Introducing One-Click-Update feature for our premium WordPress Themes & Plugins

We know that the regular updates to the latest version are essential for software development, and for the WordPress themes & plugins development in particular. This will protect the website from the potential risk of vulnerability. Being well aware of the importance of such update process, we have just built up a remote update system for our products and plugins.

Instead of the manual update, we used the one-click-update feature to give an update message in the Dashboard when the latest updates are available on our update server. Thus, you do not have to access on DesignWall or check the email to get the latest version.

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New DW Question & Answer plugin ver 1.3.5 Ready for 2016

Howdy everyone!
Let’s welcome the latest update of our all-time favorite WordPress plugin DW Question & Answer version 1.3.5.

To admit it, it’s been awhile we have not made any major updates to the plugin DW Q&A, nonetheless, we always provide active support for bug fixes on our Question & Answers page. But that’s for 2015, for the upcoming time we plan to upgrade and enhance our DW Q&A plugin with a bunch of great features enabling DW Q&A plugin to be more flexible. Continue

Review: DW Magz – Best WordPress News Magazine Theme

When talking about WordPress news & magazine themes, you might find a wide variety of theme out there, both commercial and free collection. Yet, it is not quite easy to find the best minimalistic & modern theme that gives you a balance solution where performance is well optimized while adding sufficient sets of the feature.

If you look for a light-weight, modern news & magazine theme for your WordPress site, our new DW Magz would be a strong contender you should consider, besides current flagship design DW Focus, DW Argo in our news theme category.

Enhancing readership, mobile-oriented news consumption are among key factors drive us toward the simplicity in each design & development perspective of DW Magz. And here’re fundamental functionalities packed in the theme:
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Top 10 Multipurpose WordPress Themes for Every Web Design Whim

This blog post includes a collection of the most advanced multipurpose WordPress themes.

Let’s start by answering simple questions and then make a quick recap of the advantages of each theme.

What are multipurpose themes and who can benefit from their usage?

As for the author of this article, she believes that multipurpose themes are a great step forward in web design and development. Their price is almost the same as the price of a regular theme designed for one particular business niche. However, when purchasing a multipurpose theme you get much more. Of course, different providers pack their themes with different sets of features, but the fact that you can build absolutely anything with these kinds of templates stays constant. As a rule, multipurpose themes include multiple layouts from which you can choose. They can vary from a simple personal page to a fully functional e-Commerce store. Multi-purpose themes are easy to customize and suitable for both professionals and newbies in web design. Actually, when buying a multipurpose theme you get access to numerous designs, plugins and extensions. It’s a kind of construction set you can play with until you attain the desired effect. And what is even better, when your design becomes outdated, you can always refresh it with the help of another pre-designed page available in your package. This is a great way to keep your website up to date, or just constantly improve it, by adding more features, plugins, using more shortcodes and other stuff delivered with your multipurpose theme. Continue

DW Focus 1.2.6 is back – DW Mega Menu and more

We are pleased to announce that our new DW Focus 1.2.6 has been released and is available for download today. In addition to compatibility update with WordPress 4.3 Billie, a new DW Mega Menu plugin and revamped theme setting panel have been included.

Brand new DW Megamenu

As planned in our DW Focus 1.2.0 release, we have just built from the ground up a new Mega Menu plugin dedicated for DW Focus theme.

We tried to make DW MegaMenu dead simple that can work seamlessly with WordPress default UI while solving the need of adding a versatile navigation to your site. A few features brought to you in DW MegaMenu: Continue

How to Create a Custom Three Part Form Using Gravity Forms

In this post, we’re going to take a look at how you can use Gravity Forms to accept author applications for your news site.

If you are running a news site using a theme like DW Focus, there’s a good chance that you rely on contributions from other authors to maintain a decent volume of content. Furthermore, if you pay for content submissions there is also a good chance you’re inundated with email applications from potential authors.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we created a form that allows a potential author to apply for a writing position by submitting their personal contact details and answering a few specific questions. All of the applications could be emailed to the appropriate person and stored in the database for review.

I think you’ll be surprised just how easy the process of creating a simple three-part form can be. It’s something that can be accomplished even if you’re using the most basic version of Gravity Forms. Continue

Introducing DW Store – Multipurpose WooCommerce theme

Update Aug 26, 2015: DW Store stable version 1.0.0 is now available for download.

