Template. Here are four great Email Templates to make your life easier!

[Email Templates] CleanMail – Email Template Package – 5 Colors!

“CleanMail is a simple yet sexy email template package with 5 different color schemes!”

[Email Templates] Airmail! – Customizable Email Template

“Perfect for just about anyone – usable for everything from newsletters to eFlyers to whitepapers.”

[Email Templates] Communiqué – Premium Email Template

“Communiqué is a premium email template suited for just about anything from new product announcements to weekly newsletters.”

[Email Templates] Modern Business 4 HTML Email Template

“Modern Business 4 is a professional HTML email newsletter template. If you need a vibrant, strong and clean looking solution for your email campaigns to promote your latest product or service, this is the solution for you. With 3 different colors and both single and double column designs, you have many options.”

Six More Fantastic New Items

Of course, there have also been some really amazing new additions to our other categories as well. Here are six more fantastic new items that have been added to the ThemeForest marketplace over this last week.

[PSD] Mini Portfolio Theme

“This is very easily customizable minimal blog portfolio template.”

[PSD] Modern Business 4

“My 4th in a series of clean, modern corporate / business or portfolio websites (your choice as the design would suit any), however this new design also includes not just 6 webpages, but also 5 error pages, a coming soon / Under Construction page and an email newsletter template – my largest item package to date, and fantastic value!”

[HTML] fone

“fone is a website that is specifically targeted at e commerce/businesses, especially the selling of iphone applications. Of course, with tweaking it can be used for other types of commerce sites.”

[HTML] ModDiv(3D Slider) Business & Portfolio Template

“This html is a valid xhtml 1.0 transitional is best suitable for a business, company, Blog, portfolio, or freelancer portfolio website as well as predefined classes used for the common websites.”

[WordPress] London Creative + (Portfolio & Blog WP Theme)

“London Creative + comes with fully working contact form, awesome slider for your featured images, nasty spinning slider buttons (never saw them anywhere else, so you can call it unique), 2 message buttons under the slider and PrettyPhoto plugin (better clone of Lightbox).”

[WordPress] SOFA – One Page Folio

“Sofa One Page Folio is – just like it reads – one page WordPress theme. This theme is extremely easy to set up and maintain, there are no special requirements related to it and is fully settable via built-in theme options page.
I guess everyone who wants to create and manage simple portfolio site without the need for blog will benefit from One Page Folio theme.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts.

• New Featured Author of the Week: Gyro
• Our Newest Category on ThemeForest: Email Templates
• ThemeForest Week In Review (11/09/2009)

Chatter In The Forest (Forum Discussions)

There’s been lots of discussions on the forums this last week. Here’s some notable threads you might’ve missed. Also note, I’m looking for 5 ThemeForest buyers for next week’s interview, if interested– please see the last item (thread) on the list.

• PHP in XHTML Templates
• Staff Working Hours?
• Refferals Cut
• Collaborations
• Under Construction Template Idea
• Envato Testimonials
• Holiday Items
• ThemeForest buyer wanted for Week in Review interview

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

20 Email Design Best Practices and Resources for Beginners

Even for experience designers, building email newsletters isn’t easy. You receive a lovely looking design, and you crack on with the development. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work as it should in every email clients. Styles don’t display, images aren’t visible, etc.

This is where these twenty best practices come in handy.

9 Most Common IE Bugs and How to Fix Them

Internet Explorer – the bane of most web developers’ existence. Up to 60% of your development can be wasted just trying to squash out IE specific bugs which isn’t really a productive use of your time. In this tutorial, you are going to learn about the most common IE bugs and rendering disparities and how to easily squash them or deal with them. Interested? Let’s get started.

Coding Clean and Semantic Templates

If you are the guy who uses <div> tag for everything, this post is for you. It focuses on how you can write clean HTML code by using semantic markups and minimize the use of <div> tag. Have you ever edited someone’s templates, don’t those messy tags drive you crazy? Not only writing clean templates can benefit yourself, but your team as well. It will save you time when you have to debug and edit (particularly the large projects).

10 Must Have Hacks For WordPress Development

Building your own wordpress themes will open your eyes to a lot of things, mainly the fact that you’ll be retyping a lot of code over and over and over again. So in this post I am going to show you ten wordpress code hacks that you can add to your arsenal that will not only save you a lot of time, but they will also set your themes apart from others who don’t come pre built with these types of features.

Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right

The concept of the left and right brain only lately popped up in the late 1960’s, but since has become a well-known part of human psychology.

While we all use both sides of the brain, each of us has a dominant side, and this dominant side makes up for a huge part of our personalities.

Each individual thinks a certain way, has more interest in certain areas, and above and beyond all — is most effective in certain ways. An accurate understanding of the left and right brain can help one to become more productive, efficient, and creative.

