xScape 1.4.3 features new set of icons for ShareThis module, and also new widget. Facebook module is expanded with LikeBox widget allowing customization of page to like, and all settings supported by Facebook widget control. Rest of the themes will be updated in the next couple of days.

lightScape theme had some styling issues, problems with ad in the header and problems with displaying widgets with the front page layout template.

To see themes and framework in action, visit the WordPressMU powered demo website and get your own blog to see who the framework back-end works:

Demo Site:
http://xscape.info/
lightScape:
http://xscape.info/lightscape/
airScape:
http://xscape.info/airscape/

Front Page: Lights Style

Theme number 5 is now released. This is feature packed theme called lightScape, with 14 color styles, different footer configurations, features posts sliders, top header with another menu, adjustable content background transparency and much more.

Dev4Press website will be soon redesigned and will use variation of this theme with custom styling.

You can see full long list of features and screenshots on theme pages, or try it for yourself on the xScape.info website. In the next 2 days you can expect videos explaining theme features and exploring the procedure of setting and using the theme. Until then, you can check out many existing videos for xScape framework or previously released themes.

To see the theme features and read more about it check the main theme page:

lightScape Info:
http://www.dev4press.com/themes/lightscape/

lightScape Screenshots:
http://www.dev4press.com/themes/lightscape/screenshots/

To see the theme and framework in action, visit the WordPressMU powered demo website and get your own blog to see who the framework back-end works:

Demo Site:
http://xscape.info/

lightScape:
http://xscape.info/lightscape/

Media Button

On all images controls in all xScape panels, you will see a new icon (image on the right) with folder on it. This will open well known media manager and you can use it to add images, upload images or use existing images from manager. This can be used for post specific images also. This will simplify use of images and allow you to use existing images without reuploading.

Avatar is global setting. Once you upload it and activate it, it will automatically override WP avatar settings. This will be used as default avatar for users that don’t have own Gravatar set. New xScape has some bugs fixed and improved Blueprint support for some very interesting things used in lightScape theme.

Test all themes, including the beta version of upcoming lightScape, and try them with a free test drive, for both front end and back end:

Demo Loader: http://xscape.info/load/
Demo Home: http://xscape.info/

From now on, all themes will go through Beta phase before theme is released here. This will help to better test the theme and make it more stable. Also, we can use this period to make new default styles, so you can also suggest color palettes or enhancements.

lightScape Beta features new version of xScape and several new features: Use of WP media dialog to upload or use images from media library, Upload and use default avatar, global settings and improvements to Blueprint support and implementation. Also, several bugs are fixed, mostly with Menu Designer.

xScape.info Demo Website:
http://xscape.info/
lightScape Beta Demo:
http://xscape.info/load/?theme=lightscape

Basically, most of the BuddyPress themes you can find on the Internet are child themes of the default BuddyPress theme. These themes add own images and own styling, with maybe changing footer message, and that’s it. You still have the same default theme that you get with BuddyPress with tweaked colors and images. Making these child themes is easy and doesn’t require modifying any of the actual templates/php files. But, creating theme is more than just changing colors, and doing so with WordPress is far from easy, or even user friendly.

But, making new theme that will have unique look is very, very complicated. To make things worse, there are no tutorials, no documentation (well, there is some documentation, but nothing really useful for making full theme) and the only thing you can do is to analyze the default theme and experiment. Main problem with this is the complexity of the BP theme, that goes way beyond normal WP theme. Default BP theme has 62 PHP files (default WP theme has 18 PHP files), and getting clear picture on what happens where, how templates are used or loaded.

To be honest, BP 1.2 theme code and organization is better than previous major versions, but it’s still way to complicated. Also, a full theme made from scratch for BP 1.2.x may not even work with BP 1.3 or BP 1.4. And that’s just unacceptable for a system that should work for years to come and have relatively easy maintenance cycle. So, you invest a lot of time to make full theme, and after few months when new BP is released, that theme is not working. That’s just not something that developers and designers want to hear. Even minor changes in WordPress major versions are usually subject to debates and how that will affect existing plugins and themes, I guess that BuddyPress is still not that big for their developers to take into account that other users expect some continuity in the code base.

