My recent theme “Consultant” is still brandnew but things are working quite well at the moment and so I´m happy to show you a little preview of my next great responsive theme called “Agency”.

Again this one will be very feature rich and optimised to work brilliant on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as on regular desktop computers. So no matter what device your audience is using to visit your site, you can always provide the best possible user experience.

Alongside with many other great features the theme comes with two more additional page templates for portfolio or product pages, a nice jQuery powered full responsive portfolio carousel on the homepage and 20+ fantastic build-in backgrounds by subtle patterns.

Theme Features

• Outstanding and fully mobile responsive business layout with  different layout options
• Unlimited colors for your individual colorscheme
• 20+ fantastic build-in backgrounds  (unlimited custom backgrounds possible)
• Several Google Web Fonts to choose from
• Smooth and elegant SuperFish dropdown menu
• Responsive FlexSlider for content and images included
• Integrated Nivo image slider (WordPress plugin) with lots of functionality
• WP-Cycle slider support
• jQuery powered portfolio or product “carousel”
• PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included
• Auto prettyPhoto integration
• Image handling and resizing via the WordPress post thumbnail function (no TimThumb)
• 960 grid system
• Options page for easy setup without coding
• WordPress 3.0 features like custom headers, backgrounds and menus
• 5 additional custom page templates (Blog, 3x Portfolio variations and Fullwidth)
• 14 widgetized areas
• PRiNZ Widget Factory plugin provides 11 custom widgets
• Sample Child theme for update safe customization included
• Fully localized front- and backend. Default language English. German language file included.
• W3C valid code works in all modern browsers
• Full responsive mobile support: Works on mobile devices like iPhone and iPad

The new Theme will be released by the end of May. So stay connected!

jQuery powered portfolio carousel

Portfolio Medium

iPad Landscape view - Click to enlarge

Happy to announce the release of my latest WordPress Theme called “Consultant”. It´s a  highly customizable WordPress business theme for companies, consultants and freelancers alike. Its mobile responsive design makes it work perfect on all kind of devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Until May 31st the theme is on sale and you save more than 30% on the regular price. Check out the full feature list, take it for a test drive and purchase the theme over at my themes shop.

I have another great business theme in the works, and I am excited to give everyone a sneak peek today. It´s called “Consultant” and although there not much to see yet I plan to release it by the end of next week.

Theme Features

• Outstanding business layout with “boxed” or “streched” layout
• Unlimited colors for your individual colorscheme
• Several Google Web Fonts to choose from
• Smooth and elegant SuperFish dropdown menu
• Four different homepage options for sliders or a static lead article
• Integrated jQuery content slider for posts or pages with text and image
• Integrated Nivo image slider (WordPress plugin) with lots of functionality
• WP-Cycle slider support
• PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included
• Auto prettyPhoto integration
• Image handling and resizing via the WordPress post thumbnail function (no TimThumb)
• 960 grid system
• Options page for easy setup without coding
• WordPress 3.0 features like custom headers, backgrounds and menus
• 3 additional custom page templates (Blog, Portfolio and Fullwidth)
• 13 widgetized areas
• PRiNZ Widget Factory plugin provides 11 custom widgets
• Sample Child theme for update safe customization included
• Fully localized front- and backend. Default language English. German language file included.
• W3C valid code works in all modern browsers
• Mobile device ready: Works on mobile devices like iPhone and iPad

And of course – as all PRiNZ themes – it´s ready for upcoming WordPress 3.4

Happy to announce the first update for my latest theme “Incorporated“. Version 1.0 has a lot of new features and several enhancements under the hood. I also introduce the brand new PRiNZ Widget Factory plugin which provides 11 custom widgets that have been created especially to be used in DER PRiNZ WordPress themes. As usual the update is free for existing customers and you can download it from the download section of the support forum or visit the shop to purchase this great theme.

Incorporated has now more color options. It has a new small additional headerbar (a bit like the WordPress admin bar) which comes with two widget areas that you can use to put additional information, a menu, or social icons. By the way. Social icons are included in the new PRiNZ Widget Factory which I will explain later. The former punchline now became an action bar where you can put a powerful punchline and a call to action button to grab your users attention.

The regular small footer also got a widget area and I removed the footer menu. But wait, you still can add a footer menu simply by using the WordPress default Custom Menu Widget.  I´m always trying to use default WordPress functionality for specific things because it´s more flexible and I feel it doesn´t make sense to create things that already exist. That applies for the logo, the menus, the page background and also for the thumbnail images.

Bye bye TimThumb

In the former version you had the choice to use either the default WordPress Post Thumbnail (Featured Image) function or the well known TimThumb image resizer script. Well as you might know TimThumb – despite its great functionality – was a security risk a couple of times in the past and developers already started to create plugins to narrow that risk. I used TimThumb since the early days of my themes but now I felt it´s time to say good bye to an old fellow. So I removed TimThumb completely from “Incorporated” and left just the WordPress Post Thumbnail way of dealing with thumbnails. It´s safer, it´s simpler and you have more control over the images you use. And of course it´s again a core WP functionality and not another third party piece of code.