Finally our first-ever multipurpose WooCommerce theme DW Store is live! Early this month, I had chance to highlight the 6-built-in styles when introducing the first sneak peek of this theme.

Today, I will walk you through detailed features that illustrate the DW Store’s effectiveness when used to create a fashion shop, a clothing store, an electronic shop or even a gift store or a pharmacy shop.

Our ultimate goal in DW Store is to provide a drag-n-drop-based theme that helps you get your store up and running seamlessly, with native WooCommerce shop functionalities. And truly you can create a hugely complex e-commerce solution that’s elegant and fast with DW Store.

Now, lets start with the navigation layer first, before diving into the page builder, multiple blog pages, enhanced shop functionalities perspectives. Continue

DesignWall Giving Awesome Giveaway – Survey Winner Announcement

DW Survey Giveaway

Thank You to Everyone Who Entered!

Last month, we launched a short survey calling for feedback and suggestion to improve our products and service. Our ultimate goal is to decide what types of features are built next, so we can better meet your need.

We had nearly 100 feedback entries in the first two days after we started the survey. A big motivation to our team indeed! We expect to hear many comments from you, both old and new members, but did not foresee such an incredible number of submissions that fast!

Great thanks to you all for your feature request and ideas. Your valuable inputs help us shape the upcoming improvements in a more solid way.

What we’re currently working on

Deciding what new possible features (or updates to existing features) isn’t easy, as a single change need line up with the big-picture of the whole theme or plugin. Continue

[Video] A sneak peek of DW Store – Multipurpose WooCommerce theme

I am super excited to introduce the first sneak peek of our upcoming multi-purpose WooCommerce theme DW Store. Our ultimate goal is to make it easy for you to build and manage your online store.

Thanks to valuable suggestions and feedbacks from our recent survey, we have chance to start implementing incremental improvements in this theme.

Easy way to create a noteworthy store

Starting with WooCommerce core functionalities, DW Store lets you showcase your products in the most powerful way whether you want to create tech, fashion, pharma, kid or gift stores. Simply sell with one of 6-in-1 predefined styles (TechStore, FashionStore, PharmaStore, KidStore, GiftStore, MarketStore). These stunning styles are all mobile-optimized to help you draw customers in no matter what mobile devices they use.

A robust theme option panel will give you full control over essential elements. Flexible header, color, font etc., are all customisable in an intuitive way. Just a few clicks away to get those tweaks done. I will walk you through more details on these theme options once the DW Store goes live. Continue

The Plugins You Need to Create a News Site with WordPress

WordPress represents the ideal publishing platform for news websites. Although there are some limitations when using WordPress out-of-the-box, there is an extensive array of plugins available that are capable of adding the required functionality for a large, multi-author publishing platform.

Keeping the WordPress core as lean and fast as possible should be your overall objective in order to present the best user experience. To accomplish this, you need to select an appropriate theme for a news-based site such as our DW Focus Theme combined with plugins that provide the appropriate functionality without sacrificing performance.

DW Focus - Responsive News Theme
DW Focus – Responsive WordPress News / Magazine Theme

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DW Focus – New update version 1.2.0

DW Focus 1.2.0
UPDATE 28 May 2015: The DW Focus stable version 1.2.1 is finally available. You can find the download link in your DesignWall profile. For any question related to the new DW Focus 1.2.1, please submit via this dedicated forum
NOTE 24 May 2015: This version is not recommended for your production site. The updated Focus sees some revamped elements which differ from the old Focus version. Also this beta release might see potential bugs, it takes our team some time to have all fixed in the stable release.

DW Focus has been one of the most wanted Responsive News & Magazine WordPress theme. This theme was ranked 10th out of Mashable’s 20 Stunning Responsive WordPress Themes – http://bit.ly/dw-focus-mashable

DW Focus comes with the beauty of simplicity, from typography, grid-based layout and structure. The updated DW Focus 1.2.0 almost inherits what make this theme a stand-out:

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WooCommerce joins Automattic – The next wave of ecommerce?

WooComerce

Today, you all may hear of the big news in WordPress community from WooCommerce acquisition by Automatic, the parent company behind WordPress. The news was officially announced by WooThemes co-founders, Mark and Magnus and from Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. Big congratulation to WooThemes team with their new chapter.

