As a theme developer, there are situations when having some extra buttons on the content editor can come in handy. WordPress provides the mce_buttons_3 hook, which allows you to add buttons to a third row on the visual editor.

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. Read more

Today we’re super excited to introduce Foundry Pro, a new subscription based pricing option. Foundry Pro gives you unlimited access to all our themes, tutorials, and support for a one year period. You’ll also get instant access to new theme releases and a cool Pro badge next to your name in our Help Center. We’re kicking it off with an introductory price of $125 per year. Introductory price is no longer available, now $249 per year.

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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.

We’re excited to announce that our latest release, Chalk, is now available for WordPress.com sites and blogs!

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.

It’s that time again! Every so often we take a look at our accumulated bug lists, feature requests and bag o’ tricks and make a round of updates to our themes. Our goal is to always be improving and cleaning up our themes to make sure everything is working just wonderfully. At The Theme Foundry our themes only get better with age – no rusty and dusty old themes lying around here!

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At a small company, the “Jack of all trades” is often more valuable than the “Master of one”. Each team member must wear a number of hats at any given time. When I’m helping our awesome customers I wear my support cap, and when I’m working on themes I put on my coder helmet. Previously, my least favorite hat was the documentation ushanka – the “docushanka”. Bulky, uncomfortable, and when you wear it, you know you’re going somewhere unpleasant. But, that all changed when we rolled over to our new site.

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We’re extremely excited to announce Chalk; an innovative WordPress theme for the twenty-first century teacher. Chalk is crafted to bring the classroom environment online, and includes some exciting features to do just that: to-do lists, class conversations, podcasts and video lectures. Grab it today and start bringing your lessons to life in a dynamic and interactive surrounding.

Chalk features a beautiful responsive design, which means students have the flexibility to access class content on-the-go, from the convenience of their iPad, iPhone, or mobile device. This makes it easy for you to stay in touch with your students, wherever they might be.

To learn more about Chalk’s features and specifications, stop by the theme page. Also, don’t forget to check out the live demo and the video feature tour.

A huge thank you goes out to Rachael Baskerville for allowing us to use her amazing photographs on the demo site!

I’d like to tell you a quick story. A story about a website, actually. You might even call it a “coming of age” tale.

Behind every good website there’s a person (or people) and, in many cases, a business. And behind every rework and redesign, there is a reason – a “why” before the “how”, if you will. I wanted to touch on that a little bit. Don’t worry – we’ll get to the custom post types, bleeding edge this-and-that and JavaScript whizbangs for you propeller heads before long!

But first, let’s review the story up to this point.

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While reading Warren Buffett’s 2011 letter to shareholders this morning I was struck by this passage (discussing the insurance business).

Many insurers pass the first three tests and flunk the fourth. They simply can’t turn their back on business
that their competitors are eagerly writing. That old line, “The other guy is doing it so we must as well,” spells
trouble in any business, but in none more so than insurance. Indeed, a good underwriter needs an independent
mindset akin to that of the senior citizen who received a call from his wife while driving home. “Albert, be careful,”
she warned, “I just heard on the radio that there’s a car going the wrong way down the Interstate.” “Mabel, they
don’t know the half of it,” replied Albert, “It’s not just one car, there are hundreds of them.”

Warren Buffett. 2011 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report.

Great message, and it further reinforces our decision to shut down our affiliate program. It takes an independent mindset to successfully operate any business, whether you’re selling WordPress themes or ice cream cones. In either scenario, following “the other guy” is surely the fastest way to the bottom.

This past weekend we flipped the switch on a major overhaul and re-design of The Theme Foundry website, and guess what, we’re excited!

The new website represents months of hard work by the whole team, and we are all proud to see it finally go live. Below is a quick overview of the changes, along with some fun facts about the new site.

• Powered by WordPress, bbPress, and Memberful. We were previously using a medley of static pages, WordPress, bbPress 1.0 Alpha, and aMember.
• The layout is responsive, built with HTML5 using a mobile-first approach.
• We’re using web fonts, specifically Brandon Grotesque and Proxima Nova.
• The theme itself is built with Forge, our handy command line tool for developing themes with Sass and CoffeeScript.
• We completely overhauled our Help Center, focusing on ease of use and better documentation. We hope you enjoy it.
• We added a Customer Stories page, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the new website. Be sure to check it out.

We’re planning to share some more details about decisions we made and tools we used in some upcoming “From the workshop” posts, so stay tuned.