This is quite big news for me, and for OrangeValley Projects, the development side of OrangeValley that we've been starting up over the last few months. In short: Brian Gardner, of StudioPress and Revolution fame, and myself, have decided to partner up, to provide better SEO'd themes to StudioPress customers.
Brian is the one who kickstarted the premium theme space, and he was also the first premium theme developer to realize that he could stick to the GPL and still have his themes be premium. As most of my readers will know, everything that I've ever coded for WordPress has always been released under the GPL, which is why I never went into the premium theme business before. But Brian's move to the GPL opened a series of possibilities for me.
So we are partnering up. I'm going to be optimizing all the StudioPress themes, and offering StudioPress customers advice on how to optimize their sites in regular blog posts and in a new blog optimization package we'll be offering through StudioPress.
Brian and myself are very happy with this new partnership, and look forward to creating a lot of very well designed, well SEO'd themes for all of you to build your sites with!
Now you'll ask what does this have to do with OrangeValley? Well, this agreement is actually between Brian and OrangeValley Projects, which is the new WordPress & Magento development company we've recently started, and my colleagues in OrangeValley Projects will also be working on all of this.
That's a great partnership. Every theme needs to contain the best SEO possible, especially when it costs money to purchase the theme. I've had quite a few customers asking for SEO help because their theme made their SEO ranking drop or noticed a decrease in traffic.
Can't wait to see how this goes.
Thx Jesse, we're very happy about it as well :)
Great to know about the combining news of Yoast and SP. Both have been good always and together, you would rock :)
Thanks for the vote of confidence :)
Nice one Joost, looking forward to the results.
Thx Justin, we need something to keep us busy, right? ;)
Sounds cool, looking forward to the themes.. and a lot of other people with me I guess ;-)!
Hehe I hope so :)
This is a powerhouse team-up. Very nice indeed!
Thx for the kind words Julius!
Joost,
Congrats to you and to Brian! I would second Julius's comments above: A real power-team.
Wishing you both the very best in your partnership. This is goooood for everyone!!
Thanks for the kind words and the trust George!
Sounds the perfect partnership!
That's what we thought too :)
Congrats Joost! Great news indeed. Sounds like a dynamic duo indeed.
We will be very dynamic indeed :)
Congrats man.. great teaming.. can't wait to see the results.
Thanks Remkus :)
What does "a new blog optimization package" entale? Any hints, clues?
This is great news! I look forward to seeing the end results.
So will you be releasing plugins under the StudioPress banner now?
No, but we will be integrating some of my code into the themes, starting with the breadcrumbs plugin f.i.
What does this mean? SEO'd theme sounds like complete bullshit to me. Not trying to be a hater because you are the SEO master but this sounds like a complete and utter failure. Since when does the googlebot give a shit how my site looks?
Since it's birth? Google looks at the semantics of your site, not at your stylesheet. But which headings you use, whether important text is in images or in text, how content blocks are related to each other etc. etc. That can all make a major difference.
No it doesn't, that's a complete myth.
Well Matthew, you seem to know it all :) Luckily for most other people they listen to people like me, who actually test this sort of thing.
WOWSERS! That is a fantastic partnership.
I respect you both tremendously and look forward to what you guys do together.
All the best!
Stu
Thanks Stu, much appreciated!
Congrats Joost! This is a huge move for you and the company, glad to see that good things are happening.
Keep up the great plugin development work! Always happy to rec' your plugins to friends.
Thanks for the kind words and the recommendations Jonathan!
Good to see Dutch and US developers teaming up together. Congratulations with this new partnership. Studiopress Themes belong to my quality favorites. Stylish, structured and clear. There's no doubt that your partnership will improve the quality even more.
Wish you lots of succes.
Great! A partner for Brian that will definitely bring something to the table.
This is great news... I'm going to keep a close eye on this one...
I like Brian's themes (although lacking colour at the moment :) ) but they do need a bit of tweeking for SEO and I have tried to take care of it myself (including the use of one of Yoast's plugins - thank you) but do not know if I do more harm than good!
This seems like it will be a win-win(-win) situation Brian/Yoast/Customers -
When we be seeing something actuallty available? I was thinking of purchasing another theme last week and think I will wait for now.
