Brian of Elite by Design has discontinued the sale of his previous theme, but has released an even better theme in its place.

The theme provides an extensive options page to easily configure and customise your site:

• RSS & Feedburner Integration
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Blogroll, & Portfolio
• One-Click Logo Integration
• Automatic Image Resizer for post thumbnails
• Background Customization (choose a brushed steel or transparent background, plus 15 colour schemes and patterns)
• Advertisement Management
• Social Bookmarking and Networking Integration (Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Mixx, and Del.icio.us, plus Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube)
• Valid Code
• Widgetized Sidebar

Demo | Purchase | Single-Use: $74.95 | Multi-Use: $199.95

To celebrate the release of this theme. anyone who purchases a copy by 16 May will also get a 20% discount. Simply use the coupon code “elitebydesign” at checkout to claim this discount.

Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.
Paul Strand

With the plethora of magazine-style premium WordPress themes out there already, one of the smartest things a theme developer can do is identify a niche business area which could benefit from an easy way of establishing their online presence. NetRivet has developed the ProPhoto blog theme, which is aimed at Professional Photographers.

Omitting the sidebar allows the blogger to feature 900px by 600px images for maximum impact. Of course this theme would also be ideal for artists and designers who’d like to show off their work.

This theme is endorsed by several testimonials and a gallery featuring several customers using their theme, and is well-supported via an FAQ, Tutorials, a Tips page and direct email support.

A 30-day 110% money back guarantee is offered so if you’re not totally happy with the theme they’ll give you a full refund plus 10% for wasting your time. So if you’re interested in this theme you’d have nothing to lose by trying it out.

Specifications:

• Single-column layout, optimized for 1024px width screen resolution
• Flashfader slideshow in header
• Widget-friendly footer area
• Custom bio area
• Inline comments via integration with the Ajaxd-WordPress plugin
• Excellent online documentation, including video tutorials on how to install WordPress.
• Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
• Requires WordPress version 2.3.2 or greater

Demo | Purchase | Do It Yourself Package: $99 | Handheld Installation Package: $169 | Handheld Installation & Customization Package: $299

As the pièce de résistance of their range of WordPress Themes, Daily Blog Tips have created a magazine-style premium WordPress theme called NewsDen with an array of advertising options.

Features:

• Advertising Options:
  a) Header Leaderboard (728×90) Integration
  b) 300×250 ad unit on the sidebar
  c) 120×600 unit on the middle column of the homepage.
  d) 125×125 ad options in the sidebar
• Related Posts Styling
• Single Post Page Subscription and Social Media Section
• 2 Templates for Pages
• Search Engine Optimization

Demo | Purchase | Single-User License: $67

Jai of Blog Oh Blog has given the popular Bob theme a revamp, though to the disappointment of some of his readers, the third version of Bob is not a free theme.

Bobv3 has a traditional blog layout, which shows post excerpts on the home page, but includes some non-traditional navigation effects.

Features:

• Homepage Mootools accordion post navigation
• Optimized for Search Engines
• Best posts sidebar transition effect
• 125×125 ad ready
• Tabbed Sidebar Content
• Category Drop Down Menu
• Integration of WordPress 2.5 Gallery
• Gravatar Ready
• Valid CSS and XHTML code
• Widget Ready Sidebars
• Subscribe by E-mail Feedburner Box
• Tags Ready
• Custom 404 Error Page
• Full Post-Sales Support

Demo | Purchase | Single-User: $89.99

Brian Gardner recently announced the launch of a new website focusing on themes for Real Estate Agents. He plans to release one theme a month on this site, which will not be connected to the Revolution themes, though Revolution customers can enjoy a 50% discount on any Real Estate Theme purchases that they make.

The first theme offered on the Real Estate Themes website is the Colonial Real Estate Theme.

Homepage

Listing Page

Blog Page

Demo | Purchase | Single-Use: $79.95 | Multiple-Use: $199.95

The website also offers a wide range of support options for clients, including domain registration, theme customisation, search engine optimisation and content management, making it a one-stop shop for Real Estate Agents wishing to establish an online presence.

First we had the Video Dream Theme, then Video Elements and VideoFlick were released. In recent days the Quommunication Video theme and TV.Elements by Jason Schuller have also appeared on the scene; both themes look quite similar, so how can you choose between them?

Quommunication Video

TV.Elements

Both themes have a dark colour scheme, with a main video window, javascript-powered navigation carousels for easy browsing of other available content, and post text located under the video. Neither theme requires external plugins, as the required coding has already been integrated into the theme, both are widget-ready and provide gravatar support in the comment area. Both themes are compatible with the most popular video formats (e.g. YouTube, MetaCafe, MySpace, Vimeo Facebook, etc).

