By As the title suggests, this is a short (5 minutes) video that walks you through the WordPress Auto-Install process.
New Solostream Affiliate Banners
10Here are a few new affiliate banners for the Solostream Affiliate Program. These match the new upcoming site redesign. We’ll have more banners in various sizes coming along in the next few days, so please be patient.
WP-Sublime WordPress Theme Demo Video
2I managed to get a new demo video posted on YouTube this morning. The video is a little over 5 minutes long, and it shows you how easy it is to customize our latest WordPress theme, WP-Sublime. If you’d like to embed this video on your own site, just grab the embed code from the video or from the YouTube page.
What's Green, Black and Blue and Goes 100 Miles Per Hour?
5Yes, it’s a riddle. What’s green, black and blue and goes 100 miles per hour? No, it’s not a frog in a blender (eeeeeyew). It’s the new, soon-to-be-released Solostream redesign. Between taking care of our wonderful customers in the support forum, and trying to come up with some innovative, new WordPress themes, we actually found some time to start applying a new coat of paint to the Solostream site.
If you take a look at the screenshot, which is a shot of the new home page, you’ll notice we’re working to expand our target market a bit. Since Solostream launched waaay back in 2006, our target market has primarily been WordPress users. In the new design, we’ll continue to cater to all you wonderful WordPress users, but we also want to speak to the non-WordPress user … the small business person who doesn’t yet know how easy and effective it is to use WordPress as their small business web publishing platform.
As vast as the WordPress user base is, we think the non-WordPress-user market is just as vast and sorely under-served. And we hope to help rectify that situation. Call us crazy.
New WordPress Theme – WP-Launch – Sneak Peek
27Well, we’ve been hard at work here at Solostream trying to create some new and innovative WordPress themes. And we thought you might like a sneak peek at one of three that are about to be released. We’re calling this one WP-Launch, and it boasts an incredibly clean and minimalistic design.
We’re still in the final testing stages, but we hope to roll it out before Christmas. Just in time for a good stocking stuffer. Okay, so you can’t really put a WordPress theme in a stocking, but you get the idea.
Update: Looks like this will be rolling out just after the New Year.
You can see it live at the WP-Launch theme demo site.
Black Friday Special – 20% on All WordPress Themes
0We actually love Black Friday. It is a lot fun to look around for some of the amazing deals that can be had and feel like a little kid in a candy store. I’ve got my eye on a 500 GB USB drive that just a few years ago would have been cost prohibitive and now I can’t afford to pass it up.
A member of our team thought that we should give Solostream customers a chance to share in the craziness. What a great idea! Give and receive on Black Friday.
So, now through the end of the day on Friday ALL Solostream WordPress themes are discounted by 20% if you enter “blackfriday” into the discount code field at checkout.
Happy shopping to all!
Mastering Image Uploads/Inserts with Solostream WordPress Themes
2We received a thoughtful inquiry from a customer recently who wanted to know how to better understand the manner in which images are managed within our themes. This is naturally too good a topic for just one customer so we thought we would share our complete explanation with everyone.
At this time, our most popular themes incorporate the functionality of “Get The Image” to generate thumbnail images that appear in Feature Articles and Post Excerpts. There is some confusion as how this tool works and what happens when you use it. Without further ado, here’s our best explanation.
WordPress 2.8 and Solostream WordPress Themes
0We have completed the testing for our most popular themes on the new WordPress 2.8 version. Here is the list of themes that are confirmed to work properly on the new platform:
The Best Way To Get Started With Our WordPress Themes
2Introduction: This entire post was compiled from posts made by Iskwew, one of our repeat customers and a frequent contributor to our forum. She raises so many good points that we wanted to share this with the Solostream community through our website.
A Sad Story, But A Good Lesson
1I recently lost my two ewes. For those of you who need a reminder, ewes are female sheep. The story starts two years ago when my friend and neighbor – horse breeding expert and I decided to invest in and share a small flock of sheep. The sheep would provide a source of wool for me to knit with and lamb for both of our tables. Seemed like a sweet idea.
Although neither of us had experience with sheep, I had plenty of passion and energy and was excited about the project. I had a pasture for the warm seasons and he had a barn for winter. We started with two beautiful all white females who we named Carmen and Cora. When they were old enough for breeding we bought two rams, selected carefully for their rich, brown fleece so we could introduce color into the next generation.
Don’t Lose Your Dream
0Most of us receive more training about how to drive a car than start a micro business. A high percentage of people who start businesses do so because they have a gift or talent they want to see manifest in the world. Or, they love the idea of self employment – not because they have a burning passion for business for business sake.
Resolve to do More of What Works for You
0There’s always something special about the start of a new year. As one year comes to a close and another starts, I especially enjoy taking stock, cleaning up details and preparing a fresh slate for another year of my life to unfold. As I reflect on the past year I am indeed grateful that I am still standing tall despite many challenges and economic uncertainty.
The Meaning of Hope
0“If you feel you know how to get what you want out of life, and you have that desire to make that happen, then you have hope,” Jennifer Cheavens
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about hope. It started the night our new President was elected. I, for the first time in a long time was filled with an overwhelming sense of hope. The deep thread of worry and cynicism I had been holding about how complex and unchangeable our countries problems were was suddenly replaced with the promise of something new, something hopeful.
Troubleshooting Browser Formatting Problems
2We have received a number of inquiries lately about browser display problems like:
My site displays perfectly in Firefox but when I open it in Internet Explorer 7 it is all scrambled. How can I resolve this problem?
First and foremost, we want to let you know that we make every effort possible to quality check our templates before they are distributed for sale. We test them in different browsers and operating systems to ensure that they display properly.
Protecting Your Site When Making Updates and Edits
1We’ve all heard of Spring cleaning sessions. Well, for whatever reason, Solostream customers have created an equivalent phenomena right now — Fall Update/Upgrade/New Plugin season. Perhaps this is being triggered by the soon-to-be-released WordPress 2.7.
The rash of activity has triggered an important conversation with our team that we need to share with you. One of the most painful (and frustrating) experiences in working with technology is the moment of a major crash when installing an update or the unintended disruption of a feature or service when a new plugin is installed on a site.
