Facebook Pages, Short-lived Fad or Still Useful?
Ever since Facebook launched the new design earlier this year one of the most interesting features was the new power given to Facebook Pages. Every item posted to pages showed up in fans’ news feed and I have been a fervent promoter and user of these pages, there where before I hardly ever used the platform for social marketing. The possibility to constantly drop links to blog updates without filling my own Facebook profile was a god send. I have managed to launch a blog almost entirely based on its Facebook page as sole and only promotion platform, but the future might be different and the social network could become useless as a promotion engine.
Introducing Performancing Legal with Jonathan Bailey
Performancing is happy to announce a new Performancing Service, Performancing Legal. Performancing legal is a new series hosted by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today.
Jonathan will weekly answer a question from one of our readers and help you with his advice based on many years of experience. Every Wednesday we will announce next week’s episode and open the question round. Jonathan will answer one question every following Tuesday. [Read more]
Performancing Themes go GPL
Over the years Performancing has delivered many differences services to its readers: PMetrics, Plugins, Perfcast, the Performancing podcast, and Performancing Themes.
Performancing has released 20 different themes, designed by some of the best WordPress themers known, in little more than 2 years. Today we can proudly announce you that all our free themes have been released under the GPL License. [Read more]
Treasure Theme
Ever wanted to explore for hidden treasure as a kid? Well, most of us have longed for, and still do long for, this kind of adventure. Most would keep other sorts of treasures in all sorts of places, in their proverbial treasure chests. Love letters are kept in drawers. Photos in photo albums. Toys in toy closets. Blog posts, of course, precious that they are, are kept online.
But what if you can keep your blog posts in “treasure chests” of their own? This is what Performancing’s Treasure Theme for WordPress is all about. Each blog post is kept enclosed in its own box–or what you can call its treasure box. This is very appropriate for bloggers who want to consider each and every published post as precious ad gold and gems.
Another classic from Performancing Themes for WordPress, the Treasure Theme is a collaboration with designer Randa Clay, who has done various other Splashpress Media designs.
Treasure Theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.7 and above. It supports threaded comments, post classes, image captions and gallery classes introduced in this version of WordPress.
Download the Treasure Theme for WordPress here.
See a live preview here.
Too Newsy Theme
We are pleased to announce the January, 2009 Performancing Theme release: Too Newsy. The Too Newsy Performancing Theme for WordPress is a three-column WordPress theme that uses minimal images and earthy colors, contributing to a touch of elegance.
The theme features widget-ready sidebars, which can accommodate several different image dimensions (suitable for button and banner ads). The theme is the first Performancing Theme to support new WordPress 2.7 features out of the box:
- Threaded and paginated comments
- Post classes
- Image captions and gallery classes
Another highlight of Too Newsy is the use of the sidebar for snippets of the latest posts in a pre-defined category (which is by default the “features” category). This can be useful for bloggers who wish to highlight certain posts, such that they are not pushed down too soon by newer ones. The theme also supports gravatars out of the box.
Too Newsy is another collaboration with Splashpress Media designer Sophia Lucero, who previosuly brought us the Rubidious Theme, and various other Splashpress Media blog designs.
TDAge Theme
We are pleased to announce the November Performancing WordPress Theme: TDAge
A free, public release version of design guru Thord Daniel Hedengren’s Swedish-language blog, TDAge is a light-blue themed design with big, bold feed and “about” images, and large-font headers. TDAge also has easy access links to a blog’s pages and categories from the headers, and has a clean-cut pre-defined template for use as an archive summary page.
TDAge is a pun for TDH, which stands for–you guessed it!–Thord Daniel Hedengren, who has developed various designs for Splashpress Media, including the Blog Herald, Jack of All Blogs, Blog Network Watch, Blogger Jobs, Bloggy Award, Audival, Wisdump, Devlounge, and many more. Thord has also collaborated with us on other Performancing WordPress Theme releases: One in a Million and Estranged.
Nitrous Theme
The word “Nitrous” has a motorsport connotation to it, given the use of Nitrous Oxide (or N20) in increasing the power output of engines, and hence giving that all-important boost in acceleration and speed in times of need. This is the concept behind the Nitrous Theme for WordPress. Nitrous is a fast-loading theme that gives you straight-cut, no-nonsense presentation. The design loads fast, with use of lightweight images. The grey and blue color scheme also contribute to that European touring car feel. I can almost feel the wind in my hair!
One interesting feature of Nitrous is that nested pages are automatically added to the top navigation bar as nested dropdown menus. This way you have easy access to your static pages–including the nested ones or the “subpages”–without cluttering up the navigation area with text.
Nitrous is yet another collaboration between Performancing and Brian Gardner, released as a free monthly theme by Performancing Themes.
Update: Nitrous has been updated for compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and up. Download the latest version here.
Click here to preview the theme.
Click here to download the theme.
Episode 4: How to Choose a Social Media Site That Fits Your Blog
Notes:
#1 principle: Choose a site where your target audience is hanging out.
Don’t choose a site just because other bloggers are talking about it. Digg and Twitter are popular social media sites. However, you may not want to participate on Digg if you have a wedding blog or Twitter if you have a dog blog.
Rubidious Theme
Rubidious is a three-column theme sporting deep hues of red and blue. The theme name is based on the chemical element Rubidium, which comes from the Latin term for “deepest red”.
Two light-on-dark sidebars sit on opposite sides of the main content. The left sidebar is called “menu” in the Widgets configuration page (WordPress 2.5), and is ideally made for navigational elements like links various subpages. The theme supports WordPress 2.5’s avatar features, though it should work with WordPress 2.3 just fine.
Update: Rubidious has been updated for compatibility with WordPress 2.7 and up. Download the latest version here.
Click here to preview the theme.
Click here to download the theme.
Story Theme
Performancing is pleased to release another great, free WordPress design called the Story Theme.
It’s a three column design with the content on the far left, followed by two sidebars. The color scheme uses a subtle mix of tans, oranges and browns to provide great texture and depth for your blog.
Rounded corners and a unique left margin give the impression that you have just turned the page in a compelling story.
Whether you are writing your blog to tell a story, or engage readers with a product, the Story Theme just may be the perfect choice.
You can preview the theme here.
You can download the Story Theme here.