This is great news, both for yourself and for me! I'm a big fan of Brian's work and his themes but he does need your SEO help!
Congrats on the new partnership. I am excited to see more Magento posts.
Big fan of your advice and plugins and the Studio Press themes' look and feel.
My question is when will these be available? I'm holding up on a couple blogs to make sure I start with these themes.
If not soon, do you recommend a theme to start the blog in and then convert to the new theme?
The first thing I do with my Studio Press themes is "Yoastify" with little things like adding breadcrumbs and fixing up the "search" features the way you suggest. Thanks so much. This will be an awesome partnership!
This is fantasic news! We use studiopress themes for most of our custom designs and end up adding many of your plugins to compliment them. Having you two power houses work together is definitely a win-win situation for both us and our clients.
Any idea when we can see the updated themes available from Brian?
That sounds super-cool. I can't wait to see the results.
Joost, you sure keep yourself busy. Look forward to see what you come up with.
Is there a specific place where you'll announce which themes you've finished?
That's terrific news. I use StudioPress for most of my clients' websites and always go add your plugins and a few of those from other developers like Lester for maximum functionality and SEO value. We've been re-writing some of them for MU as well. It'll be great to just have some of them included! Congratulations : )
I bought the unlimited themes package for Revolution right after my first install and I upgraded for Rev2 and Studio Press with no regrets. I'm a full time SEO and every one of the sites I made with these themes has at least a few Google Page One rankings with some being major. There are other excellent theme designers out there but no one has a 50,000 post forum like Brian Gardner. And I've never seen a moderator there be condescending... they're usually nice about everything. I was sorry to see some of those really nice Rev2 designs fade from view but some partnerships last like Hewlett Packard and other don't last long. I wish you and Brian good luck !! And Joost, please keep those guys from getting lost in Amsterdam for too long !!
Great collaboration on the themes. We have appreciated the extra functionality!
However ONE Problem so far. We abandoned the education theme because after many tries we could not get the thumbnails to work. We tried again using your upgraded version 3.0 of Streamlined and WP 2.8. Again, the featured content gallery and everything else seems to be working fine, however no matter what combination of settings we attempt the thumbnails will NOT appear. We have the thumbnails and the featured content gallery running on the Streamline 2.0 and WP 2.7.1 on at least 10 other sites without a glitch.
ANY insights as to why the thumbs, thumbnails, or thumbnailimg (why can't we just call it one kind of "thumb" throughout all of the StudioPress themes?) are not working would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks for you HELP!!!
Hmm I've heard that issue once yesterday too. You can't generate any new images? Or what's the issue?
Joe,
The thumbnails are displayed by using custom fields in the posts. The custom field name is "thumb;" then you have to specify the location of the thumbnail image in the value of that custom field.
Did you do this and still have problems?
I spent a couple of hours trying to track down why Streamline 2.0 thumbnails work so well and Streamline 3.0 do not.
The only progress I made was to switch the site back to 2.0 and eureka!... the thumbnails turned back on. Again... I'm using WP 2.8
Anything you can do to find out where the glitch is would be much appreciated.
Thanks so much!
This news sounds cool. When do you think you'll have your first round ready? I need a theme for the photography studio and I am about to go blind looking at all the different themes out there. It is overwhelming with all the information....Information Over Load!!! I want a theme that is going to be SEO friendly. I ran into thesis themes and they seem to be pretty good from what I researched on SEO themes. Does anyone know if they are any good?
Thanks
I can't imagine a better partnership!! I always know I can rely on plugins from you, and themes. I'm here to find your paypal button to donate??? can't seem to find such a thing. tsk, tsk.
Cathy :)
I just signed up for an all theme package. Looking forward to implementing the SEO'd versions on my sites. I see you have done five of the studiopress themes so far.
Great news - I'm a StudioPress customer and the news of you taking over the optimisation is fantastic.
I'm wondering about the bit where you said:
"I'm going to be optimizing all the StudioPress themes, and offering StudioPress customers advice on how to optimize their sites in regular blog posts and in a new blog optimization package we'll be offering through StudioPress."
Can you tell me more about this package? I can't see anything about this on the StudioPress site.
Cheers
Jose