Mimbo Pro was first released just shy of two months ago and both Darren and I have been overwhelmed by the response. To celebrate the reception of the theme, and the May day bank holiday we have decided to run our first sale. For the whole of today, the 5th of May, we will be offering 40% off of the full price of Mimbo Pro.
In order to make the most of our offer you should enter the coupon code “cincodemayo” when you get to the checkout page in the store. Press the update button and the price will be altered accordingly.
Note that this discount will work on both the single and multi site licenses so go for whichever one you think is most appropriate.
Hope you all have a good bank holiday, I’m going to be spending mine away from the pc (this post was written on Thursday last week 
).
The most common support items for Mimbo Pro are to do with the TimThumb script - and minor problems with it’s usage. Below are the three things that fix the problems with the image resize system.
- The scripts/cache folder needs to be given the permissions 777 in order to save the cache files. This speeds up the image serving which in turn makes your server happy.
- The custom field key is case sensitive. It must be “Image” not “image”
- The custom field value for the image path should be relative to the site root. This means you should not include the http://sitename.com bit, but include everything else.
- On some server setups the .htaccess file found in the scripts folder can break things. If this happens then renaming/ deleting the .htaccess file should fix things. Make sure you try all the other suggestions first.
With any luck the suggestions above will solve your Tim Thumb related problems. If not then you can still contact us through the help ticketing system.
When I started Pro Theme Design I was thinking about what I wanted it to be and, whilst I wanted to sell Premium Themes, I also wanted to expand my knowledge, and the first way I am going to do this is by designing, and giving away for free, a free icon set.
Well this is it, Circular. In creating the set I learnt an awful lot about icon design, both technically and creatively - and will talk more about this on my personal website. Some of the icons I’m really proud of, and others could do with some work. I can promise you I don’t (often) make the same mistake twice, so my second set will be immeasurably better
As you can see I use some of the icons on this site, and hopefully someone out there will be able to make use of them in some way.
You can get more details and the download on the Circular icons page.
Been a couple of weeks since an update. In that time we’ve done a fair amount of support on the forum, and it’s taught us a lot about what people want and how people use the theme. We’re going to be updating the faq to reflect the problems people have had.
Yesterday I made the stupid mistake of upgrading this blog to Wordpress 2.5 without making any backups, and something went wrong so the blog stopped working for 20 minutes. Thankfully it was simple to fix (reupload the files) but there were a few minutes of mild panic.
Mimbo Pro Updates
This weekend we spent some time working on the next Mimbo Pro update. It’s our intention to keep the updates few and far between but obviously if important things crop up we’re going to fix them.
This update includes one minor html change, some improvements and bug fixes for the recently open sourced TimThumb, and some changes to the admin to fix Wordpress 2.5 display bugs.
In order to send out Mimbo Pro updates we have set up a Google Group. We did this because the Plimus email system is less than stella, so we are now asking all users to sign up. Hopefully Google will send you all an invite soon, but the invites have to go through a verification process to make sure we’re not spamming people. The group is invite only so have your order number to hand so we can verify it’s you signing up.
We plan to release the Mimbo Pro 1.2 update within the next 24 hours so I would suggest signing up to the group soon as the information for getting the update will be announced there.
More Payments Options
One of the things we’ve been asked for is more payment options. Specifically an upgrade option, and a price for charities. We now support both charities and upgrade. Simply submit a help ticket asking about them and we will send you the necessary information.
Today we sent out the first update for Mimbo Pro. We were hoping to stick to only updating to fix bugs but we had some ideas for new features and couldn’t resist adding them.
An abbreviated version of the changes is…
- new control panel options for carousel count and page/ categories in top navigation
- full gif and png support for timthumb
- fixing timthumb bugs
- fixing wp-head plugin hook issues ad author image problem
- a couple of other small fixes
The new features are the ability to adjust the number of items visible in the carousel, and the ability to swap between displaying categories (the default) and pages in the top navigation. Both small changes but welcome too.
The other big fix is Timthumb. For those who don’t know Timthumb is the script that crops and resizes images on the site. As well as some bug fixes Timthumb now supports pngs and gifs properly. Also, as mentioned yesterday, Timthumb will soon be made open source and released for free on Google code. We’re just trying to decide what license to use and then it will be released.
The forum has also seen huge growth, with people both looking for help, and giving it.
Note: the updates and accompanying newsletter will be sent out Thursday, March 20th. Anybody hasn’t received a copy after that day should contact us through our brand new support ticketing system.
When I came up with the idea of Pro Theme Design I wanted to do two things, 1 make money from kick-arse premium themes, and 2 give something useful back to the community. So when I read that Matt Mullenweg, the man behind Automattic, said he thought that Premium themes were holding back the community - I felt a little hurt.