This article will cover a basic understanding of what the left and right brains are, and each of their traits. We’ll also go into how we, as creative people, can harness this understanding of the left and right brain to be more creative, as well as succeed in other work-related tasks.

So let’s start with this week’s interview with author and reviewer, Kai Loon.

Interview With Author and Reviewer Kai Loon (kailoon)

Kai Loon is one of ThemeForest’s very own reviewers. He not only reviews for ThemeForest but for GraphicRiver as well. Kai Loon isn’t just a reviewer though, he is a skilled author who also runs two great websites–LoonDesign and ThemeTation. I’ve asked Kai Loon a few questions for this week’s interview and here’s what he had to say.

Q #1: As one of ThemeForest’s reviewers, what are some tips you can give to our current and potentially new authors?

A: “Never give up, try the best you can. Try not to compare to any low performance items while your item was rejected. All of us have the passion to be the best.

Many authors always have the same thought when designing for ThemeForest: I want to provide something special, unique and different from what we have on ThemeForest now. I understand that, as a designer, we always want to try something new. However, we still have to keep the aesthetic level and standard usability when creating something new.

Further, this is a marketplace but not a web gallery. People pay money to buy our creative works but not pay for something you use to test the market or your skills. So, we need to provide our best.”

Q #2: Obviously, there are so many elements and practices that go into creating a wonderful and high selling theme. What are some techniques or tricks you have learned that have proven to be successful?

A: “Flexibility and usability are the key, keep in mind your items can be used for several times on multiple websites. Users normally will modify it before they use it. Know the needs of the type of theme you are going to build. For example, if you are going to create a photography theme, you will need to provide functions such as auto image resize, gallery, lightbox, easy to manage of images etc. Or, if you are creating a community theme, you will need functions such as news submit form, multiple authors support, easy blogging system etc.

Always think that this is a theme that you are going to use. Then you will know what you need to do.”

Q #3: How did you get started in web design and development and what is your favorite part of the work you do?

A: “I started as a graphic designer, and then I know about WordPress 2 years ago. At that moment, I don’t know anything about HTML/CSS, jQuery or anything related to web development. I started as a blogger, I know more about WordPress when I first modify my blog. Then I started to learn HTML/CSS, jQuery, WordPress and php. I enjoy the both designing and coding.”

Q #4: When/how did you first come across ThemeForest?

A: “I was contacted by Collis and asked to submit the first WordPress theme and Joomla template to ThemeForest. I knew about this site via PSDtuts. After that, I was hired as reviewer for ThemeForest and GraphicRiver. I am so happy to be part of the amazing team Envato.”

Q #5: What are your top five pet peeves in design or web development?

A:

1. We have only 24hours per day.
2. Getting this phrase “This design is ok but can you move the box 1 pixel left?”
3. Selection of color combinations
4. Getting this phrase “Can you help me to clone cnn.com?”
5. Getting this phrase “I want this, this and this but my budget is only this. No worry, we can have profit sharing after this.”

Q #6: Lastly, can you give us any general wisdom or rules to live by when designing?

A: “Simplicity is the most complex achievement.”

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Kai Loon!

Check Out Kai Loon’s Portfolio

Notable Additions to the Forest

Here are eight fantastic new items that have been added to the ThemeForest marketplace over this last week.

[PSD] HYPER PRESS – Premium PSD Template

“The ‘Hyper Desk’ theme is a clean & modern layout designed to promote anything from a corporate business to a portfolio site. It comes in 7 color ‘flavors’ to start, but within mere minutes you can have this layout colored and styled to suit your taste.”

[PSD] Photoworks – Photography & Portfolio PSD Template

“Photoworks is a modern web 2.0 style psd template for photography or portfolio website.”

[HTML] RT-Theme 5 / Premium Corporate Theme 10 in 1

“RT-Theme 5 is best suited for business, corporate or service websites. Theme comes with 10 premium skin options and you can easly modify or make your own skin using sliced PSD files.”

[HTML] iMaxell Premium Corporate Template

“This design is a Portfolio and / or a Corporate template for companies, portfolios, webdesigners, eBooks sites, etc, to showcase your services and work. This theme comes with Cub3r an awesome 3D slider easy to customize, I’ve added 2 more sliders for your customization, s3Slider and jQuery innerFade.”

[WordPress] Kreativik – 5 in 1 template Wordpress edition

“Kreativik is a result of our work on an easy, clean and solid design, which would be universal, cool and featured-packed at the same time. Finally available as wordpress theme!”

“It comes in 5 different styles (these style actualy link to the HTML version, but the look of the homapage is the same ):”

[WordPress] TYLIUM – Premium Wordpress Theme

“This template is a complete site compatible with all the browsers IE6 , IE7 , IE8 , Opera, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Safari 4, Google Chrome.”

[PHP Scripts] Shoutbox

“This is an easy to integrate shoutbox that you can use also as chat. The installation is really easily: You have just to upload one file, follow the introductions and that’s it! With just 27kb, PHP5 OOP and jQuery powered it also very fast and looks also good.”

