Looking for a slick theme for your PremiumPress powered website?

Coming very soon will be a range of themes for PremiumPress suitable for both CouponPress, DirectoryPress and Shopperpress.  Stay tuned for more info.

Theme Sneak Previews: CouponPress Ice Blue and DirectoryPress IceBlue

Premiumpress Ice Blue by AzzX

I have been dabbling a bit with the creation of a coupon type savings site based on a particular genre and have been trialing a few different scripts and plugins.  The last one I tried was a script called BACS php coupon script, which allowed you to create your own coupon stores along the lines of RTN and its popular brethren.

The issue I had with this script was the limited feature set, as it was missing basic features like RSS, Expiry date functionality and the lack of updates for some very significant issues.  Whilst searching good old Google, I came across CouponPress which is a plugin and theme environment for WordPress.

Don't let the fact that it just a WordPress theme because quite frankly, Couponpress is outright fantastic.  The fact it sits on top of WordPress gives you the best of both worlds, 1 it is easily the best coupon script I have found and 2, it works with WordPress making customisation, integration and design an absolute pleasure.

CouponPress Features

• Ready Out of the box.
• Easy Administration.
• No programming required
• integrated ‘social booking marking’ tools
• Complete Store Management
• Google Analytics tracking integration.
• Aweber integration options.
• Plugin and widget ready
• SEO Friendly, the list of functionality just goes on and on.

Ironically there is a coupon code available for CouponPress which is constantly updated on CouponIce Australia and yes this site runs CouponPress.

A significant part of my decision to use Joomla in the past for some of my websites was due to the excellent assortment of themes available at RocketTheme. The monthly designs are excellent and make a perfect starting point to develop your own online identity.  The community at RocketTheme is also worth mentioning as they are the most helpful and knowledgeable group of designers and coders you could find on any site.  A great community.

The OpenSource CMS Joomla is not for everyone and not suitable for various types of websites, so it is extremely exciting to see Rockettheme and their fabulous themeing capability move into the WordPress theme arena.

RocketTheme's WordPress Theme Club is a new club based on the highly popular Joomla Template Club. It provides WordPress themes that can either be used along side an existing Joomla site or as for a stand-alone WordPress blog.

Some features:

• Multiple Preset Styles on each theme
• RokBox
• W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional. W3C CSS Valid
• Widget variations, styling and positions
• A unique Color Chooser making it simple to change your sites look.
• RokMooMenu or Suckerfish menu abilities.
• And Heaps more...

The WordPress Theme Club starts at $50 for 2 domains and access to all their themes.  RocketThem also allow Developer solutions for small business or web developers who have the need to use many RocketTheme WordPress themes as a basis for their client production.

Available RocketTheme WordPress themes:

RocketTheme also have some of the best looking PhpBB3 themes available with their phpBB3 themeclub:

One Theme are currently slashing 50% Off all their themes.

Years ago when I first ventured into Open Source content management platforms like Joomla and Drupal, I came across the Rockettheme premium theme site.  Damn the designs were nice, and tailoring theme to suite your needs was just so easy.  An extremely helpful community made

I was never happy with the Joomla platform as a whole and such design ability seemed wasted being limited to the one open source CMS platform.

That is until now, WordPress is now coming to Rockettheme. From Andy Miller, founder of the Rockettheme Theme Club:

We have many thousands of happy customers but some of those customers don't just work with Joomla, they work with other platforms such as Drupal and WordPress. Rather than focusing on one solution, they deploy the platform that best suits the needs of their clients and customers.

These themes are actually running on WordPress:

Rockettheme WordPress Themes

An interesting post has been made on the WordPress blog which doesn't ask the question whether themes are GPL but instead reiterates the fact that: Themes are GPL, too This is also the complete opposite to Joomla's stance on the very same issue.

There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion.

The response from  James Vasile of the Software Freedom Law Center:

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

Personally, I think if you buy a theme for a GPL CMS, you are paying for someones artistic ability - and that should definately not be GPL'ed.  A theme requires GPL code in order to work with an Open Source CMS - thats just the way it is.  The official WordPress response seems to display the fact they do not want anyone making money from their product in the way they would like.  I am open to anyone who can explain why I should not think in this regard.

Brian Gardener, the creator of some spiffy wordpress themes with his studiopress collection has  intruiging perspectives on the topic:

PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

It seems that even before the posting of the response that Matt was given from the Software Freedom Law Center, other developers such as iThemes and WooThemes had already decided it was wise to move their licenses over to the GPL.

There you have it.

And as Matt puts it, WordPress has chosen to celebrate those who are developing GPL themes with a brand new Commercially Supported WordPress Theme page. Which, of course is a follow through to a promise that Matt made nearly a year ago.

This also clearly illustrates Matt’s view that people can (and will be endorsed if they do it with the GPL License) make money using WordPress.

Fair enough I suppose, though this does seem like a contradiction of the GPL licence as a whole - Remember the whole raging Joomla gpl extension debate?

Also check the Woothemes response.

WooThemes are probably one of the biggest premium theme makers available for the WordPress blogging platform with some of the slickest designs around.  No need for any coupon or promo code, the guys are offering 4 themes for one to celebrate the launch of WOO2 website redesign.

We decided that we'd spoil all of the WooThemes fanboys and -girls again, with another amazing 4-for-1 promotion to celebrate the launch of WOO2. It's the same as before: buy any theme and get another 3 themes absolutely free of charge.