So I ask him why and he explained to us (Mike, Alain, and I) that the current state of selling WordPress themes aren’t helping the community grow, which defeats the purpose of WordPress being open source. How are other theme authors going to learn from your themes if you’re only giving them an option to buy them? [source]
Obviously his statement wasn’t directed at us since at the time we hadn’t released anything, however it is now relevant - so I thought I’d write a post explaining why - for Darren and I - it’s not the case.
New Code
One of my objectives with my premium themes is to develop top quality themes with top quality code. I also want to innovate creating new features not before seen in Wordpress. Part of this development has led to me creating a number of plugins (with more to come) that I have open sourced and even host on Wordpress.org - currently a small selection but there’s more to come.
When developing Mimbo Pro Darren came up with the idea of creating a thumbnail script that sizes and crops images saving people time and effort. It sounded like a great idea so with the help of one of his work colleagues timthumb was born. Since then it has been tweaked and adjusted and is soon to be released as an open source project. It will also be seeing use in Adiis upcoming Premium Wordpress themes.
New Tutorials
So there’s plugins and a widget, but something else both Darren and I like the idea of, is creating a series of tutorials explaining some of the more advanced features we developed for Mimbo Pro. I have been posting Wordpress Tips and Tricks on my own website for some time, and it’s a tradition I intend to continue.
There are plenty of ways to give back to the community and still make a profit. My intention is to try as many of them as possible.
A long-awaited, full-featured magazine/news theme for Wordpress — Mimbo Pro is finally here!
Already familiar with the original Mimbo? Imagine no more manual template editing, no more Photoshop, no more image-cropping or FTP’ing. Plus a built-in contact form, image gallery, custom archive pages, breadcrumbs, ad management, Feedburner and Google Analytics options, and more. Enjoy using Wordpress like a CMS, now more than ever.
Product & Purchase Details, Live Demo, you can even Buy it Now, and talk about it on the forum.
When you’re working on your website it is often best to test locally and then upload to your website. Either that or you should have a test site of some sort. Working on your website whilst it’s live is just asking for problems (as I’ve found out a number of times… I’ll learn eventually).
To test on your local computer requires a few things.
- A copy of Wordpress - easy, grab one here
- A decent text editor - I like PsPad but you can use whatever you prefer
- A local webserver - this is the most complicated bit but is worth doing so read on to find out how.
Local Webserver (EasyPHP)
I should probably also point out that this post is a guide for getting set up to develop themes on a pc - sorry Mac and Linux users.
Download a webserver package. You want one that includes a server (normally Apache), and installers for both MySQL and PHP. There are many of these packages around but my fave is EasyPHP (although it hasn’t been updated in a while). Click here to download EasyPHP. If you have one you prefer then please do let me know in the comments.
As the name suggests it’s very easy to use EasyPHP. Just run as you would any other installer and it’s there. Now run the app (start->EasyPHP etc) and yourlocal copies of Apache and MySQL will be started up. You can now browse your brand new local webserver from the wonderfully titled url - http://localhost/
Note - you may find that you can’t start Apache if Skype (or some other network based software) is running. Just turn off Skype then start EasyPHP. You can restart Skype afterwards with no problems.
Once you have the package downloaded and installed you need to get Wordpress up and running so open up your previously downloaded version and extract it to your new local directory (most likely c:\program files\easyphp\www\ ).
Before setting up Wordpress we need to create a database. To do this open up the EasyPHP window and administration. This will take you to the admin panel on your localhost (probably - http://localhost/home/) from there click “mysql manager”, and you will be taken to a copy of phpMyAdmin which has rather nicely been installed for you. From the phpMyAdmin splash page create a new database making sure to remember the db name/
Now you can set up Wordpress using the fabled 5 minute install. Browse to the new Wordpress folder - http://localhost/wordpress/ and follow the instructions. EasyPHPs database defaults are host: localhost, username: root, and the password is blank. You can also enter the name of the database you just created.
If you were currently setting up a proper website then you should create proper mysql users and use nice strong passwords. Since this is for testing locally I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort.
Once complete you are good to go. Just treat the wordpress folder as if it were a remote website folder. You can install plugins, and themes, through windows explorer and start work on your local development. There are however some more changes you can make that will make the whole process even better still…
Permalinks
To make the most of your blog, you really should enable permalinks, which means enabling mod_rewrite on the server. Most web hosts have this turned on, but it’s something you will need to do yourself with your new local server. To do this run EasyPHP and click the “E” on the control panel. Select configuration -> Apache. This will open the httpd.conf file. Now search for and uncomment (uncomment means remove the #) the following two lines.
- LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
- AddModule mod_rewrite.c
Restart Apache, rewrite your permalinks (from the wordpress admin) and you’re all set.
Let me know how you get on in the comments.