[PHP Scripts] Ad-Seller

“Ad-Seller is designed to make advertising very easy for everyone who has the needs to display ads on there website! Ad-Seller is lightweight to minimize the server load. It has a great simple css based design and offers great options! Next to the lightweight design, Ad-Seller is made using CodeIgniter an PHP framework with exceptional performance.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Chatter In The Forest (Forum Discussions)

Here are some of this week’s forum discussions worth checking out and chiming in on. Authors, make sure you check out the ThemeForest Authors Twitter List and the Nvator iPhone app.

• Say hello to Nvator iPhone app for Envato Marketplaces
• October 2009 Browser Stats!
• Envato IRC Chat Room
• The Official ThemeForest Authors Twitter List
• What Do you Buy Templates on Theme Forest For?

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts.

• Free File of the Month: November, 2009
• Record-Holder for Most Sales in a Single Month
• Ask JW: A Plugin to Make Important Announcements
• Inside the Mind of ThemeForest’s Top Selling Author
• New Featured Author of the Week: Maximus

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

ASP.NET from Scratch: Lesson 1

Nettuts+ is primarily a PHP haven; however, I’m sure we can all agree that there are many fantastic, and technically more powerful languages and frameworks at our disposal. Jeremy McPeak, author of Professional AJAX, and Beginning JavaScript: 4th Edition, will teach you how to build ASP.NET applications from scratch over the course of the next several video tutorials. Enjoy!

Website Maintenance Tips for Front-End Developers

One of the biggest advantages of online media over print is the ability to change, update, and enhance online media at virtually anytime, with virtually no negative side effects. In fact, if a website or web application does not continually offer its users an ever-evolving and growing experience, that site or application would soon become insecure, unusable, and out of date.

Simple CSS Tips that Go a Long Way

Sometimes it’s the little things that can make all the difference and there are plenty of neat little CSS tips that can help with all aspects of design and development. Here are a few great tips that will help you improve your CSS work and help you get the most out of your code

40 New Useful Web Development Tools and Resources

To become a professional web designer, you need effective tools that would help you implement beautiful designs with solid coding techniques. Handy ready-to-be-used solutions and smart design tools are always nice to have, but good ones are often quite hard to find. And this is where we come into play.

In this post we have put together a useful collection of new web development tools to save developers and designers time, energy, and headaches. Let’s take a look at 40 new useful web development tools and resources in a goodie bag for you, including easy and fast tweaks to forms, snippets of code, documentation at your fingertips, fonts, and cheat sheets.

50 Examples of Effective Uses of Typography Within Web Design

Not only do we showcase typography in the classic sense, but also illustrate that the combination of web design and great typography can be used effectively, along with clever color selection, and create usable web sites thats base design is dominated by text, for either navigation, a good headline, a logo or even used for the entire content.

Essential CSS/HTML Lists Styling Techniques

Certain elements in HTML lend themselves to many situations when marking up a website, one of the more useful of these elements is the HTML list. Using lists, a developer can markup horizontal navigation, dropdown navigation, a list of links, and even scrolling content panels (with the help of Javascript). These features can help developers build new sites and applications as well as integrate new content into existing applications.

Web Design Trends for 2010

With a new year on the horizon, it’s time to pack away the old, worn web designs and prepare for the brave, new face of tomorrow. Although trends don’t start and stop on January 1st, there is a definite shift from what we craved at the beginning of the year to what we are seeking tutorials for at the end of the year. Most of the time, this shift is subtle. It’s a perfection or re-interpretation of a currently hot trend. Trends help us evolve as designers. As we master the skills of design aesthetic, we continue to push forward to what’s next or what needs to be fully discovered.

Interview With Author Tolga (stmcan)

Tolga is one of ThemeForest’s rising stars with some really great quality portfolio items to offer. When Tolga submits a new template or theme, you can be sure it will have lots of options and styles with a fantastic design to go with it.

Q #1: When creating a new template for Theme Forest, what aspects are top priority and why?

A: “The thing is ‘usability’ what is preferential principle for me to making a new theme for Theme Forest. I have been working in business field about web design and development with hundreds clients approximately for nine years. According to these wide experiences i am trying to convey new themes in this large area as considering customers needs.”

Q #2: What tips for success can you share with our readers that you feel have contributed to your success?

A: “Generally everyone can say that you need hard working and big love to be a successful person in every area in your life. It’s all true for Theme Forest also, but additionally you need to have large perspective to evaluate your themes for the purposes of buyers view point.”

Q #3: What do you enjoy most about the work you do?

A: “I’m enjoying all parts of the web development process. But if I had to choose one, I would choose coding.”

Q #4: Outside web design and development what other interests do you have?

