I’m going to be releasing a new free WordPress theme called Green Piece. There’s a preview available now but the download won’t be available until Monday. I’ll make another post here when the theme is available.

In other WordPress theme news, I’ve been tweaking things a bit on this site for the last few days. Those of you reading this via the RSS feed might want to stop by to see the changes.

I’ve made the sidebar twice as wide so now I can have the popular square banner ads (currently advertising sites I like or own). There’s a new rotating header as well that highlights posts and articles on this site I think are especially interesting to readers.

I’ve checked it out on Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 and things seem ok. It’s a little wonky in the latest Safari release but I’ll be slowly getting around to fixing it up as time allows.

This week’s featured WordPress plugin is Comment Relish by Justin Shattuck. Comment Relish is a genius plugin that sends an automated email to anyone who leaves their first comment on your blog.

I first came across Comment Relish when I left a comment on Jamie Harrop’s blog and a few minutes later receive what appeared to be a personalized email from Jamie thanking me for visiting his site.

Using the simple admin panel shown below you can construct a simple “Thank you” email or a more elaborate response to your first time commentators to drive them back to your site or convince them to subscribe to your RSS feed.

You can expand on your email message with Comment Relish by using some of the following tags:

%AUTHOR% - Author’s Name
%AUTHOR_URL% - Author’s Website
%AUTHOR_EMAIL% - Author’s Email
%COMMENT% - Comment Posted
%ARTICLE% - URL to Article
%COMMENT_ID% - Comment’s ID
%FEED_RSS2.0% - Website’s RSS 2.0 Feed URL
%DATE_SHORT% - Short date (eg: 5/25/2006)
%DATE_LONG% - Long date (eg: May 25th, 2006)
%DATETIME_SHORT% - Short datetime (eg: 5/25/2006 10:58:35AM)
%DATETIME_LONG% - Long datetime (eg: May 25th, 2006 10:58:35AM)

If you know of a WordPress plugin I might like to feature on the site please contact me.

My post on useful WordPress plugins was one of the most popular posts on this blog during December. I thought I’d start a regular Sunday feature that highlights one plugin that I recommend WordPress users check out.

The first plugin I’ll be featuring is called Link A Dink by Dax Herrera. Link A Dink is essentially a giant search and replace for your blog. It has a simple admin panel that lets you replace words in all of your posts with whatever you’d like but the main motivation is to replace words with links. For example, I could setup a rule that replaces any occurrence of the letters “FSGS” with this: Fore Score Golf Stats. You could use a rule like that to save you some time writing posts.

If you’re the type of person into selling links on your blog then this plugin could prove to be quite valuable. You could sell links to keywords within all of your posts for a fee and then maintain the sold links with Link A Dink.

There are other plugins that provide the same functionality as Link A Dink but some of them are commercial products with pretty ridiculous prices. If you’ve been looking for a simple search and replace plugin then you should give Link A Dink a try.

If you know of a WordPress plugin I might like to feature on the site please contact me.

Small Potato, the man behind the extremely popular WPDesigner site, was nice enough to answer my questions about premium WordPress themes.

The premium theme Small Potato currently sells is very different from the rest on the market. The theme, called Showcase, is built specifically for portfolio or design gallery sites and not your typical blog. It comes with a variety of color schemes and layout variations as well.

In addition to Showcase, Small Potato has released a large number of free WordPress themes and theme tutorials on his site.

What prompted you to begin selling your premium WordPress theme?

I wanted to try something new.

How do the number and type of support requests a premium theme is generating compare to the requests you receive for one of your free themes?

Initially, I expected to be bombarded with questions since my own premium theme was far from anything in the market, but so far I’ve been getting only one to two questions, every two weeks.

For premium theme authors out there or those wanting to get into paid/premium themes, a few support questions here and there every two weeks isn’t realistic. You have to keep in mind that I’m currently selling only one product with a very detailed ReadMe file.

Detailed ReadMe files or guides tend to help filter out the newbie questions.

I assume there’s a larger sense of responsibility when dealing with premium theme support. Do you sometimes feel like you’ve signed on with dozens of clients all at once?

Fortunately, no. Although, it’ll be like that in the future for every premium theme author if we don’t create detailed guides for the clients and encourage community support.

Premium theme support is not something you can easily outsource so the best help you can get will be from the users. Take the WordPress.org forums for example, the administrators and moderators don’t have to sit around all day to answer every questions. The users help each other troubleshoot.

Would a new level of commitment alter your plans for future themes in regards to features, release schedules, etc.?

Although my one and only paid theme is a success, I have no plans to continue selling individual themes that focus on function — themes that push WordPress blogs beyond their current limits.

