What is value

Merriam-Webster defines value as “a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged.” The modern world most of us live in is predicated on value and exchange of goods. For example, I buy some food supplies from my local grocery store — the grocery delivers value, and I provide money in exchange for that value. This allows the grocery to deliver value to other customers, pay their employees, pay their vendors, and sometimes realize a profit for the business itself. The circular nature of this system allows everyone to provide value in their own way, and receive a widely accepted currency in return for this value. It’s truly a beautiful thing.

Value of a premium WordPress theme

The value of a premium WordPress theme, like any digital good, is easily misunderstood. After all, you can’t hold it your hand, taste it, or physically try it on. This makes it difficult to understand the “what you get” side of the equation.

When you purchase a theme here at the The Theme Foundry you’re buying months of hard work in the form of a beautiful hand coded theme to represent you or your business, access to the friendly and dedicated team that actually built your theme (not a part time support staffer), and regular maintenance updates and improvements. We feel this represents a boatload of value delivered to you in exchange for $68 ($51 if you’re an existing customer). Most importantly, thousands of our new customers each year feel it represents a fair value. They tell us this when they decide to purchase one of our themes, and if they don’t feel that way after buying a theme, we give them their money back.

Cheaper options

Like most things in life, there are usually cheaper options. You could purchase a theme from a theme marketplace or another theme shop for a cheaper price.

Theme marketplaces

The likelihood you will receive the same level of design, code quality, support, and maintenance from your average theme marketplace seller is small. There are a few exceptions of course, but a marketplace theme is not usually going to deliver the same level of quality. Most sellers are freelancers trying to make some extra cash. You have to weigh saving a few bucks against buying a top quality WordPress theme with a dedicated team to support and maintain it for you.

Other (cheaper) shops

Some other theme shops might be cheaper, but it’s important to pay attention to the hidden costs. Some questions to consider: How sustainable is the business model? Are they charging enough to operate the business and grow over the long haul? Do they have a team or is it a one man show? How long have they been selling themes? Will they be around if you need help with something a year from now? Do they regularly fix bugs and release maintenance updates? Are they in touch with what’s happening in the WordPress community? Is it quality code? Are they outsourcing support?

Do what’s right for you

If you’ve done your research, and you still find a cheaper option that meets your needs, go for it! When we first started selling WordPress themes we were a “one man show” and priced our themes more agressively to take advantage of our size. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that approach, and some of our first customers will agree they got quite a bargain in those early days. Now we have a dedicated team working together to build even better themes and provide top notch service and support. This means we have to charge a bit more, but we feel it more than makes up for the difference in theme quality and customer experience.

Every theme at The Theme Foundry starts out as an idea that is discussed and then put to paper by our designers. We review and refine the design, and then we build it out in HTML so we can see the design come to life in the browser. From there, every theme is constructed from the ground-up (no frameworks) as we try to build upon the successes (and failures) of our previous themes.

This time, we’re proud to present a minimalist masterpiece that is the result of well over a month of back-and-forth hard work from Scott and Drew. The design changed a lot over the development cycle, but as I gaze upon the finished work I can’t help but smile. I think they’ve done it again.

Portfolio is a clean and refined – you guessed it – portfolio theme for elegantly showcasing your client work, photography, videos or artwork.

Portfolio puts all the focus on your work. The light colors and minimal design allow your photos to stand out, grabbing viewers’ attention and enticing them to read more.

The strengths of Portfolio are the

• Homepage and Portfolio page templates for highlighting your work.
• Individual portfolio item display.
• Customization options that allow you to make your site feel “just right”.
• Lovely blog display with lots of easy to use typography options.

Let’s take a quick look at each of these!

The Homepage template

When visitors land on your site, you’ll want to direct them to the most important and most recent blog posts and portfolio items. At the top of the Homepage template, we’ve included a featured slider that can link to any post or portfolio item on your site.

Below that, you’ll see the “Recent Portfolio Items” section, which automatically pulls your most recent items for display on your front page.

View the Homepage template →

The Portfolio page template

We’ve paid special attention to your portfolio (or “showcase”) page, which displays your portfolio items in a grid that scales down to look just as lovely on mobile devices as it does on large-format displays.

View the Portfolio template →

Individual portfolio items

When you click through to a single portfolio item, there is an optional sidebar that can be used to put extra details, a description, your inspiration for the project, or external links to the project website. We’ve added a couple of styling elements that look especially good in the sidebar: blockquotes and external link buttons.