A: “Well, I like sightseeing with my family, the dog is included! These meantimes I’m trying to take photographs, really like B/W ones and also enjoying to make unreal photo manipulations on them. In the near future I would like to open an exhibition.”

Q #5: What are your top four pet peeves in design or web development?

A:

1. Unfortunately we have only 24 hours in a day
2. Extra works for ie6
3. Searching icons or stock photos for design
4. Getting this phrase “This design is ok but, can we see the red one additionally?”

Q #6: What are three of your favorite features used in websites?

A: “My favorite features are sliders which i like to use in my sites also.”

Q #7: What are some tips or words of wisdom you would like to share with our readers?

A: “I’m working as a web developer over nine years and I think if you miss the life while working, your creativeness die away in the course of time. Even if you catch the success, can not get the utmost enjoyment out of it.”

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Tolga!

Check Out Tolga’s Portfolio

Notable Additions to the Forest

Here are eight really great new items added to the ThemeForest marketplace over this last week.

[PSD] Grunge Portfolio

“Grunge Portfolio is a grunge design theme for webdesigner, printdesigner, photographer or any other graphicartist you can think of.”

[PSD] Clickloud Web 2.0 Business Template

“Clickloud is a web 2.0 business software template. It’s mainly directed towards the companies that either produce or administrate web 2.0 software content (cloud software companies) but it may be used for a variety of other things: company portfolio, personal blog theme etc.”

[HTML] BigBrands

“BigBrands is a marketing/Portfolio site geared towards showcasing your skills in a variety of fun ways.”

[HTML] Under Construction Page w/ AJAX contact form

“SolidForm Maintenance Page is a customizable “Under Construction” page.”

[WordPress] Concise

“Concise is a very easy to customize theme which best suits business or portfolio sites. This theme has a feature loaded theme options page with over 50 options you can play with to make this theme Yours! – check out the screenshots to see what you get. Concise has a jquery featured slider where you can showcase posts in a specific category.”

[WordPress] WP-Photo – Beautiful Photo Blog

“A Professional Wordpress theme with an ultra-clean layout, big images and superior style. The look and feel of this theme can be used in many ways making it a top choice for businesses, artists, designers, photographers and more. ”

[PHP Scripts] simple PHP Feedback form

“This simple application that will bring a feedback form for your site, you can put this feedback contact form into any interface that you have.”

[PHP Scripts] Contact Form With Custom Auto Responder

“The easy and full functional advanced contact form with validations and custom Auto responder message system which is easy to set no need of php coding.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Chatter In The Forest (Forum Discussions)

Here are some of this week’s forum discussions worth checking out and chiming in on. We’ve got a fresh bit of info. from Collis on an upcoming code marketplace, more proof that authors can make a living at ThemeForest, a “flash” back from the past, birthdays and more!

• Code Marketplace is coming!
• What Do you Buy Templates on Theme Forest For?
• 1000$+ profit
• Which Game Do You Play?
• FlashDen 2006 – Original FD Intro Animation
• Authors Post Your Website – By UNIXIS
• When is your Bday? Making a calendar with your special days
• Movember Competition On The Envato Marketplaces

  “Movember is a mustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health.”

  Grow a mo and post a photo on the marketplaces and Envato will donate AU$10 to Movember Australia. Every member who grows a mo will get a special Mo badge. The coolest mo, chosen by Collis, will win the coveted Gold Mo (only given away once this year)!

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts.

• New Featured Author of the Week: MarkDijkstra
• An HTML-Friendly Template System using PHP’s Output Buffering
• How to Achieve Cross-Browser @font-face Support

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Design and Converting it to HTML and CSS

This screencast will serve as the final entry in a multi-part series across the TUTS sites which demonstrates how to build a beautiful home page for a fictional business. We learned how to create the wireframe on Vectortuts+; we added color, textures, and effects on Psdtuts+; now, we’ll take our completed PSD and convert it into a nicely coded HTML and CSS website.

Top 10 Reasons Why the Closing of Geocities is Long Overdue

Geocities is finally, after nearly fifteen years, bowing its head and closing its doors. While the first reactions of many, like myself, was, “it’s about time;” others embraced the nostalgia of their first websites in the nineties – full of animated gifs, enormous counters, midi tunes, frames, tables, … the list goes on and on. With that said, we can all agree on one thing if we’re truly honest with ourselves: this closure is long overdue!

20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Design

When you are creating a website (or hiring a web/blog designer to create one for you), there are specific items you need to be aware of. Things that normally wouldn’t cross your mind. For the average person who wants a website or blog for their business, they are after one very important thing – sales. Now, they may tell you that they want the big flashy logos, or the overdone textures/gradients, but it is the job of a well skilled web designer to steer their clients in the right direction.

14 jQuery Plugins for Enhanced Content Viewing

Whether you need to display content within a limited amount of space or you just want to make a section of your website more engaging, jQuery is an excellent solution. With jQuery you can easily create accordion style content boxes, image galleries, and content sliders. Here are 14 excellent jQuery plugins for adding this type of functionality to your site.