Quommunication Video provides ajax-commenting, the navigation area supports four category headings and if you run into trouble the theme is supported via a busy forum. I really like the minimalist elegance of the main window, though I wonder whether the comment form should be hidden until requested by the visitor.

TV.Elements uses a drop-down menu for selecting post categories, which is useful if you intend to use more than a few categories. Using the menu requires a page reload, which may become tedious for frequent visitors (I wonder if Jason might work on that in an upgrade). The navigation area shows video thumbnails, which are more attractive than the text-only carousel in the other theme.

TV.Elements features five unique widget-ready sidebars so that you can have differing sidebars on your your Home page, Category pages, Posts, static Pages, and Search pages. The theme also provides 5 buttons on the left of the video window: Share (with links to social networking sites), Comment (linking to the comment form), Embed (to reveal the video embed code), Subscribe (to RSS), Read (to move down to the post text). The Subscribe button on the demo only seems to link to the feed for the particular post that you’re viewing, but that can be easily fixed.

And the price? A single-site license of Quommunication Video costs $95, while TV.Elements is nearly half the price at $50. That might be enough to make up your mind. I’d advise anyone interested in purchasing a video theme to try out both demos and figure out which one suits how you’d like your site to work. TV.Elements is certainly feature-packed, especially for the price, but you may prefer the simplicity and minimal page-loads of Quommunication Video.

So which would you choose? I’ve set up a poll below, or let me know in the comments.

Quommunication Video: Purchase | Demo | 1 Site License: $95 | 5 Site License: $175 | Developer License: $295

TV.Elements: Purchase | Demo | Single-Site License: $50 | Multi-Site License: $125

Tim Waddell of Mediatricks has created an exciting range of WordPress plugins that enable you to easily integrate images into your blog. Tim kindly allowed me to try out two of his image manipulation plugins: Viva Thumbs for custom sizing of thumbnails, and Viva Carousel Posts Edition for inserting a scrolling gallery of your post images.

Viva Thumbs

The download of Viva Thumbs provides the plugin, the thumbnail processing file, sample image manipulation files and a comprehensive 12-page tutorial.

There’s a small amount of work required to set up this plugin, but once it’s completed, producing thumbnails for your posts is child’s play. The sample image manipulation files are already configured for Revolution themes such as Revolution Magazine or Revolution Pro Media, and specific instructions are provided for the Revolution themes and the free Unstandard theme.

I tried out the plugin with Revolution Magazine. On its homepage the magazine theme has a central featured category section with small thumbnails of 70×70. By linking to the provided “middlebar” file the first image uploaded to the post will be resized to those dimensions. A larger thumbnail of the post image can also be used for the featured post section by using the “featured” image manipulation file.

If you’re not using a Revolution theme, the tutorial also provides instructions for creating your own image manipulation files. The script is one of the most powerful that I’ve seen, allowing you to perform multiple manipulations on the same image, for example, you could resize, crop, and rotate an image all at once. You could even apply a reflection effect to your images too.

If you’d like to try out this plugin for yourself, you can try the demo.

Purchase | Single-Site License: $14.95 | Multi-Site License: $49.95 | Theme Developer’s License: $149.95. Each purchase includes support and upgrades.

Viva Posts Carousel

If you like the recent post carousel featured in the Mimbo Pro theme, you’d definitely like the Viva Posts Carousel, which shows thumbnails of the images used in your most recent posts in a scrolling vertical or horizontal interface. The plugin was an easy install: simply upload the files, then insert the required code where you’d like the carousel to appear. You can customise the carousel’s appearance and functionality by following the instructions provided in the tutorial file.

Purchase | Single-Site License: $14.95 | Multi-Site License: $49.95 | Theme Developer’s License: $149.95. Each purchase includes support and upgrades.

Viva Gallery Carousel

Mediatricks has also released a Gallery Carousel plugin which facilities a gallery of the images uploaded into your media gallery that can be included in your homepage or your post pages, and links to the full size image via an ajax lightbox.

Purchase | Single-Site License: $14.95 | Multi-Site License: $49.95 | Theme Developer’s License: $149.95. Each purchase includes support and upgrades.

Viva Random Image

Last but not least, the Viva Random Image plugin displays a random image from a directory of your choice, resampled at your specified size with an optional reflection effect.

Purchase | $14.95

Viva Bundle

Save money by purchasing the Viva Bundle for a discount of 35% off the combined price of Viva Thumbs, Viva Carousel (Posts and Gallery Edition) and Viva Random.