View a single portfolio item →

If you don’t like the sidebar, just leave it empty and it won’t appear!

Customization options

As with all of our themes, we try to provide easy to use customization options that make your site feel just right. Portfolio is no different! You can:

• Select from 7 lovely fonts for your accent and body text.
• Choose a color for your links and other accents to match your logo or brand.
• Give your images a slick “fade in” effect when a page loads.
• Easily add handcrafted Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Flickr links to your footer.

It’s a blog, too!

Portfolio isn’t only about portfolio items. It wouldn’t be a complete WordPress theme without a lovely blog layout for your articles, images and status updates (asides).

View the blog page →

We’ve also included several typographic elements including special styling for in-content titles, pull quotes and alerts. We’ve added these elements to the editor so you can easily insert them in your content without mucking around with shortcodes or HTML.

Check it out

We’re very proud of our latest addition and we hope you’ll check out the demo site or watch the video tour to see what it can do. There are more details on the Portfolio theme page, but let us know if you have any questions or comments!

We should also give a very big thank you to Teagan White, whose (absolutely stunning) illustrations are being used on the demo site. Thanks, Teagan!

$query_args = array(
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key' => 'my_key',
            'value' => false,
            'type' => 'BOOLEAN'
        )
    )
);

This works for the false case, but not for the NULL case. As I did a bit of searching, I found this core ticket which is going to allow searching for NULL meta values in WordPress 3.4. However, I had 2 problems with this solution:

1. WordPress 3.4 isn’t out yet (duh) and we need to support a couple of versions back, anyhow.
2. I needed to modify the main query. Tacking on items to the meta_query is error prone once someone else (a plugin, for example) tries to modify it as well. Specifically, the relation argument causes issues:

$query_args = array(
    'meta_query' => array(
        'relation' => 'OR',
        array(
            'key' => 'my_key',
            'value' => false,
            'type' => 'BOOLEAN'
        ),
        array(
            'key' => 'my_key',
            'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
        )
    )
);

The above code would work as long as no other plugin needed to use the meta_query. But what if a plugin tried to modify the query args with their own keys and values?

$plugin_query_args = array(
    'meta_query' => array(
        'relation' => 'AND',
        array(
            'key' => 'their_first_key',
            'value' => true,
            'type' => 'BOOLEAN'
        ),
        array(
            'key' => 'their_second_key',
            'value' => true,
            'type' => 'BOOLEAN'
        )
    )
);

You’ll notice the relation values would conflict, since WordPress only allows one meta_query at a time. That means we need another method to check for false or NULL values. After a bit of digging around, I pieced together this SQL-based solution:

add_filter( 'posts_join', 'lets_modify_the_posts_join' );
add_filter( 'posts_where', 'lets_modify_the_posts_where' );

function lets_modify_the_posts_join( $clause='' ) {
    global $wpdb;

    // We join the postmeta table so we can check the value in the WHERE clause.
    $clause .= " LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta AS my_postmeta ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = my_postmeta.post_id AND my_postmeta.meta_key = 'my_key') ";
    
    return $clause;
}

function lets_modify_the_posts_where( $clause='' ) {
    global $wpdb;

    // Check whether the value is false or NULL. If it is neither, then we want to filter it.
    $clause .= " AND ( (my_postmeta.meta_key = 'my_key' AND CAST(my_postmeta.meta_value AS CHAR) = '') OR my_postmeta.meta_id IS NULL ) ";

    return $clause;
}

What we’re doing here is adding a JOIN statement to the query that joins the wp_postmeta table on the key “my_key”. We join the table as “my_postmeta” in the example.

Then, we’re adding a condition to the WHERE clause to check if the my_postmeta.meta_value is either false or NULL.

I hope this is useful to somebody out there. If I’ve overlooked some easier way to do this, let me know in the comments – thanks!

After a fast start, Twenty Twelve development slowed to a crawl in February (which was my fault) and in March we decided including it in WordPress 3.4 wasn’t a good idea. Since then we’ve re-focused, moved the Twenty Twelve repository to Github, and established a regular work schedule to ensure it’s ready for WordPress 3.5.

If you’re following along over on Github, expect to see commits going in on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Right now the team is small: Lance and I are working on the code and chatting with Matt and Nacin as required over Skype. We may be small, but we’re more than happy to accept bug fixes and suggestions in the form of pull requests. In fact, a few folks have already chipped in — thanks Konstantin Obenland and Jeff Sebring!