To School or Not to School

Education undeniably changes us. Learning new things completely alters our perception of life and the world around us.

But formal academic training is a touchy subject for some people. Going to school to learn a discipline is still not an option for everyone.

As someone who has worked in the graphic design field for quite some time without an advanced degree, I understand that self-education is not to be underestimated.

But just how far can this type of training get you in life before you reach an impasse?

This is one of the big questions in the world of graphic design: is design school worth the time, money and effort? Does it pay off?

Brand = User Experience: The Interface of a Cheeseburger

There he goes, the web designer, stepping up to the counter of an empty McDonald’s at 3 o’clock in the morning. He is scanning the overhead menu, putting a cheeseburger in his mental shopping basket. “Cheezubahga, onegaishimasu,” we hear him say, “with an iced tea.”

Waiting for his order, he examines the wireframe of the display on the cash register, the mechanical logic of the deep fat fryers, the input/output logic of the ice cream dispenser. Coming late from work, with his mind still in design mode, he starts tracing the restaurant’s interaction model, drawing arrows from the entrance to the counter to the tables to the trash cans; seeing how the conveyor-belt kitchen, the trays with the paper liners, the bolted down seats and the meals comprise a single, complete customer interface. “They must have run usability tests,” he thinks, taking his tray to the table.

So let’s take a look at an interview with rockstar author System32, some fantastic new items in the marketplace and other great stuff from this last week.

Interview With Author Khan (System32)

Khan is one of our rockstar authors with items across three marketplaces including AudioJungle, GraphicRiver and of course ThemeForest. With over 3,500 sales and 57 ThemeForest themes and templates, Khan has helped set the bar high. I’ve asked Khan to answer some questions for this week’s Week in Review and here’s what the author had to say.

Q #1: When creating a new template for Theme Forest, what aspects are top priority and why?

A: “Firstly, Thanks to the Envato Team, including reviewers, for their kind support and gigantic marketplace where you can not only sell your creative products but also learn much more stuff. I have been working as a web designer for the last 12 Years, those of 1 year from ThemeForest since last Sept. 2008 stepped with AudioJungle and very instantly checked with ThemeForest. I feel that I have been productive lately here at ThemeForest compared to my initial approach.”

“The High priority aspects of providing a products for ThemeForest are.”

1. Creating something unique which appeals to the eye of a visitor or buyer. Unique creations are not just totally scratching your mind but getting inspiration from 4-5 different industry level designs.
2. Making a theme with a right color choice and combinations for which I prefer the Adobe’s Kuler http://kuler.adobe.com.
3. Coding your template is much easier than commenting the code and indenting it in a proper blocks. Use of enough spacing and start / end comment of your HTML Code shows you’re web savvy.

Q #2: What tips for success can you share with our readers that you feel have contributed to your success?

A: “Well, the success is not just the sales part or being productive like a machine gun, but the key concept is to create something unique which sells well and worth using a template.”

“I have been productive more faster compared to other authors on ThemeForest not for sales. Oh it’s just my hobby and I’m a computer nerd. Sitting in front of a desk for almost 16 hours a day. ”

Q #3: What do you enjoy most about the work you do?

A: “Ah! That’s really difficult to say as I love designing and coding but not marketing as am not a publisher. ”

“I love designing because I start something and end with a different output which I didn’t have a dream about.”

Q #4: Outside web design and development what other interests do you have?

A: “I have many interests beyond the development but I don’t have much time to fulfill all my dreams or interests. I play with my two little daughters in my free time and watching Discovery Channel.”

Q #5: What are your top five pet peeves in design or web development?

A:

1. In short the one and only Internet Explorer 6.
2. Creating issue myself and finding a solution. That too only for IE6. But that’s a job.
3. Selection of a color combinations.

Q #6: What are three of your favorite features used in websites?

A:

1. Designing with perfect pixels.
2. Modifying Open Source Code to different extent level.
3. Effects and proper positioning.

Q #7: What are some tips or words of wisdom you would like to share with our readers?

A: “Find yourself as unique creation of your own artwork and create something from scratch not from your heart or brain. Give it a kick start to the work what you want to do and output will pop in like a legendary game.”

“To Get Success in Life, ‘Define yourself, Plan your future, Realize the value of Time.’ ”

“To Get Success in ThemeForest, ‘Create which appeals to Visitor not Author.’ ”

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Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Khan!

Check Out Khan’s Portfolio

Notable Additions to the Forest

Here are eight really great new items added to the ThemeForest marketplace over this last week.

Authors: If you’re looking for an untapped market, check out the Joomla category. There are a mere 27 items in that category and it has a lot of potential.