Purchase | Single-Site License: $39.95 | Multi-Site: $150

Forthcoming Plugins

Keep an eye on the Mediatricks site for more information about the forthcoming plugins User Pics Gallery Carousel and Viva Blogpins:

• The User Pics Gallery Carousel, will be ideal for community-based sites with a large membership. The plugin provides an Ajax admin facility for easy image approval.
• The Blogpins plugin will enable travelling bloggers to create a pin map of their posts, by adding their geographical co-ordinates to each post. The plugin will also automatically thumbnail an image to the map if one was added to the post.

Here are my 5 favourite site designs (in no particular order) featured here during April, all of which have also received a rating of at least 4 out of 5.

Grandmaster B | Milk It Theme

Outlaw Design Blog | Revolution Magazine

Simple Mom | Thesis Theme

Quiet Radical | Omni Theme

Words Aloud | Monochrome Theme

I’m currently considering setting up a sideblog as a nice way to publish all the interesting premium theme news that I come across each week, but I haven’t found a solution that suits me yet. In the meantime, here’s some recent premium theme news:

Premium WordPress Theme Responsibilities: Kyle Eslick discusses his views on what premium theme creators should provide to ensure customer satisfaction.

CelebrityPress theme sneak preview: MediaCore Studios offer a preview of their sexy forthcoming CelebrityPress premium theme.

Plans for the Future of Design Adaptations: The creator of the Cornerstone theme provides an insight into her forthcoming new themes (Cornerstone Press and Solidarity), plus Cornerstone 2.0.

Vibrant New Theme Concepts: Adii gives a sneak-peek of his new Vibrant themes. My favourite is the VibrantCMS.

iThemes Reviews: Andrew of Fun with WP has a long look at these iThemes offerings Essence, Photo Gallery plus Biz Card Theme, Corporate Theme, Deep Order Theme and the Grunge Theme.

The Purple Fever Theme by WordPress Themes Market is now free to download.

Coming Soon: Premium WordPress Theme For Churches: Patrick Daly plans a premium theme for churches. It’s an interesting idea; does anyone remember Vandelay Design’s recent post about church websites?

Chris Pearson’s Thesis Theme has been upgraded to version 0.3., which provides some useful extra features such as a dynamically generated navigation menu, the option of having a video instead of a rotating image above the sidebar. He’s also made some improvements to the styling and css, configuration setup, and SEO of the theme.

Sam Burdge is currently working on his 76 digital remix theme, which he is using on his blog at the moment and plans to release in the summer. The theme will be available in three formats, and will offer an array of innovative features, such as feed aggregation, sliding navigation and comments, and lightbox integration.

Blog Perfume, an invaluable WordPress resource site, has just released its first premium theme, entitled Blubs.

Despite the unusual name, Blubs is an elegant theme with an aesthetic use of whitespace.

Features:

• 2 columns flexible layout
• Navigation Dropdown Menu
• Widget ready sidebar
• Ready for 125px and 250px ads integration
• Separated comments/trackbacks
• Built-in gravatars in comment section
• Print.css stylesheet
• Author Profiles & Archives
• Clean & valid codes - XHTML 1.0 Strict + CSS 2.1
• Cross browser compatible - tested on IE/Win, Opera, Firefox, Safari/Win

Demo | Purchase | Single License: $49 | Developer License: $99

The Omni Theme is a recent release from Bryan Hauer.

The theme is available in four distinct colour schemes (Original aqua/brown, Black, Pink and Tan), each of which give the theme a very different feel and potential audience.

The theme’s funky design would make it a perfect fit with socially-minded bloggers, who would be able to take advantage of its integration of their flickr pics and other social networking profiles.

This double-sidebar theme provides the usual tabbed content interface, a featured video area and flickr pics thumbnail integration.

Omni Theme is WordPress 2.5 compatible and purchase includes lifetime theme updates as appropriate. Hauer provides a support forum, but also offers optional customisation for $95/hour.

Demo/Purchase | Single Use (1 colour): $79.99 | Multi Use (1 colour): $199.99 | Multi Use Developers Pack: $299.99

In between releasing numerous free themes, Jai of Blog Oh! Blog has also released a few quality premium blog themes, none of which are magazine themes.

The most recent themes are in the Modblogger theme series, which is available in tech and news varieties.

