Charity Ondriezek, of Design Adaptations, is the subject of my latest interview about premium WordPress themes. Her premium theme is called Cornerstone and is on sale now. She also has a variety of free themes available on her site as well.

What prompted you to begin selling premium WordPress themes?

Creating a premium theme was something I had in the back of my mind for quite a while, after having seen a few others try. I wasn’t convinced there was much of a demand however, until I saw how successful Brian Gardner’s Revolution theme was. Then I knew there was a predominantly untapped market. I figured the timing was right.

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?

Surprisingly, there hasn’t been a significant difference. That means one of two things… either I’ve done something quite right in the building of the theme, or something very wrong! The jury is still out on that one.

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?

I definitely feel a stronger sense of responsibility. For the most part, releasing a free theme affords the luxury of doing so on an “as is” basis. Some fixes and updates are necessary for the theme to stay on par with Wordpress itself of course, but there’s very little to do once a free theme has been released. With a premium theme on the other hand, I feel obligated to provide detailed email support when requested, because I consider it part of the theme purchase.

If so, has that new level of commitment altered your plans for future themes in regards to features, release schedules, etc.?

I’m really excited about the potential in themes right now and I absolutely plan to release more, both premium and free. Cornerstone has been a great learning experience… it has given me a basis for comparison for future projects. Hopefully I can refine my process (and my product) with each theme I release, and gather some happy customers along the way.

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

I think there’s too little information right now to go on. I think a 50/50 split (if it’s true) is inappropriate, but Matt has a tendency to be shadowed by rumors wherever he goes. So until he sheds more light on the subject I’ll refrain from further comment.

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?

There’s always the possibility of saturation, but I don’t see that scenario being too troublesome for serious themers. The people who were involved in sponsored links are typically looking to make the largest ROI for the least amount of work… creating (and supporting) a premium theme does not fall into that category based on my experience. It’s not a get-rich-quick enterprise.

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

I’m still experimenting with ideas for promotion. So far, reviews and mentions on others’ blogs has brought in much of the traffic Cornerstone has received. Stumble gave it a boost as well.

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

Sure, start from the beginning. Be proactive in learning as much as you can about theming, then release a few high quality free themes to use as a launch pad. Spend some time aligning yourself (in a sincere way) with prominent individuals in the WP community. There’s a lot to be said for building relationships in this arena.

I’d like to thank Charity for setting aside some time to answer my questions. Her Cornerstone theme is available for purchase now. This was the second 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.

Adriaan Pienaar, better known as Adii online, is a South African designer who has recently jumped head first into the premium theme market for WordPress. You can find some of his WordPress themes for sale at Unique Blog Designs and his most recent release for WordPress is called Premium News Theme. Adii was nice enough to take some time to answer a few questions I’ve been posing to a handful of the more popular WordPress designers selling premium themes.

What prompted you to begin selling premium WordPress themes?

My main motivation was my desire to establish a more passive income stream and in such a way diversifying my revenue streams.

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?

Oh, it is definitely a lot more intense and insane - plus, since the client has paid for the theme, you are OBLIGATED to support him / her and iron out their issues. Providing the support is probably the worst part of the job, but is also probably the most important aspect of becoming a successful seller.

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?

For sure… Every morning when I get up, half my unread messages are from clients that need support / help with with customisations of the Premium News Theme. One way to soften this “blow”, is to establish a support forum where clients can basically help other clients - unfortunately I’ve not had time yet, but I will be adding that in the near future.

If so, has that new level of commitment altered your plans for future themes in regards to features, release schedules, etc.?

I think the only influence the “added” support has had on my plans, is to shift the main emphasis in developing the themes to the quality thereof - I will thus be releasing less different themes, but invest heavily in the quality of its back- and front-end. A high quality theme will also result in less support queries from clients…

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

I’m definitely not opposed to the idea of a official theme marketplace, but until Matt & co has announced more concrete plans (with details), I would rather not be drawn into a discussion about a marketplace, where we need to speculate about the exact details.

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?

Maybe… But I don’t think that everyone is capable of releasing premium themes, as the coding, design & support needs to be top-notch to get recognized in the community. A lot of small-time designers got into sponsored themes for a quick buck - whereas premium themes is not about a quick buck - instead you need to work REALLY hard to generate a return on your money & time invest.

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

Word of mouth… Nothing beats a glowing review by a satisfied customer!

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

Work your way up to it - you can’t just enter the community as a premium theme designer, when you have not built up a reputation yet, as the community will not trust you enough to spend money on your work.

Once again, I’d like to thank Adii for taking the time to answer my questions. This was the first in a series of posts and interviews related to Premium WordPress Themes I’ll be making here. If you’re interesting in keeping up with them all I suggest you subscribe to this site’s RSS feed.

Whenever someone writes a post about their favorite WordPress plugins they usually list the most popular plugins everyone already knows about. In the interest of sparing the Internet from more praise for Akismet and FeedSmith, I’ve put together a short list of my four favorite WordPress plugins you may have never heard of.

Clutter Free

Clutter Free, by Mark Jaquith, is a simple little plugin that allows you to hide parts of the WordPress posting interface. I use it to hide parts of the admin this site’s theme doesn’t use like excerpts and custom fields.

TD Word Count

This is probably my favorite plugin on this list. TD Word Count adds a tab to your WordPress dashboard that provides you with detailed word count stats for your entire site. This plugin tells you the average number of words per post, the total word count for all of your posts combined and even provides a display of your posts you can sort by date, word count and title.

Theme Test Drive

From the “Why didn’t I think of this?” Department at i am jack’s design comes the Theme Test Drive plugin by Vladimir Prelovac. This plugin is essentially a theme switcher with one clever catch. When you’re logged into your site under the admin account you can see a totally different theme than what your regular visitors see. This is proving invaluable to me right now as I work on a new theme for this site. I’m a huge fan of this plugin and recommend it to all of the WordPress designers out there.

WordPress Reports

The last plugin on this list is WordPress Reports by Joe Tan. This plugin downloads visitor data from your Google Analytics and Feedburner accounts then displays it all with charts. It’s like a one-stop shop for all of your nerdy statistical needs.

After upgrading this site to the 2.3 release of WordPress I began receiving a database error every time I tried to save a new post or make a new comment.

The error looked something like this: “WordPress database error: [Table 'wp_post2cat' doesn't exist]” and then usually a complaint afterwards about header output already being sent.

After some research I figured out the problem was with one of the various plugins I was using on this site. The actual culprit turned out to be the 2.7.1 release of the Google Sitemap Generator. A quick upgrade to version 3.0.2.1 and the error went away.

If you’re also having a similar problem with your WordPress installation, I suggest you start troubleshooting the problem by deactivating all of your plugins and then re-activating them one at a time until you find out exactly which one is causing the error.

I use MagpieRSS a lot when I’m trying to parse RSS files with PHP. It forms the backbone for the spider that drives all of the sites that make up Jack’s Sports Report as well other small tasks here and there. For example, I use MagpieRSS to parse weather feeds for Fore Score Golf Stats so our users can get real-time information on their local weather and the conditions at their favorite courses.

There’s a major competitor to Magpie in this space called SimplePie that a lot of people prefer. Development on Magpie has basically stalled since late last year while SimplePie improvements have been coming fast and steady for awhile. You probably can’t go wrong using either one. I stick with Magpie mostly because it’s what I’m familiar with. Magpie is also built straight into WordPress now which might be advantageous to a lot of plugin developers.

A person could most certainly write their own RSS parser using PHP5’s XML functions. I prefer using a library because it handles most of the dirty work for me and it saves on time.