[PSD] Spotlight Portfolio template – PSD version

“Spotlight PSD template is clean, elegant and professional solution for personal portfolio and/or small business website. Originally this was supposed to be dark template only, but I’ve decided to design light color scheme as well. So, Spotlight consists of five page templates in two colors.”

[PSD] A&D THEME 6 colors

“A&D is the perfect design to showcase apps or website. It come in 6 vibrant skin ( only the homepage is done with all colors in the PSD but it will be really easy for you to reuse the style and apply it to the other pages )”

[HTML] Ecosystem | A versatile, full featured theme

Includes:

• Portfolio page with lightbox
• Twitter integration
• Customizable header for this who can’t edit PSD files
• Tooltip hover boxes
• jQuery feature box
• Links to fonts used in PSD

[HTML] Fruity OrangeScroller

“Fruity OrangeScroller is second template to great ‘Fruity Collection’.”

“This is a one page portfolio template, with already working five pages – only if you want to use them. With different and clean design your portfolio will pop out from others – ‘Navi-header-three columns-info-footer’ designs.”

[WordPress] SilverOak

“SilverOak is a very easy to customize theme targeted at personal blogs/portfolio websites. It has dropdowns for both categories and pages and a nice featured showcase slider. SilverOak supports threaded comments up to 10 steps deep with numbering for each comment. SilverOak also has a sub featured area which shows your most recent posts in a different format to catch their eye.”

[WordPress] WP Color Video

• Fixed layout
• Theme options page
• Widgetized sidebar
• Widgetized footer
• Google Analytics ready
• Auto resizable thumbnails

[PHP Scripts] Easy Forms

“One of the most time consuming and hated jobs in webdevelopment is without doubt, creating forms.

Think about the many hours you spend creating contact forms that validated the email address or that upload form that only needs to accept jpg images that are smaller then 300 by 300 pixels.

With EasyForms we make an end to this. EasyForms is a PHP library that helps you create forms on a fast and easy way including input validation.”

[PHP Scripts] SPM – Simple Project Manager

“The idea behind Simple-PM is an easy to use Projectmanagement tool. I was searching a while for something like that and unfortunately nothing was the right one for me. So I began to program my own project manager and here it is ”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Chatter In The Forest (Forum Discussions)

Here are some of this week’s forum discussions worth checking out and chiming in on. We’ve got show-and-tell, give your testimonial, contests, mustaches and more!

• Share your desk/workspace!
• Official ‘Post your desktop’ Thread!
• Envato Testimonials
• [Winners] Psdtuts+ and ThemeForest Portfolio Themed WP Design Contest!
• Girlfriend VS ENVATO
• Brand New iMacs [OMFG!]
• Movember Competition On The Envato Marketplaces

  “Movember is a mustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health.”

  Grow a mo and post a photo on the marketplaces and Envato will donate AU$10 to Movember Australia. Every member who grows a mo will get a special Mo badge. The coolest mo, chosen by Collis, will win the coveted Gold Mo (only given away once this year)!

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts.

• ActiveDen and Activetuts: New Names, Same Awesome Content
• Are you Following your Favorite Authors?
• Deleting Multiple Records with PHP
• New Featured Author of the Week: simonbouchard

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

10+ Reasons Why you Should Definitely Upgrade to Windows 7

I’m a PC, and I’ve always been one. That’s why I’m excited about the late release of Windows 7. I’ve been playing with the beta and release candidate for 10 months now, and for the last few months, I’ve been running Windows 7 exclusively. So let’s see what Microsoft’s latest offering is all about!

Win a Super-cute App Icon Pillow!

The Tuts+ Network has teamed up with MySuiteStuff to hold a network-wide pillowriffic giveaway! One random commenter will be chosen to win a very cute app icon pillow. To increase your chances of winning some loot, make sure to visit each Tuts+ site and take part in each giveaway. Across the network, we’re giving away pillows for all the creative apps you know and love, including After Effects, Illustrator, Flash and Flex. To enter, all you’ve gotta do is comment! Too easy.

Rich Typography On The Web: Techniques and Tools

Let’s face it: Web-safe fonts are very limiting. Maybe a dozen fonts are out there that are widely enough adopted to be considered “Web safe,” and those ones aren’t exactly spectacular for much other than body type. Sure, Georgia, Arial or Times New Roman work just fine for the bulk of the text on your website, but what if you want something different for, let’s say, headings? Or pull quotes? What then?

10 Useful WordPress Coding Techniques

Since last year, the WordPress themes market has grown incredibly. The reason? Great designs, of course, but also a lot of amazing new functionality. Top WordPress developers are always looking to get the most out of WordPress and use all of their knowledge to find ways to make their favorite blogging engine even more powerful.

In this article, we have compiled 10 useful WordPress code snippets, hacks and tips to help you create a WordPress theme that stands out from the crowd.

