This is something I have wanted to do for ages – so it’s with a lot of thanks to the team at WordPress.com (Lance, and Ian in particular) that we now have Mimbo Pro available as a premium theme on WordPress.com.

The process took a while. First Darren and I rebuilt the theme – releasing Mimbo Pro 3.0 in the process. We then went through a review process with WordPress.com themselves. They gave us loads of awesome feedback to improve the theme further, and this in turn has been added into Mimbo Pro for our Pro Theme Design customers to make use of.

What does this mean then?

Really it doesn’t change anything. Users here on Pro Theme Design still get awesome themes – and now they are reaching a wider audience we will get more feedback and so be able to update the themes to be even better still.

If you’re on WordPress.com and want a new theme then I’d love to offer Mimbo Pro as an option.

In that time, web design standards have also changed. Instead of retiring the theme, we wanted to give it a makeover and help keep its popularity going—

Improvements include:

• Responsive design for mobile devices
• Web fonts via Font Squirrel
• CSS3 enhancements for navigation, colors, gradients
• Semantic HTML 5 markup
• Inclusion of sub- and sub-sub categories in breadcrumb nav
• Improvements to Custom WP Menus
• “Related Posts” widget uses WP categories, instead of tags

Important to note: Mimbo 3.0 is a standalone product. Significant changes have been made to the core code so it should not be used to overwrite older versions of Mimbo Pro without some breakage. Existing Mimbo Pro users will have access to both versions in the accounts system.

TimThumb is actually an invention of our own – something we originally developed for Mimbo Pro. As soon as the flaw was discovered I set to work fixing as many issues as I could. In the following week I committed at least half a dozen security improvements. The person who announced the issues went so far as to rewrite TimThumb introducing even more new security features.

To ensure that TimThumb is up to date on your website you should either:

1. Update your theme from the accounts control panel
2. Update TimThumb from the Google Code site

The version of TimThumb used on Pro Theme Design themes is always up to date. For releasing theme updates I created a build script. A file that zips up the theme files, updates the translation files, creates the right to left css file for rtl languages, and then updates TimThumb from the latest Google Code source file.

Security has always been a concern with TimThumb and now that there is an extra pair of eyes helping with the code it will be an even higher priority and kept as strong as possible.

Ever since Mimbo Pro, all those years ago, I have wanted to create another magazine theme, but I wanted to try something a bit different.

So, I decided to partner with a friend of mine, Jack, and he came up with the seed that became Byline. To make the theme more unique we designed a clean layout that could be personalized easily. We also introduced the unique concept of coloured categories, not seen before in a WordPress theme. Match that with a flexible homepage design and easy to digest content pages and you have the perfect recipe for a magazine style website.

A Screenshot of the Byline WordPress Magazine Theme

Byline is powered by Elemental and, as with all Elemental themes, it has a wide variety of options and customisations such as advanced font controls, powerful SEO out of the box, and a whole heap of custom page templates.

If you’re running a magazine website and fancy a new look then you check out the Byline info page, the Byline demo, and you can even preview the Byline admin for yourself.

Exhibitor is an Elemental child theme, and makes use of the latest WordPress technologies – such as custom post types – to make managing the website content as easy as possible.

Gallery and Portfolio WordPress Theme

Exhibitor uses TimThumb to intelligently resize your artwork so that they are consistently sized and viewable on as many screen sizes as possible.

Keeping bloggers in mind I also added a blog area to the homepage so that you can post news and updates about anything you like.

Since Exhibitor uses Elemental as it’s parent theme, it automatically inherits all of the benefits of that theme. In particular there are more than 15 custom page templates, and a comprehensive SEO optimisation to give your website the best chance it can have.

One of the coolest features about Exhibitor is the custom colour scheme. Inside the theme admin there is a colour wheel, that you can use to pick the colour scheme to use on your site, giving you a nice easy way to personalise the site. This is on top of the standard font options that are always available in Elemental themes.

If you are in the market for a new gallery theme then you can test it before you buy, on the theme preview site available here.

I just want to let you know that I recently “changed” theme to Pagelines.com’s PlatformPro. I didn’t really have any reasons except the fact that it seemed to bring additional possibilities for setting up the site “differently” (my website). Things went quite alright, but I quickly found the lack of structure in their files (specifically CSS files). This and the fact that I just felt/feel at home with Elemental, made me go back to Elemental rather quickly.

I once again learned that, one really have to know what one wants to show and focus at. The structure of Elemental and its associated child themes simply stand out, and feels good to work with.

