The theme started off as an entire website that I created called WPVote.com. The site allows users to register, and then submit articles and vote on their favourites. The idea behind releasing the theme is that anybody can set up their own voting site, on any niche they desire.

Nominate WordPress Theme Screenshot

Who is it for?

Nominate is for anybody who wants to create a user focused social website. It brings the interactivity of a social networks and combines it with the power of WordPress to give you software that is powerful yet easy to use.

The theme requires little technical knowledge and, provided you have a working copy of WordPress, should be easy for anyone to set up and use.

What can it do?

Nominate is an Elemental child theme (Elemental is included for free) which means it inherits all of the power of Elemental. On top of that it has:

• Powerful spam controls
• Custom user login and registration pages
• Ajax voting system
• Ajax article submissions (with captcha)
• 3 colour schemes
• Custom widgets for displaying the latest content
• Multiple Widget Areas

Nominate WordPress Theme Screenshot

Nominate is the public version of WPVote.com, in fact it’s actually the exact same theme that is used on the main WPVote website. The only difference between WPVote.com and Nominate is that I am running a plugin on WPVote.com to give it a unique look.

To make things easier on me I have decided to release the theme in a staggered way, this will keep the amount of support I have to do to a minimum – once I am happy it’s working everywhere I will release it fully.

The initial release of Nominate will be limited to a small group of people so sign up to RSS updates using your favorite RSS reader, or the email subscription box on the right. Alternatively follow us on Twitter or Facebook to get the scoop as soon as it happens.

• First up is an update for all of our themes. This will include some bug fixes, and new features. Elemental gets the most love, but there are fixes and changes for Mimbo Pro, Accumulo, and The Local as well
• Next we have custom menu support. This is a fantastic addition to WordPress 3.0 and adding it to our themes will be a pleasure.
• Finally (for the time being) Nominate will be released. Nominate is the public release of the WPVote.com code. You will be able to create your own Digg style site with your favorite blogging software. The code is almost complete so once the other updates are done this will come out.

I’m afraid I won’t promise any time lines for these updates but the first two should both happen in the next couple of weeks, maybe sooner.

Traffic has increased greatly since the launch of Elemental, The Local and Accumulo in the last 6 months, so Pro Theme has decided to bring extra help to the forums to make your support experience better and more reliable.

Give a warm welcome to Dustin Ward and James Morrison, 2 talented consultants who make their living off WordPress and have done extensive work with theming. They will continue getting acquainted with the particularities of Pro Theme products while Ben and I will continue to oversee things and concentrate on future plans.

Ultimately we could only afford 2 moderators who met all the criteria, but we were pleased and impressed by the volume of applications we received and want to thank everyone who showed interest!

Business at Pro Theme continues to grow! And this means more questions to answer in the forums. Ben and I would like to spend more time on development so we’re looking to hire a forum moderator to help out, for an hour or so each day, Monday-Friday.

What are the requirements? You must be talented and experienced at using CSS, PHP and general WordPress theming. You must also be familiar with the workings of all Pro Theme products, which you will receive for free including upgrades. Priority #1 in the forums is solving potential bugs, and Priority #2 is helping with customization.

Sounds interesting? Drop us an email for more details about pay and support policies.

WPVote

The site is a Digg style community voting site built on the WordPress platform. Not dissimilar in function to software such as Pligg or Drigg (notice a pattern in the naming of these things?) it focuses on the WordPress community and promoting peoples content.

There is a full run down of the WPVote development on my personal site, Binary Moon.

WPVote.com was originally developed by Jean Baptiste Jeung, and he sold it to me late last year so that I could continue the development of it. As well as giving back to the community (by promoting peoples content) my hope is that I can eventually release the theme as a premium theme here on Pro Theme Design.

Noteworthy changes:

• Widget area descriptions, per WordPress 2.9
• Google Analytics code changed to Asynchronous method
• New header-image upload method. Reduces reliance on problem-causing legacy code. Note: if you use the old header image method, it will be reset and you’ll need to re-upload the image. This is a one time deal, and won’t be required again. Apologies for any problems it may cause
• New favicon upload method
• New admin panel branding abilities. You can now add your own header image and footer text. Perfect for designing sites for clients, or for websites that require public accounts logins
• Calendar added to Archives page to enable easier traversal of historical content
• TimThumb updates to latest version which featured stack of bug fixes and improvements
• Improved custom post options which allow for filtering via plugins or child themes
• Fixed Google maps widget (they changed the API which broke the widget positioning – doh!)
• Major improvements and code clean-up added to Sitemap page template
• New page numbers layout for paged content
• Option to hide the home link
• Subtle improvements to caching system
• TimThumb shortcode (more) can now dynamically resize images in posts. Example: [thumb width="" height=""]http://image/path[/thumb]
• New option for “Post Details”s widget so author details can be displayed on pages OR posts OR pages and posts – it’s your website so your choice
• Improved admin bar for logged-in users which includes gravatar and link to user account. Allows for good integration for community sites (such as the upcoming WPVote.com redesign)

In general if you’re looking for information about updates, you can log into your accounts panel and view changelog records there. We are also working to sync up the custom Elemental dashboard widget with the Pro Theme blog. Stay tuned.

Accumulo Live Demo »

Who is it For?

You may be a blogger who likes to write but also need a site that collects niche content from all over the web. Accumulo lets you publish it, excerpt it, categorize it and rearrange it using a custom control panel screen.

Accumulo Theme Options Screen

On the front end, Accumulo provides a clean and easily-customized layout enhanced with smooth, elegant jQuery animations in the tabs, dropdown menus and ‘back to top’ button. Set up Accumulo as as a personal content ‘hub’ and monetize it with ease.

What Can it Do?

The infrastructure of Accumulo mixes Gravy’s clean markup with the premium features and widgets of Elemental. Additional features include:

• Custom page template for Blog and Archives
• Animated multi-level dropdown menus
• Custom control panel options to control tab names and ordering
• Custom widgets for Twitter Updates, Popular Posts, Facebook and more.
• Front-end admin bar for adding or editing posts
• Smooth tab and scroll-to-top animations
• Image thumbnail resizing
• Support for gravatars, author comment highlighting, threaded comments and paged comments
• Full localization and translation support
• Widgetized sidebar and footer

Partners in Health

PIH focuses on providing medical care to the poor in developing countries. They need donations to continue their community-based care model which has helped many countries, especially Haiti, since 1987. They also provide free education programs and improvements to sanitation, clean water and economic opportunities in the communities they serve.

Doctors Without Borders

DWB is an impartial humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in 1971 to serve countries suffering under war, epidemic, disaster and overall lack of healthcare access. DWB is already on the ground in Haiti but lacks sufficient “medical staff, equipment and medicine to properly care for the injured.”

Related Links:

• Boston.com Big Picture: Earthquake in Haiti
• The Help that Haiti Needs
• Text Messages Speed Donations to Haiti
• Haiti Live Blog Updates

So…we’re proud to announce that Pro Theme Design has relaunched with a new look and improved documentation! That includes screencasts and FAQs, plus a new Elemental child theme called The Local. We also have plans for a few more themes and goodies we hope to launch before Christmas, so stay tuned.