No matter how good BuddyPress is and how important for WordPress is, it’s still not mature enough to ensure some sort of development security for developers that want to invest time to make plugins or themes that will work with BP. Until the BP code base becomes stable enough for something like that, we are not going to see many original themes that support BuddyPress.

So, back to xScape. I still plan to try to make a theme that will be compatible with BuddyPress. But, I am not going to make separate themes for WP and separate for BP, that must be a single theme that will work with or without BP installed. I am not sure when such theme will happen, but I started some work on it already.

For a Weblog post and all the comments (including several I made) check out their post:

Trend for 210 – Paying for plugins: http://dv4p.com/hc

So, why should you pay for plugins? Or themes for that matter? For years most of the plugins (with very, very few exceptions) for WordPress were available for free. The same goes for themes, but about year and a half ago that changed, and several designers and developers decided to release so called premium themes and change for them. And during this year they modified their business model to include the GPL for the themes and practically shift focus to support for the themes. And from what I can see, that concept works great and more and more themes are in fact premium themes. And they are, no doubt about it, much, much better from the most free themes (with very few exceptions). Key word in all that is again support, and free themes are basically provided without any support at all (again with very few exceptions).

And, for the past year I use only premium themes, mostly from Woothemes or ElegenatThemes, and this site is made on the base of The Station theme from Woothemes. I don’t mind paying for quality, for fast support, after all all that takes time, and in the end that is not free.

In the past several months we have witnessed the same thing starting with plugins, with few developers started charging for their plugins. With launch of the WPPlugins website we got first payed plugins market. I am not going to talk much about WPPlugins website, but there are many things that are wrong with the way they work and is actually against my idea of how premium plugins should be provided to the end users.

Main reason I decided to start this new Dev4Press and launch several premium plugins is the fact that providing quality support for plugins takes a lot of time, and in the end I don’t have so much free time aside the freelance projects I work on.  It all started with GD Star Rating, and I really tried to provide as much help as I could with tutorials, documentation forums, and after all that users wanted more. So i tried to help on the individual basis by taking on some minor integration projects. And that was successful, but still idea is to have support that can be widely used. And after a while, I made several more plugins I provided for free, and they also have grown and again support became a problem.

So, I decided to stop with free support. If I can’t provided quality free support, than I will not do it, simple as that. And I expanded some of my plugins with additional features that will available only with Pro versions, even written one new plugin (Pro only), and I plan to dedicate most of my time to making WordPress plugins and provide the best quality support I can. Also, all plugins are available with few different packages that have different prices allowing users to find what is best for them.

And why the payed, or premium support is better solution? Imagine that you are building a site for a client (and you are payed to do it), and you are using a free plugin with free (and very limited) support. And, at one point, this plugin breaks down (no regular updated, or bug fixes). Your whole website is not in problems. You can try to replace it or fix it yourself, but that is not usually that easy. Best way is to contact author of the plugin and ask for support. In most cases even if you get response from the author, it will take maybe even weeks. And what you are going to say to your client: hey, this plugin broke, and I need to wait for the support, so we need to delay website for few weeks. Hell no! You will try to find someone to fix it as soon as possible, and you will pay a lot for that. It would be much cheaper if the plugin has premium support.

Just for fun, contact authors of each of the plugins you are using on your blocks (maybe 30 of them). I am sure than at least half of them will not respond at all. A third will respond after a week or two, and maybe 4-5 will respond sooner. But almost no one will be able to help you exactly when you need help. And that’s why is good to have premium plugins around, and give users a choice to pay for the quality. And labeling pluign as premium doesn’t mean that support will be any better, and that’s something all developers need to work on, to raise the quality and to justify the payments and really help their clients.

What you will get from Dev4Press if you decide to buy our plugins (and soon themese)? Regular updates, nightly builds and quick bug fixing releases, premium support forum, email support (development subscriptions), tutorials (both text and video) and extensive documentation. And on top of that, you will be able to influence the development using suggestions box and follow regularly updated roadmaps for all plugins. And be sure that I will release at least 3 new plugins in 2010, and two of them are already in the planning stages.

So, to summarize, paying for quality support is something that will definitively happen, and next year will be critical for this new business model for our beloved WordPress. Tell me what you think.