Welcome to the new Styled Themes website for 2014! At first glance, you may have noticed a few things have changed…actually a lot of things have changed, including a complete new colour scheme with softer and darker tone. Of course, this is just the visual side of things because behind the scenes, a lot of things have changed as well.
Some features are new and others have simply been rebuilt from the ground up whether it’s the layout or the fact that we’ve implemented a new membership system, Styled Themes is ready to take on 2014! There will still be more to come with this site and with the ongoing popularity, more themes are planned — with one already in development to be released in January.
Things that Changed
As previously mentioned, a new look and style of Styled Themes was done. Although the overall design is similar to the previous 2013 version, this one is softer with a darker colour scheme. But there are other changes that happened:
- New Colour Scheme
- New typography changes
- New layout
- New Joomla cms version (I use Joomla for the site, not WordPress)
- New Membership system (more on this in a moment)
- Updated the site template to Twitter’s Bootstrap 3.0.3
A New Membership System
In mid-summer, I changed the membership system to one I had a lot of faith and trust in and for the most part, it worked very well. There were a few adjustment bugs to work out with the change, but eventually things were solidified for everyone and I thought this would last a long time.
Unfortunately, the developer of the extension (plugin) I switched to has experienced problems in trying to manage several popular extensions with updates and maintaining support for each one. He made an announcement on their website that due to these restraints, they reluctantly decided to end development with new versions and support by summer of 2014. Because of this, it creates a serious problem with keeping the membership system up to date for Styled Themes, therefore I had to make the decision to change it.
However, the change to a new membership system will not affect existing members and you will still be able to log into the site, get support, and access member only areas. But, just as before, if you run into any login or access problems, please contact Styled Themes with your username and I will reset your account. The great thing though with this new system I setup is that it has a lot more features and it also makes it easier to renew and/or upgrade your membership at any time.
Things that are New
Aside from the changes noted above, there are some new things that I’ve incorporated:
- A new membership system
- New site search
- New Tag search
- Announcement notices, such as new theme updates
Things that Will be Changed or that will be Added
- Theme tutorials will get an overhaul, plus new theme releases will include both written and video tutorials
- A testimonial form will be added so you can submit a testimonial
- Tutorials for using WordPress, designing your site, and more, will be added
- More themes will be coming