Premium theme creators Woothemes take time to talk to us about what they do and why Wordpress rules the roost.

Adriaan Pienaar – co-founder and designer at WooThemes

Woothemes are creators of undoubtedly beautiful WordPress themes. They currently have a stable of over 20 themes, with more planned for the very near future. We talk to Adriaan Pienaar about WooThemes, WordPress and get a little insight into the world of creating and developing unique WordPress themes to grace the screens of the Web loving masses. You can view the fabulous WooThemes WordPress gallery at woothemes.com and grab your free set of three premium themes on this issue’s cover CD!

WD: Could you tell us a little about WooThemes, who you are and what you do?
AP: WooThemes – a WordPress themes club and marketplace – was founded by myself, Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester and we’re a little more than a year old now. We basically design and develop a minimum of two WordPress themes every month and then release those templates to our club members or make them available for individual purchases via our website. WooThemes is currently the biggest themes club of its sort (for WordPress) and in future we hope to include templates for other CMS platforms as well.

WD: WordPress has become something of a phenomenon over the last couple of years. How has this affected demand based on your own experiences?
AP: We’ve definitely experienced a very steady (and sustainable) growth in the demand for our themes over the last year. Since WordPress is such an easy-to-use platform, with a community of happy users marketing it, your ‘Average Joe’ online tends to try it out ahead of their other options. So considering that the focus of most WP users are on the ease-of-use thereof, I think we’ve established ourselves with a niche offering (easy-to-use, out-of-the-box themes that can be heavily customised if need be) that has allowed us to grow along with WP’s general growth.

WD: As experts in your field what tips do you have for designers who are interested in creating WordPress themes. Plus, what styles are currently in vogue and how do you see theme styles evolving over the next 12 months?
AP: I must admit that it took us a while to really understand (and we still find ourselves surprised sometimes) what our users are after. Creating a theme that’s going to be used by multiple people each with different design tastes is never easy, as you’re trying to create something to fit everyone’s needs, while also creating something to satisfy only certain requirements. So I think beyond the function/purpose of a WP theme, one needs to ensure that the code base is superior and basically stays out of the way of the user who wants to modify the theme. As for theme styles; this is something we continue to experiment with on a regular basis. In the past, we released themes that were very multipurposed, but as our themes library grows (from 22 themes currently), we’ve found that users are after our more niche purposed themes. Magazine-style designs are still very popular, as are multimedia ones, but our users are requesting more and more business themes instead.


COMING SOON!! WEB DESIGNER PODCAST EPISODE 4 WHERE WE TALK TO MARK FORRESTOR ABOUT WOOTHEMES AND WORPDRESS