35 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins

Quick and powerful, jQuery can help designers and developers create awesome interactive websites that are appealing and accessible to the widest range of browsers. For your audience, the visit to your site will be both exciting and entertaining. Navigation, galleries and slideshows, are hot points for a site to shine.

Here are 35 useful fresh jQuery plugins focusing on navigation, gallery and slideshows, calendars, tab browsing and further resources to reduce time and effort while increasing your audience.

51 Web Apps for Web Designers and Developers

Web design and development has significantly changed over the years, as have the tools and technologies involved. With these advancements come tools to make our lives easier, provide higher quality work and better services for our clients. Communication and collaboration over vast distances is no longer painfully frustrating (or impossible) and project or task management is now easier than ever.

50 Air Apps and Browser Addons for Web Designers and Developers

As web designers and developers, we’re all aware that some of the simplest of tools can make a huge impact on our day to day workflow and productivity. Using a simple browser plugin or lightweight Adobe AIR application to automate or simplify basic tasks that would otherwise be unnecessarily time consuming and redundant can reduce tasks to a split second click or drag and drop action.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the Nettuts+ RSS Feed for the best web development tutorials on the web.

Interview With Author Santosh Setty (Settysantu)

Santosh Setty is an author for both ThemeForest and GraphicRiver with an ever growing and diverse portfolio. This week I’ve asked Santosh to answer a few questions for this week’s Week in Review and here’s what the author had to say.

Q #1: When creating a new template for Theme Forest, what aspects are top priority and why?

A: “Creating templates is easy and difficult task, easy because I can create template of my own choice, in my own style with out any time restriction and difficult because it need to be liked by others and should make them buy.”

“I consider following aspects as top priority.”

1. Simple but yet to be effective.
2. Generic usage with appealing colors.
3. Well commented code that makes easy to understand.

Q #2: You are this week’s featured author. What tips for success can you share with our readers that you feel have contributed to your success?

A: “Love to design and adapt your own style which reflects your identity.”

Q #3: What do you enjoy most about the work you do?

A: “I enjoy coding, and when ever I get time I download all the open source stuff and start playing with them.”

Q #4: Outside web design and development what other interests do you have?

A: “I Dream a Lot, other than that I Watch Movies a Lot.”

Q #5: What are your top five pet peeves in design or web development?

A: “One and only one IE Browser.”

Q #6: What are three of your favorite features used in websites?

A: “Glossy and Shadow / Reflects effects.”

Q #7: What are some tips or words of wisdom you would like to share with our readers?

A: “Work Smarter Than Harder.”

- -

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Santosh!

Check Out Settysantu’s Portfolio

Notable Additions to the Forest

Along with more great additions to the ThemeForest catalog this week, there is also the emergence of a new style. These new templates fall into the Personal category, within a new subcategory called Virtual Business Card. Let’s take a look at two pioneers in this category as well as eight other additions to ThemeForest.

Virtual Business Card Templates

These new templates are great for getting your name, work and information online quickly with a fresh and professional design. These days it’s important to show potential clients and businesses that you’re up to date with technology and a virtual business card is a fantastic way to do just that.

For authors, now is a great time to get your work into this brand new category. However, make sure you’re creating something unique for your submission. Try to stand out from the crowd with unique graphics, layout, features, typography, etc.

[HTML] V-card site template

“Don’t you have the time to create a complicated web site or don’t have the money yet to represent yourself then this v-card web site is the thing for you. It’s easy to setup and its running in minutes. It’s a clean and simple design inspired by Tim Van Damme, it comes with some cool and advanced jQuery options. Best of all it comes with a working contact form.”

[HTML] vCard Professional Portfolio

“This is a professional and clean vCard based on Tim Van Damme’s website. With this design you can use almost any background.”

More Fantastic Additions

Now let’s take a quick look at eight new additions to ThemeForest during this last week.

[PSD] CREATIVE WEB AGENDA

“The layout is clean, full editable layers and easy to cut. You can use it for business companys, product website or catalogs. Your imagination is the limit.The layout is optimized for big and small resolution from 1024×768 to 1920×1200.”

[PSD] CREATIVE PORTFOLIO TEMPLATE #03

“Hi there! This is another gray + 1 color 2.0 style design that’s probably suited to a very complete creative portfolio for freelancers and studios.”

[HTML] Koncept Business & Portfolio Template – 10 Colors

“The home page includes custom looped slider that allows you to change the slides using arrows manual and auto. You can modify it by editing the js file for speeding or easing transition effect in animate. Highly customized About Page, Blog Page, Portfolio Page and Services Page, you are able to edit each block as i have well commented each code.”

[HTML] Hosting Company Template

“Clean and slick web hosting template, very light and professional. It include a content slider and newsticker on the frontpage and a lightbox for the client login form.”