Both themes offer the following functionality:

WordPress 2.5 compatibility
Inbuilt Gravatar support
Page-based dropdown menus
Stylish formatted Tags
jQuery based Accordion to display featured news/products
jQuery based Custom News/Gallery scroller
125×125 banner support
Breadcrumbs enabled
Custom Author information box beneath every post
Alphabetized posts on the categories page
Pagination of the blog posts
Recent posts, recent comments, separate Comments/Trackbacks
Two widget-ready sidebars
Fully XHTML compliant
Soothing Orange and Grey colors with an appealing layout
Complete post-sales support

Tech Demo | News Demo | Purchase | Single-Use: $89

This theme is enhanced by the use of a BBC Style News Ticker and a jQuery based scrollable News Section.

Demo | Purchase | Single-Use: $79.99 | Multiple-Use (5 Maximum): $280.00

This attractive blog layout is aimed at money-making bloggers, but would be great for bloggers writing in any genre.

Demo | Purchase | Single-Use: $49.99 | Multiple-Use (5 Maximum): $150.00

Fresh News is the latest theme released by the Premium News team, and was mainly designed and developed by Magnus Jepson.

The theme features:

• 6 colour schemes
• Automatic Image Resizer
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
• Author Profiles & Archives
• Featured news section
• Video Panel
• Traditional Blog Layout Homepage option
• 2 Featured Post Homepage options
• Optional aside/sideblog sidebar section
• Navigation Dropdown Menus
• Sidebar Tabbed Box
• Widgetized sidebars
• Integrated Banner Ad Management
• Integrated Flickr & Feedburner

Demo | Purchase | Single-Use $99.95 | Developer’s License: £249.95

The iThemes team has released a new theme to enable small businesses and entrepreneurs to host an online store.

The Ecommerce theme includes 6 colour schemes (Black, Blue, Green, Grey, Girly Pink, White) and is optimized for Search Engines.

Demo | Purchase | Single Use: $49 | Developer Use: $199

iThemes has also just announced the launch of a new All-Inclusive Developer’s Package, which includes all nine of their current range of themes (Essence,
Grunge, Photo Gallery, Industrial, Biz Card, Corporate, Brochure, Deep Order and Ecommerce) for $399.95.

Jason Schuller of WPElements has released his Video Elements theme, which is primarily aimed at video bloggers.

The home page may be presented in a linear or a gallery view.

The theme features:

• Integrated MediaBox video window, which supports YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, FLV (Flash) Video, Quicktime and Windows Media Video formats
• View videos via homepage thumbnails, or via individual post pages, the choice is yours
• Coverflow of featured videos at top of page

Demo | Information/Purchase | Single Site: $25 | Multiple Sites and Credit removal: $75

Jason has also released his VideoFlick gallery theme, which is provided in black and white colour schemes, and with a choice of two thumbnail sizes.

Demo | Information/Purchase | Single Site: $25 | Multiple Sites and Credit removal: $75

Brian Gardner has just announced the release of a new Revolution Theme for Real Estate Agents, which is simply called Revolution Real Estate.

The theme offers the following features:

• Homepage sections: Featured listings, About Me and Recent Blog Posts
• Dropdown Navigation menu
• Sidebar Contact Form
• Real Estate Listing Page template

Demo | Purchase | Single-Use: $79.95 | Multiple-Use: $199.95

Plus, to celebrate the launch of this new theme, Brian’s also reduced the price of his All-Inclusive Theme Package to $299.95 until midnight (CST) on Wednesday 9 April.

I’ve been entered into a contest run by Alpha Blog Designs to win a custom theme design.

If I win I’ll give one of you the chance to win this custom design for your own blog, so why not vote for me now?

The contest ends on Friday 11 April.

Chris Pearson, creator of the popular Cutline theme, is preparing to launch his premium theme marketplace: DIY Themes.

The first theme offered by DIY Themes is the Thesis Theme, a clean and well-coded framework which features quality typography, a dynamically resizable layout, tight optimization, and a lot of flexibility. This theme has been in use at Forge Louisville for the past six months, so it’s been well-tested before its public release.

The pre-launch price is $67, which provides the purchaser with a lifetime subscription to any theme updates. This introductory price will surely increase, so if you fancy this theme don’t delay.

Subsequent to the recent release of the Limewire Theme series, Adii’s Premium News team has ironed out various minor bugs and added a dynamic image resizer to their entire range of themes.

There’s now also an All-Inclusive Developer’s Package priced at $499 to allow designers and developers to use any of the seven Premium News themes for projects and client work. Adii’s currently running a contest for a chance to win a developer’s package by blogging about the contest, and revealing which theme is your favourite and why.

My personal favourite is the Flash News Theme, as it’s so elegant, yet so feature-packed.