It’s been about a month since we launched now, and it’s been fantastic. We’ve gotten a great reaction from everyone and far more of you have signed up and purchased themes than I ever expected!
It’s been a crazy month as well though. We’ve put out several updates to the themes, added new features to Chameleon, and helped out with dozens of customization and support questions. For anyone who knew me through Pro Blog Design first, you might also have read that the past month was my final month of university and exams. I’m finally free to work on PliablePress 100%!
Well, almost.
I’m going to the Cook Islands for 2 weeks on Sunday (Will be back on the 29th). Most of you will probably be heading off on holidays to every corner of the world over the next few months as well, but mine were a little poorly timed so soon after the launch, sorry!
When I get back though, it’s going to be full throttle on development from the first of July, and that is what I want your help for.
What Would You Most Like To See?
There’s no shortage of ideas bouncing around! I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the most popular ones we’ve heard so far, and any other you might have. This is what we have in store for you:
- Release MyBiz – Really, we were supposed to have released this theme already. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to finish it when I get back. You can definitely expect to see it in early July though!
- Design Controls – The PliablePress control panel lets you control just about every piece of content on your page. The next stage is to move into design controls, letting you tweak the appearance further, without looking at CSS. We’ll most likely be looking for testers and feedback as we build this, so current customers will get an early preview!
- Oracle Upgrades – Oracle has been our most popular theme so far. A popular request has been for more control over the grey column of posts on the homepage (e.g. listing the most commented posts, using a tag, or excluding those posts from the main post list). These upgrades will be available for all our Oracle customers over the Summer! We will also be looking into re-adding the “sticky” navigation feature from WordPress 2.9 to work with the new WordPress 3.0 menus as well.
- Custom Header Image – Probably our most popular customization request is from people wanting to replace the header with an image of their own. One great example of this being done perfectly is on Loribudin.com. We’re going to make this much easier for you, so you will be able to do it all from within the control panel!
- Advertising – Naturally a lot of you want to make money back from all the work you put into your site. At the minute, all of our themes can have ads added to them just like any other theme can. We want to take this a step further though, highlighting key areas that ads will fit into each theme and making them simple to add (Not yet sure if that means we’ll custom-build an ad-system for you, or integrate tightly with an existing plugin).
And don’t forget that all of our themes come with free upgrades for life as standard. So if you purchase a theme at any time, you will get everything mentioned above as soon as it’s released!
No Support for 2 Weeks
The major downside of being the only person on the support team is that there is no-one to replace me when I’m away. I wish there was another way around this, but PliablePress is just too new for anyone else to have experimented and played with it enough for them to step in.
Hopefully, if you have asked any questions so far, then you’ve been pleased with the response you’ve gotten. What I can promise is that that will continue to happen, and every single question will be answered when I get back.
So, what features would you most like to see? Help me set my battle plan for development when I get back, and I’ll see you all in 2 weeks!
Oscar said:
Great roadmap Mike! I’m looking into the features, and I look forward to your planned enhancements in time for my purchase and launch of my site in July. The sooner the enhancements arrive, the better!
12th June 2010
Michael Martin said:
That’s awesome Oscar, it’s great to hear that you plan on joining us!
I will be starting into this all as soon as I get back on 30th June, and I’ll be putting out each update as soon as it’s done, so you should start seeing progress on the list very early on in July!
(And all of our upgrades are free for everyone, and easy to do, so no matter when you set up your site, you’ll get all the benefits of these updates as we release them!)
btw – If you have any questions at all about how I can help you out with the site, feel free to email any time! (Just don’t expect a reply for the next 2 weeks of course, sorry! ;) )
12th June 2010
Oscar said:
Hi Mike,
Are you planning to add the features to add “Like” (thumbs up), “Dislike” (thumbs down) and Star rating (1-star to 5 stars) to the control panel. so we can add these interactive reader-rating icons/features to articles in the blog?
This is what I’m actually looking for. I know there are plugins available that will provide these functions, but if they can be incorporated in the control panel and seamlessly integrated into our blogs, that would be fantastic!
Looking forward to it.
4th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Hi Oscar,
Thanks for getting in touch with the idea. I’m afraid ratings aren’t something we have in store for the near future though.
They can be a great addition to a site, but it would have to be a fairly specific site (One built for reviews).
There’s a good chance that we could build that functionality into certain individual themes, but possibly not for all themes (e.g. themes like Creative Soul where it just isn’t likely to be used)
Like you said though, there are a lot of good plugins out there that you can easily add to your theme!
5th July 2010
Oscar said:
Hi Michael,
I’m interested in both Oracle and Chameleon, and it would be terrific if you’ll be able to integrate ratings (star and/or thumbs up/down) and related statistical functionality to them.
Truth is, I’m also looking into one of WooThemes’ magazine themes and evaluating what WooThemes has feature-wise. But I really like Oracle’s layout – I think it’s the best I’ve looked into so far.
Thanks!
6th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Thanks Oscar, I’m really glad to hear you like Oracle! (Chameleon comes free with every purchase, so if you bought Oracle, you’ll end up with both themes!)
If you’re looking to set this sort of theme up now, I’d be more than happy to recommend you a ratings plugin and show you how to integrate it with Oracle. We’ll have no trouble getting you set up!
And we have a 30 day moneyback guarantee, so if you don’t like the integration, you have 30 days to change your mind with no loss!
What do you think? If Oracle’s design and layout really is your favorite, I just don’t want worries over this to hold you back from it, we can definitely get you set up! :)
7th July 2010
Tim said:
Michael,
Great the see the progress you are making. I hope the combination of your themes and my new site really work out well together. I am looking forward to the additional features.
An idea for another theme: A classified ads theme. I have purchased one and am not too crazy about it. If you like the idea I would be happy to give you some ideas of what I am looking for.
12th June 2010
Michael Martin said:
Thanks Tim, always interested in hearing thoughts and ideas. I’d definitely love to hear about what you’d like to see in a classifieds theme. My email address is michael@pliablepress.com – send me an email when you get the chance, might end up being able to build something you’ll love from it!
Sorry it’s taken me so long to write back to you about this by the way. Just back now, and still jetlagged. Just replying to a few messages like this now, then into support messages tomorrow!
29th June 2010
Basilakis said:
Your Framework is really interesting. Al tough what would make me a buyer, would be a better style manager. And i mean it, a better one. To keep the CSS coding as less as possible!
5th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Thanks Basilakis. The framework doesn’t have a built-in style manager yet. It’s definitely getting one this Summer, but I’ve been holding back on it a little because of what you said; it really needs to be done well.
It’s very easy to throw together a simple style editor that doesn’t make things make easier than just writing CSS anyway.
I’ve been sharing my ideas with customers in the support forum already and it seems to be going down well. Keep an eye here in the months ahead, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well once I have some concrete plans for it published here!
7th July 2010
Raize said:
Unique themes targetting specific fields. ie. real estate agent, musician, consultant, web designer, etc.
6th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Thanks for the thoughts Raize! Specialty themes can be some of the most fun to make, so that’s no problem! ;)
Did you have any thoughts on what you’d want to see for each of those?
e.g. Real estate is pretty obvious, but in your opinion, what would make a theme really suited for a consultant or a web designer? :)
7th July 2010