[WordPress] The Clothes Shop -WordPress eCommerce

“Designed especially for online shops, The Clothes Shop accommodates a category structure of upto 2 levels deep (1st level -3rd level categories), a membership area, creating and saving a wishlist, an informative customer service area, unique „Shop by…“ widgets, lots of independent widget ready areas and sooo much more! Flexibility is written all over this theme.”

[WordPress] Dilapidated – Premium CMS Grunge WordPress Theme

“This is a 6-in-1 grunge style WordPress theme designed primarily for sites that use WordPress not just as a blog but as a content management system (CMS).”

[PHP Scripts] fastAmazon

“fastAmazon lets you quickly and easily set up your own Amazon affiliate powered site. It uses Amazon’s Product Advertising API and SOAP to bring products straight to your website.”

[PHP Scripts] Mobile Site

“This application helps you to create in no time a mobile version of a website. For the moment this script is specially created to detect iPhone. But in the next updates there will be support for other mobile devices.”

“With this script there is no need for you to create a subdomain for your mobile website. This script detects if the visitor is using a mobile device and then shows the right versions.”

More Great ThemeForest Items

These are some seriously great templates, themes and scripts but don’t forget that there’s lots more! View them here!

Chatter In The Forest (Forum Discussions)

Here are some of this week’s forum discussions worth checking out and chiming in on.

• vCard templates | an unused section at themeforest & an appeal to all sellers
• How old are you, authors?
• Solution for homepage exposure
• Sales notify

A couple threads information you might be interested in.

• HTML Email Templates – Coming Soon?

  Jeffrey says the new HTML Email Templates category is coming soon. The seed content is waiting to be posted and it is on the fast track with a hopeful launch next week.

• What’s up with the Managers Selection?

  Some people are wondering about the managers selection but fret not, Jeffrey is on top of it and figuring out the best way to handle it.

Fun, fun for everyone! Remember when you were young and were always excited for show-and-tell in class? Well, we’re not in school any more but we can always have fun with threads like these.

• Official ‘Post your desktop’ Thread!

Let’s see your stuff everyone! I’ll be posting mine as well.

Blog Review

This week’s fantastic blog posts, featured authors and Blog Action Day roundup.

• 7 Things I Wish I Had Known About jQuery
• New Featured Author of the Week: Settysantu
• All of the BAD Articles in the Envato

Web Roundup

There’s a tremendous amount of information on the web and it’s not always easy to find the cream of the crop. Here are some great tutorials and articles from around the web that are definitely worth checking out.

Winners of the Nettuts/Screenr “Fame and Fortune” Competition Announced

The results are in. After a week of community voting, we’ve selected the best five submissions to the Nettuts+/Screenr competition. Everyone did a fantastic job, but there can only be five winners! Let’s see who they are.

Supercharge Website Performance With AWS S3 and CloudFront

We live in a world where people are increasingly expecting more and faster speeds. In fractions of a second, your website can lose valuable visitors and in turn, money. Although most people think CDNs are for the “big dogs”, they’re actually super cheap and incredibly easy to use these days.

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to setup and use Amazon’s Web Services S3 and CloudFront to decrease website load time as well as show the performance differences.

7 Key Principles That Make A Web Design Look Good

Everyone and their grandfather (and dog) seems to have a website these days. The Web is getting more crowded by the day, with literally dozens of websites being added as you read this article. It is becoming harder and harder to get noticed among the masses.

“Fortunately” for us designers, not everyone seems to understand what makes or breaks a Web design. Granted, Web design is to a large extent a creative process and can therefore be called more art than science. But because it is intrinsically a medium of presentation, some rules (or at least principles) apply. By following some simple pointers, anyone should be able to create a visually pleasing design and take one step closer to fame. Okay, it’s not that simple, and talent and experience do matter, but anyone can turn their home page into something prettier within mere minutes.

Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices

Comment forms are an essential part of our blogs, social networks and websites. Comment forms are our websites’ communication channel. Through these forms we get feedback on our content; therefore, it’s necessary to design them in such a way that they are easy to understand by our user base.

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

One of the most bizarre statistical facts in relation to browser use has to be the virtual widespread numbers that currently exist in the use of Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8. As of this writing, Internet Explorer holds about a 65% market share combined across all their currently used browsers. In the web development community, this number is much lower, showing about a 40% share.

Are Freelancers a Commodity or a Profession?

Lately, I’ve been exploring various “commodity” freelance job boards where one bids for projects. In perusing a number of sites where only experienced web developers and graphic designers are competing against each other, one thing stands out vividly: every buyer/job source has set their price not only low, but outrageously out in left field low.

Building a jQuery/PHP Powered Chat Room

In this tutorial we are going to build a little chat program that is really easy to get up and running on any server running PHP. No database is required – as the chat will store itself in a simple text file.

Freelance Freedom #126

NOTE: If you come across a tutorial or article you think should be shared in Theme Forest’s “Week in Review”, please email jremick@jremick.com with the URL and the subject “Week in Review Recommendation”.