Over the next few months I’ll be posting more about the decisions and discussions we’ve made and had while building Twenty Twelve. At first, these will be a bit backdated, but the posts will slowly catch up as we move along. We’ll also put up a live demo site sometime soon, so you can see Twenty Twelve in action!

First sketches

First sketches are a basic overview for the direction of the theme. It’s the first thing I do when I sit down to design a theme. They don’t set anything in stone, but they set the tone and aesthetic for the design. The goal here was to avoid anything fancy, whimsical, or tricky. The focus for the theme will be clean lines, precise spacing, and great typography. Twenty Twelve should be a joy to read.

These sketches were completed back in January, and some things have changed since then, but the general look and feel of the theme has stayed the same. In the next few posts we’ll dive a little deeper and take a look at some of the decisions we’ve made so far. Stay tuned!

However, by default this row will show no matter what, even when you toggle the “kitchen sink” on and off:

It seems more logical to toggle the third row on and off along with the rest of the advanced buttons. In fact, there is a core ticket dealing with this very situation.

In searching around, I discovered a WordPress StackExchange thread that described my exact problem – but without a solution to the toggle issue.

I decided to dig into the TinyMCE API and write my own little jQuery function to handle it. You can add this code directly to your TinyMCE plugin init call:

init : function( ed, url ) {
    ed.onInit.add(function( ed ) {
        if ( getUserSetting( 'hidetb', '0' ) == '0' ) {
            jQuery( '#content_toolbar3' ).hide();
        }

        jQuery( '#wp-content-editor-container #content_wp_adv' ).click(function() {
            if ( jQuery( '#content_toolbar2' ).is( ':visible' ) ) {
                jQuery( '#content_toolbar3' ).show();
            } else {
                jQuery( '#content_toolbar3' ).hide();
            }
        });
    });
}

Once you add this snippet to your editor plugin JavaScript, your extra row of buttons will toggle on and off along with the other advanced buttons:

Let me know if it works for you!

Additional resources for writing your own TinyMCE plugin:

• WordPress Codex page for custom buttons
• Writing a TinyMCE plugin

How does it work?

After one year, your subscription will automatically renew. You’ll have the option to cancel the renewal from your account screen at any time (we’ll also send you a reminder five days prior to renewal). If your subscription expires without being renewed, you’ll no longer have access to the theme downloads, new releases, updates, support, and tutorials.

The 25% customer discount on individual theme purchases does not apply to Foundry Pro membership.

Can I still buy individual themes?

Yes! You may still buy individual themes and receive updates, tutorials, and support with those purchases. We’re just offering a new option for customers who are interested in access to the entire collection for a yearly price.

Go Pro!

Sign up for Foundry Pro today and start enjoying the benefits.

If you’re an existing customer that has purchased three or more themes from us in the past, drop us a line and we’ll give you a discount on your first year.

We just started working with the talented Dave Ruiz on a brand new responsive photography theme. The whole team is super excited about it (to say the least). Dave has also posted a screenshot over on Dribbble.

When you buy a theme on WordPress.com you get the same quality support from us with the ease of a WordPress.com-managed site. Check it out – and as always, let us know if you have any feedback!

You can also browse all our themes available on WordPress.com.

This round of updates had some common changes for our older themes. In Vigilance, Titan, Traction, Linen, React, Photography, Shelf and Paperpunch we made a few small changes:

• Added styling for the <small> HTML tag – some styles for the wee ones!
• Removed the 12-month limit on the Sitemap page template.
• Removed the footer “stats code” option – it was outdated and we think there are a large number of plugins that can handle tracking scripts better than we can. This means if you’re currently using this option and you plan on upgrading, you’ll need to install a plugin to handle JavaScript tracking – let us know if you have any questions, of course!

All of our themes are getting some updates, and you can learn about those in the changelog files (included with your theme package). The theme with the most changes is our recent release Duet – we’ve gotten lots of feedback and made quite a few fixes, including:

• Made the gallery slideshow available on Pages and non-gallery posts using the [gallery slider="true"] shortcode.
• Changed how column breaks are handled in Internet Explorer, fixing some bugs with how columns display.

Photography also got a small improvement that should speed up load times on newly-created galleries.

In addition to the changes mentioned above there are the normal fixes we make with each update:

• Stylistic updates and fixes.
• Updating our translation templates.
• Code and functionality fixes and improvements.