So, I’m back to “normal” and still see the number of visitors increase. In tandem, the administration in Elemental is a lot more intuitive and doesn’t require additional tools like Firebug in order to personalize the website.

Reinar uses a heavily modified version of the Elemental child theme Meteora – and I must say, his site looks great.

This time the testimonial is specifically about Elemental and how Reinar finds it easy to use. 2 things I love to hear. It’s great to get this sort of feedback. If anyone else has any feedback, positive or negative, then I would love to hear it.

Dennis from ComedyHype.com - with a Tiger

This testimonial comes from Dennis at ComedyHype.com, a comedy based website that uses Nominate to power the social voting community.

What did you gain as a result of buying Nominate?

Purchasing Nominate allowed me to fulfill my lifelong dream of running a social voting site dedicated to the art of comedy… okay, maybe it wasn’t a lifelong dream, but having a WP theme that does the things that Nominate does, I was more than happy when I found it. In fact, I threw a party with cake and cookies about it… okay, maybe I didn’t throw a party and it was just a regular weekday lunch for me, but I was happy about the Nominate theme.

What specific feature did you like most about Nominate?

The best feature is the one that automatically logs you in to BigChicksNeedLoveToo.com. Other than that, the front page tabs in the main body is pretty cool where you can navigate between incoming posts, top posts for the week, and the blog is pretty tight. Sort of like the aforementioned’s clothing.

Would you recommend Nominate? If so, why?

Is water wet? Do dogs lick their man berries? Of course I would recommend this theme! Although, I must admit that I don’t want to share this piece of gold with the rest of the world. Mine! Mine… all mine! PRECIOUS! If anyone is looking to start a social voting site, Nominate is the way to go… especially if you like big beautiful women.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I have decided that Ben and I are having a virtual affair… and I’m kind of okay with that. KIDDING! Sorry, Ben, but I love vagina. However, in all seriousness, the customer support given by the Pro Theme Design Team is top-notch. I’ve e-mailed several times about something and BAM, solutions were found. And, believe me, I was as annoying as an ex-girlfriend that swears she left her eyeliner on the dresser. IT’S NOT THERE!!! Sorry about the flashback. In any case, Ben’s support was almost as good as my gigantic jock strap and I truly appreciate the inordinate amount of e-mail replies.

Today I am pleased to say that I have finally found, and released, the answer!

Pro Theme Design Preview

The Pro Theme Design Preview is a new section of the Pro Theme Design site, that allows you to create a test site, and then apply any of the Pro Theme Design themes to it. This will let you test the administration panel, and all of the themes features before you make your choice.

Since Elemental, and all of it’s child themes, now include a feature for exporting the theme settings, you can also setup a blog, export the settings (and site data using WordPress export tools) and then use it when you make your final decision (and hopefully purchase a theme!).

The only limitation of the system is that the sites get deleted after 36 hours. Hopefully this will be long enough for you to get a taste of the themes and how they work. If you need longer then you can always create a new site.

Would love to know what you think of the system, and if there’s anything else you would like to see included?

Sometimes the changes are small, simple bug fixes and optimizations, and sometimes they are whole new features – and I am not sure how best to communicate these changes and improvements. I don’t want to turn Pro Theme Design into the Elemental updates blog, so I decided the best way to detail changes and improvements is to create a whole new website just for them.

So, I give to you, the Elemental Hub.

The Elemental Hub, is a blog exclusively about the Elemental WordPress Theme. I will post about new features and improvements, alongside hints and tips, and tutorials for customizing the theme for your own website.

The first handful of posts are going to cover features that I have been working on recently and not mentioned anywhere, and in the future I will post new features as they are released. These feature release posts will include screencasts and screen shots showing the features in action, so there will never be any doubt about what you can do.

The first couple of posts showcase two of the latest features:

• Custom Fonts from the Google Font Directory
• Elemental Theme Settings Import and Export

Just to give you an idea of what you’ll be getting, you can check out the first video I created for the website below.

Let me know if there’s anything else you would like me to feature on the new website, Elemental Hub.

Always wanting to save people money we took them up on their offer. So available now, for all Pro Theme Design customers, is a new series of coupons to get your first month of hosting for just 1 cent on any of the yearly plans from Cool Handle Hosting.

As with all of our partners the offer is now available to view in the Accounts Control Panel. Check out the Cool Handle Hosting website now for more information on the offers and services they have.