From WordPress user’s perspective as well as a web developer, we might have concern how this acquisition will impact the future of WooCommerce plugin and WordPress community. Would it remain community-oriented and free as before? Or even any change to the name WooCommerce under the new home?

It is too early to predict specific changes in WooCommerce roadmap in coming months and years. However, in the short term, a few things have been clarified by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg.
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How to Set Up a RSS to Email Campaign for a WordPress Blog

Do you have an email mailing list working alongside your blog? If not then you definitely should think about setting one up. But, how do you going about doing so?

Thankfully there are plenty of options available when you are ready to start your email list or newsletter. You can compose the email content yourself, hire writers to do so, or maybe you can’t even think about starting an email campaign because your daily to-do list just won’t handle another task to accomplish.

If that last scenario sounds like something you can relate to, then this post will show you how you can start emailing out a list of your most recent blog posts to your subscriber mailing list, at regular intervals – all on autopilot.

By the end of this article, you will know how to set up an RSS to email campaign for your WordPress blog. This post will teach you how to use the RSS feed from your blog to create email campaigns, helping you to see why you can’t afford not to be working with an RSS-email combination.

Let’s begin by talking about why starting an email newsletter for your WordPress blog is such a great idea.
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How to install WordPress locally on Your Computer

Building WordPress themes and plugins locally is a huge time saver. Creating a local development environment is nothing complicated. As you probably already know, it is simply a web server running on your computer, as opposed to a remote one, which is usually a hosting plan you purchased.

Coding WordPress themes and plugins entails a lot of back and forth testing, as well as browser refreshing. Since there are no latency issues to deal with on a local server environment, you work through this process a lot faster than on a live server, where you have to wait for your network connection.

Moreover by developing on a local server, you give yourself ample room for mistakes. That is, you can make as many mistakes as possible and cause no harm whatsoever. This is different with a live environment since it typically hosts other websites and some mistakes may be unforgiving – especially those that may affect the security of the live server.

Furthermore, if you want to test out any themes or plugins, before adding them to your live website, having a local installation of WordPress to experiment on has its obvious benefits.

If you like the sound of setting up your own local server environment to install WordPress on your computer, then this article will highlight some of the best options. You will also find a walk through guide to setting this up with my service of choice.

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30+ Go-to WordPress Resources You Should Follow in 2015

In today’s world, if you want your business to be competitive, you need to know which techniques are being employed by your competitors. When it comes to web design, the situation is almost the same. Web development doesn’t stand still. Every year new trends and styles are being implemented, new tricks are being tested, and thousands of new ready-made themes are being released. For many, it’s hard to follow each and every resource that posts valuable information on web design.

When it comes to WordPress, keeping track of the latest developments in this field can seem to be a major undertaking. Improvements, new themes, plugins, and lots of other things are being added literally on a daily basis. In order for you not to get lost and keep a list of the most reliable go-to resources always in handy, we will share, in this blog post, 30 must-follow WP resources. These include blogs, websites offering free WordPress themes and podcasts worthy of your attention.

So, let’s get straight to the list.

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Essential Plugins and Themes for Creating a WordPress Website That Isn’t a Blog

It might seem strange to use WordPress to create a traditional type of website, one which has a fixed home page and doesn’t include a blog. However, if you are already familiar with WordPress, or you want to make use of the countless themes and plugins available for the software when creating a traditional non-blog website, we totally understand why you would want to use WordPress for this purpose.

Being able to tap into the shared knowledge of the large community of WordPress users and its burgeoning ecosystem is another benefit of using this software that can’t be overlooked.

So in today’s post we are going to look at some useful plugins and themes you can install on your brochureware or non-blog website, which will make it easier to manage, add some essential features, and generally look and work better. Continue

The Whys and Hows of Creating a Mobile App for Your WordPress Website

Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are now the most popular way to consume digital media, including websites and social networks. After years of predictions, the tipping point has finally been reached and smartphones and tablets are now responsible for 55 percent of the online activity in the US.

A lot of attention has been focussed on ensuring your website is responsive and adapts to the size of the screen it is being viewed on in order to cater to mobile users. However, there is another equally important statistic that doesn’t quite garner as much attention. Continue