We hope you enjoy this round of updates! Download the latest package from your downloads page, and check the changelog for specific details for your theme. We love getting feedback on our handiwork – so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to contact us or write a comment below!

It was about time

Now that we’ve moved completely to WordPress all of our content is actually managed by – guess what – a Content Management System! All tutorials, documentation, theme pages and generic content pages (About, Contact, etc) were previously hand-edited HTML/PHP files. Making updates to the documentation involved:

1. Writing the copy locally and committing to Git.
2. Creating and formatting any necessary images and adding them to the Git repository.
3. Adding links elsewhere on the site to the new content.
4. Ask the team to review changes, which meant they had to pull the repository.
5. Deploying the changes and images to the live server.

That meant content and images were generally not visible to the whole team until they were checked into Git, and it created incredible friction when it came to updating documentation. I know I personally avoided adding images because it was such a pain to get things to work “just right”. It was a process that is better suited for code and not content.

New and improved workflow

Now, we’ve simplified our workflow:

1. Write or edit your content and insert images in WordPress.
2. Ask for review if necessary.
3. “Publish” and you’re done!

Most links are managed by WordPress and automatically updated – for example, publishing a new theme immediately makes it available on the theme index page.

Now, there are times where we want to do some local development – maybe Scott wants to test some new headings for blog posts. I wrote some pulldown scripts using Capistrano with the multistage extension to make this possible.

Content (including uploads) is pulled down from the production server to the staging server, which is a nearly-exact replica of the production machine. Then, we pull the content from the staging server to our local machines, which means we can develop locally with a copy of the live content easily.

Before the switch, content flowed from Development → Live. Now, we’ve completely reversed the flow: Live → Staging → Development. This is separate from code changes, which still go Development → Staging → Live (and they should, as Mark Jaquith dutifully pointed out in his WCSF 2011 talk).

The WordPress-powered site removes the friction I mentioned earlier, making documentation and copywriting tweaks quick and easy. We’re now using the full potential of WordPress to power our entire site, instead of only using it for our blog. It’s refreshing to trust WordPress to manage all of our content, because it allows us focus on improving the other aspects of the site.

That’s great, but what’s under the hood?

Our content is broken down into a few Custom Post Types, beyond the normal Posts and Pages:

• Themes – One for each dazzling theme we release.
• Stories – Success tales from our actual customers.
• Tutorials – Documentation and guides for our paid customers.

We use custom taxonomies for each of these Post Types. Currently, the taxonomies are used to decide which Themes/Stories/Tutorials are “featured” in various places on our site.

In addition to the taxonomies, we’re using a handful of custom meta data fields on each of the post types. For example, each Story belongs to a Theme, so we store that with the Story:

Similar meta data is stored for Themes:

Plugins

We’re also using a few plugins to help power the new site.

• Akismet – Foil nasty spammers.
• bbPress – Powers the customer support section of our new Help Center.
• Markdown on Save Improved – We love Markdown, and this plugin makes it easy to use with WordPress.
• Memberful WP – Handles single sign on and integration with Memberful.
• Multiple Post Thumbnails – Use multiple Featured Images in a post.
• VaultPress – Real-time offsite backups of our precious data.

Wrapping it all up

So what does all this WordPress goodness amount to? Well, it has offered a few clear advantages:

• Previously, WordPress only powered our blog. Now, it powers all of our content – and that means that we’re dogfooding it even more, bringing us closer to the experience of most of our customers. Heck, according to the WP 2011 survey most WordPress users have WordPress acting as a CMS only, so we needed to get with the times!
• Our documentation and marketing copy have improved already, due to the ease of revisions. Small copy tweaks that would’ve taken 15 minutes to deploy on the old system take 15 seconds now.
• Reviewing the material before a release used to be a mish-mash of “sharing” methods. Sometimes we’d check it into Git and push for everyone to read and sometimes we’d post rough drafts in Basecamp. Now, we just write our draft in WordPress and publish when a new theme is released. Condensed, consolidated and simplified.

I think the last point can’t be overstated – consolidating your workflow into one place does major things for your productivity. No more lost bits of information scattered over multiple sources. Instead, you have a canonical place for your content, reducing the clutter and allowing you to just…write.

All of this sums up to a much better content publishing experience. Like I mentioned, I used to dread publishing to our site. But now I’m actually excited to work on our documentation posts and to write blog posts like this one.