Welcome PRiNZ Widget Factory

“Incorporated” as well as any other PRiNZ themes already had several custom widgets intergrated. This was a part of the themes I haven´t touched for a long time and some things required a little makeover. So I asked my collegue Ralf Albert again to create a collection of widgets and pack them right into a plugin. Ralf already created the PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin which is part of all of my themes since January 2012. The result is just great. Eleven (11) custom widgets that you can use in you theme to display featured pages, -posts, -categories, social icons, tweets, newsletterforms, contact info etc. I´m very proud especially of the featured pages, -posts, -categories widgets and the social icons widget. They come with a lot of functionality and custom settings and it´s fantastic what you can do with them.

I will update the installation guide as soon as possible and  I guess I will create a screenscast that shows the power of the new Widget Factory. So make sure you stay tuned and have fun with the new version of the “Incorporated” WordPress theme.

It´s Friday and it´s time to provide some freebies again. I have almost finished the new Version of the “Incorporated” WordPress theme which will be released soon (better stay tuned). One of the new functions I added is a selection of different subtle background patterns that you can use in the header area. Just a few but they are quite nice I guess. You can combine them with the background color and create a very nice and individual header section.

I thought it might be a good idea to provide those patterns to the community as a freebie. This download comes with a layered Photoshop file that includes all five patterns (you can see them all in the post image above). They are transparent and you can use them together with any background color you like. Go create it´s 100% free to use!

Download this Freebie

As of now you can take a look at the new showcase section here at DER PRiNZ and get some inspiration from the work of others. It features websites that have been build upon themes from DER PRiNZ by satisfied customers.

If you build a website based on BranfordMagazine or any other PRiNZ WordPress theme and like to present it to the public, just send me a message. Please accept that I cannot publish every submitted website.

• Watch the Showcase
• Browse Themes

You might have recognized it or not but since a few days the new support forum is available. Why did I launch a new forum? Well that was not planned to be honest. It became necessary because my old forum crashed after an update and it appeared to get very complicated to bring it back to life.

For a few years I was very happy with a seamless integration of the support forum right into my WordPress site by using the SimplePress forum plugin. It´s still a great plugin but in my particular case there were several conflicts which I wasn´t able (and at the end willing) to solve.

So I decided to go for a completely other solution and installed the Simple Machines Forum software on a subdomain on my webserver. I should have done that much earlier because a real forum software has lots of advantages against a plugin (no matter how good it is). It´s more flexible, has more features to offer, provides a better permission management and much more. Especially the way it works with displaying code and attachments (e.g images) in post is worth using it. It also works much better on mobile devices.

The only disadvantage is that it was not possible to transfer the old posts and users into the new forum. So even if you had an account for the old forum you need to register a new account for the new forum. But that´s easy as 1, 2, 3…

Today was screencast Friday. I produced and published three new screencasts for you guys out there. Have fun watching them. And if you have any suggestions for screencasts and video tutorials let me know.

• How to setup a WordPress site with dummy content
• How to regenerate WordPress Post Thumbnails
• How to use the WordPress Nivo Slider Plugin

• Watch all Screencasts
• Visit my YouTube Channel

Happy to announce that I will release a new WordPress premium theme in a few days. It´s called “Incorporated” and it will be a business theme for small (or big) companies and freelancers alike. It comes with some great features focused on custumization and individual setup.

Unlimited colors, Google Web Fonts, image sliders or static leadarticle and various layout options are just some of the great features of “Incorporated”. It also includes a sample child theme you can use for even more customization in an update safe way. And as all PRiNZ themes it comes with the new PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included.

So make sure you don´t miss the release. Stay in touch via Newsletter, Twitter etc.

Theme Features Overview

• Outstanding business layout with many different layout options (e.g sidebar left or right)
• Unlimited colors for your individual colorscheme
• Several Google Web Fonts to choose from
• Smooth and elegant SuperFish dropdown menu
• Integrated Nivo image slider (WordPress plugin) with lots of functionality
• WP-Cycle slider support
• PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included
• Auto prettyPhoto integration
• Automatic image handling and resizing
• 960 grid system
• Options page for easy setup without coding
• WordPress 3.0 features like custom headers, backgrounds and menus
• 3 additional custom page templates (Blog, Portfolio and Fullwidth)
• 11 widgetized areas
• 8 custom widgets
• Sample Child theme for update safe customization included
• Fully localized front- and backend. Default language English. German language file included.
• W3C valid code works in all modern browsers
• Mobile device ready: Works on mobile devices like iPhone and iPad

After some very busy weeks where I spent most of my time working on my WordPress themes I ´m happy to announce the release of updates for all of my  themes and the release of a fantastic shortcode plugin today.

It turned out to be a major update for all themes. Many new things where added, several functions updated and the code was cleaned up and optimized. You can find a list of all (new and existing) features in the themes section.

The biggest thing might be the release of the PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin. This plugin is shipped as an add on with all PRiNZ premium themes and adds an interface to your WYSIWYG editor that allows you to use many useful shortcodes. There are shortcodes for multiple column layouts, for content boxes, sliders, togglers etc. Check out a demo of the shortcodes on the Freelancer (or any other themes) demopage.

Thanks to Ralf Albert for creating this plugin for me.

Take a look into the FAQ if you don´t know exactly how to use updates or new versions of themes. It´s a bit more complicated than the auto-update of WordPress.