What are your thoughts on the notion of an official theme marketplace that was mentioned by Matt Mullenweg at the beginning of November?

Actually, I wrote about it on my site.

With the crackdown on sponsored themes and sponsored links, do you fear the premium theme market will be flooded with WordPress designers looking to make back lost revenue?

I don’t think so. Selling sponsored links for a free theme is much easier than creating your own product for sale. You can quickly whip something up, but are people going to buy it?

Without giving away any personal trade secrets, what have you found to be the best methods of promoting your premium theme?

I haven’t promoted my theme at all, not even a dollar spent on it. I guess the secret is to build yourself from the ground up by releasing free themes and writing WordPress tutorials. Those two things are useful toward establishing trust. Your readers get to know who you are, what you do, and your level of standards. Eventually, those readers become customers.

Do you have any tips or words of advice for WordPress designers thinking about entering into the premium theme market?

• Do some research. Find out what will separate you from the rest of the premium theme authors.
• Create something that you can be proud of. “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.”
• Worry about how you license your products.
• Don’t pay someone else or an external website to manage your transactions and deliveries. There are lots of scripts out there that can handle digital products for you. For example, WHMCS (typically used for web hosting, but it works the same way.)
• Write detailed and thorough guides, installation instructions, and usage instructions.

As usual, I want to offer my thanks to Small Potato for answering my questions. Be sure to check out his site, WPDesigner, for excellent themes and WordPress tutorials as well as his premium theme Showcase. This was the fourth in a series of interviews with designers of Premium WordPress Themes. If you’re interesting in keeping up with them all I suggest you subscribe to this site’s RSS feed.

Magnus Jepson creates free and premium WordPress themes under the PremiumPress name. His premium themes, PortfolioPress and GrungePress, differ from most in that they focus on offering exceptional and unique looks with standard WordPress features. In addition to his premium works, Magnus has several free themes available as well.

What prompted you to begin selling premium WordPress themes?

I had been doing freelance web designs locally in Norway, which doesn’t get you that many jobs, especially since I didn’t market myself. I really wanted to increase my skills as a web designer, but grew tired of redesigning my portfolio X number of times. So I started designing a couple of free themes and made a site to showcase them. I saw how popular they were and thought I would try to put out a paid theme and hopefully sell one copy in the first month. I sold one the first day and immediately started designing my second premium theme.

How do the number and type of support requests a premium theme is generating compare to the requests you receive for one of your free themes?

I haven’t sold that many themes to generate much support yet, but there has been a few emails. Most support has gone to my free themes via comments and emails.

I assume there’s a larger sense of responsibility when dealing with premium theme support. Do you sometimes feel like you’ve signed on with dozens of clients all at once? If so, has that new level of commitment altered your plans for future themes in regards to features, release schedules, etc.?

My premium themes are more focused on the design rather than having extra features. They are therefore easy to setup and don’t require much from the customer. My commitment to release more themes has been altered, but only because I have received numerous custom design jobs that have taken up my time so far.

What are your thoughts on the notion of an official theme marketplace that was mentioned by Matt Mullenweg at the beginning of November?

One of the hard parts of being a custom theme designer is getting noticed. This would obviously be a great chance to get some traffic. Taking 50% of the sale price sounds quite much, but that is the price you have to pay to get noticed. I think Adii’s idea of a hybrid marketplace is good, where you design some themes for Matt’s marketplace and some for your own site. I want my themes to be available to people who aren’t on WordPress.com as well.

With the crackdown on sponsored themes and sponsored links, do you fear the premium theme market will be flooded with WordPress designers looking to make back lost revenue?

I do think we will see more and more designers trying to sell their themes, and I think there is a big market for it. But spitting out themes that look like all the rest will not get any revenue. Good designers will make it in the premium themes market. Bad designers trying to get rich quick will not.

Without giving away any personal trade secrets, what have you found to be the best methods of promoting your premium themes?

I would say the best method is by designing free themes as well as premium themes. They get lots of traffic if they are posted on Weblog Tools Collection. I have also started putting some money back into advertising on sites about Wordpress.

Do you have any tips or words of advice for WordPress designers thinking about entering into the premium theme market?

Start out with making some free themes, and see what feedback you get. Just because you can make a Wordpress theme doesn’t always mean it is worth more than a free theme. If you are already a good web designer then I would jump on the bandwagon immediately.

I’d like to thank Magnus for taking the time to answer my questions. His premium and free themes are all available at PremiumPress. This was the third in a series of interviews with designers of Premium WordPress Themes. If you’re interesting in keeping up with them all I suggest you subscribe to this site’s RSS feed.