iThemes Community Updates for April 2010

April 15, 2010

By Cory Miller

Dear iThemes and PluginBuddy Community—

I’m going to try to send out these community updates more often to let you know what we’re doing and building and releasing …..

Here’s some quick highlights ….

NEW BUILDER SEO FEATURES RELEASED IN BETA

We think Builder is an awesome web design tool for WordPress …. I’ve seen a ton of sites our community has built with it and been thrilled to see it in action.

We’re got a feature-packed roadmap for new Builder development ….

Next up, Chris Jean, our lead dev, went to work on building some amazing new SEO features … and he just released the beta version of the new Builder SEO panel this week.

He spent a lot of time reading, researching and gathering input from our community and others … we think you’ll love the new options.

Check out the overview video here

Additionally, we’ve also built and released a couple of new child themes for Builder ….

Check out the Slate theme here

Check out the Anchor theme here

As with everything we’ve done, we release a great product and value to you, our community, and go to work making it even better for you!

BTW – be sure to follow the new Twitter account for @ithemesbuilder here.

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NEW FREE PLUGINS FROM PLUGINBUDDY.COM

We’ve also released some free plugins at PluginBuddy, our premium WordPress plugins division, that might be of use to you in your businesses ….

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SERVER BUDDY — TEST YOUR WP HOSTING & SECURITY

This awesome plugin gives you the power to check the quality of your hosting and WordPress security, among other things.

It also allows you to email reports of the information, including your WP setup.

I think it could be a great benefit for your clients … or to show how bad certain hosting is and encourage your clients to transition off it to a better one.

Download and get more information about ServerBuddy here

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THEMEMAN — EASILY PREVIEW THEMES IN DASHBOARD

ThemeMan, short for Theme Manager, adds a drop-down list to the Themes page in the WordPress administrator Dashboard allowing you to rapidly preview or activate different themes on your site. This is particularly useful for power users and developers looking to preview or work with a multitude of themes.

Download and get more information about ThemeMan here

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WORDPRESS 3.0 PREVIEW WEBINAR APRIL 21

WordPress 3.0 is slated for release in the next couple of weeks … our development team has been keeping track (and even participating) in this awesome, feature-packed release.

As such, we’ll be hosting a noted WP expert, Aaron Brazell, for a free preview webinar of WordPress 3.0 on Wednesday, April 21 at 1 p.m. Central Time.

Sign up for the free webinar here

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WORDPRESS DEVELOPERS COURSE STARTS THIS SATURDAY

WebDesign.com will be offering an advanced WordPress Developer course that will help you to take your development skills to the next level and give you a deeper understanding of the building blocks of WordPress.

Sign up for the annual membership to take advantage of the live training!

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Thanks for continuing to support us! Look for some exciting new WordPress products from us very soon!

–Cory Miller
Founder
iThemes.com
PluginBuddy.com
WebDesign.com