So excited in fact, that we decided to launch a dedicated mini-site, just for this beautifully designed WordPress product:  CleanSlateTheme.com.  There, you will find in-depth information, walkthrough video, and six (yes, 6!) unique theme demos showcasing the versatility of this amazing theme.

The new CleanSlateTheme.com

What’s new in Clean Slate 2.0?

Redesigned Clean Slate Options

The Clean Slate Options (Appearance > Clean Slate Options) has been redesigned and reorganized. These interface improvements make it more compact, easier to manage, and easier to navigate through the options.

Improved Home Page Slider

We’ve added a number of improvements to the slider, making it more flexible than ever:

• New custom post type: “Features”. This is a third option (in addition to posts and pages) for entering content in the slider. With “Features”, you can display a video, a static image with text and link it to anywhere you want!
• Slider speed controls. Now you can set the animation speed and slide duration.
• Play/Pause button. Your users now have the ability to pause the slider, perhaps to watch a video or read a single slide in more detail. You can disable the button in the theme options.

Video: Adding video to the slider

New custom post type, “Callouts”

Now you have the option to use “callouts” instead of widgets for managing static home page content (you can still use widgets if you prefer). “Callouts” give you more flexibility and better organization of content. Each callout consists of a title, text, image (optional), and button link (optional).

Video: Using the “callouts” custom post type

Social media icons

Just above the slider, we’ve added 3 new social media icon links alongside the RSS icon: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Set these page URL’s in the Clean Slate Options to enable the icons.

New font switcher

We’ve added a theme option to choose from a selection of built-in designer fonts to use for your site-wide headers.

Loads of “behind the scenes” improvements

We’ve gone through and improved much of the code throughout the theme. Made things more efficient, cleaner, and implemented cutting-edge web technologies like @font-face web fonts.

Today we announce the release of a very special theme called WP Bids.  What’s so special about this one?

It’s a theme that is intended to do one thing and one thing only brilliantly:

Create (awesome) Project Proposals Using WordPress

WP Bids is a specialized WordPress theme, which can be used to create stunning web-based project proposals. It’s perfect for freelancers and agencies who present bids to prospective clients to win their business.

WP Bids is different from typical WordPress themes in that it’s intended to be used specifically for creating web-based proposals. The proposals you create can be presented to prospective clients. In other words, while other WordPress themes are typically meant for presenting content for the world to see, WP Bids is intended to be used as specialized communication tool between you and your prospective clients.

The theme is so special, we even decided to launch a dedicated website for it:  WPBids.com.

There, you can find detailed information, lists of features, and videos all showing how amazing this tool can be for your business.  But if you’re pressed for time, here’s a quick rundown of the key features of WP Bids:

• Stunningly formatted project proposals, intended to win you more projects from more clients.
• Ability to create a proposal template, drastically speeding up the process of creating new proposals.
• Optimized for Mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry.
• Optimized for print versions – we know your clients may want to print and review shortly before signing their check to you
• Easily list and sort your proposals
• Read about and see all features…

WP Bids live demo

WP Bids detail page on themejam.com

WPBids.com

NOTE: Purchasing WP Bids through themejam.com or wpbids.com is the exact same purchase.  Both give you the same theme packaged with the same outstanding support you receive with any ThemeJam purchase

The Front-End

The first video gives you a little tour of the front-end of Clean Slate, including the various home page layout options and five built in color styles.  Enjoy:

The Back-End

This video digs a little deeper and gives you a peak at the back-end theme options for Clean Slate.  From the featured slider configurations to the “More Posts bucket” and other options, this video gives you a nice walk-through of some of the more notable functionality built into Clean Slate:

What Do You Think?

Share your thoughts in the comments below, or send us you’re feedback on Twitter.  We’d love to know what you think!

• Clean Slate Demo
• Clean Slate Purchase Page

In case you missed our tweets last week, we have released our sixth WordPress theme titled, Clean Slate.

This is our most exciting release yet because it comes at a very exciting time in the WordPress world – the imminent release of WordPress 3.0.  We’ve been playing with the 3.0 beta release for the past few weeks and couldn’t help but include some of the awesome new functionality in Clean Slate.  But that’s not the only reason to be excited about this theme.

Clean Slate was crafted with a few simple objectives:  Minimalist, clean design; Flexible theme options; Developer friendly.  Well, that last one is true of all of our themes, but you get the idea   Without further ado, here are the most notable aspects of the Clean Slate Theme:

3 (actually, 4) Home Page Layouts

Packaged with Clean Slate are 3 beautifully crafted home page templates, each providing a different layout.  Shown above, the first layout offers a hybrid between a blog and static callouts (which are widgets).  The second layout is geared more as a portfolio layout, displaying thumbnails and short excerpts.  The third option can be used as an informational home page, displaying static content using widgets.  You might consider a 4th option, and that is to have the home page take a traditional blog layout.

Flexible Featured Slider

This is our most flexible featured content slider yet.  First, you can choose between two formats, shown above.  “Wide” mode gives you a full-width image, with the post title overlaid across the bottom.  “Split” mode shows a medium sized image along side the post title and excerpt.

You also have the option to display posts or pages.  If displaying posts, choose which category to feature (or leave it unselected to show recent posts from all categories).  If you’d like to feature page content, just select the pages you’d like to display.

WordPress 3.0 Enhanced  /  WordPress 2.9+ Compatible

Are you on the cutting edge of the WordPress platform and already getting your feet wet with the 3.0 beta release?  Well, you must be just as excited as we are about the awesomeness coming in 3.0.

Clean Slate gives you the option to make use of one of the coolest new features in WP 3.0, and that is menu management.  You can use this feature to take full control of your navigation menus.  With the drag and drop interface, you can mix and match links to pages, posts, categories, external websites, and define your own order and hierarchy.  In the Clean Slate demo, we’re using menu management to control both the main navigation and the navigation in the footer.

If you’re running WordPress 2.9, Clean Slate is fully compatible.  The main navigation will function just like any other theme – displaying your wordpress pages with proper hierarchy and dropdowns.

More Posts “Bucket”

One of the cool and unique details in Clean Slate is what we call the More Posts Bucket.  It’s a row of additional post thumbnails, tucked neatly at the bottom of the main area, just above the footer.  With a click, the row slides in/out of view.

As expected, this piece is fully customizable.  You can set the following options:  Default state open or closed; Define your own “More Posts” text;  Define a category to pull posts from;  Set the posts offset to display posts farther back in your timeline;  Disable the bucket altogether.

Redesigned Theme Options Panel

Also making it’s debut is the redesigned Theme Options Panel.  The interface design is more closely tied into that of the core WordPress admin, with a few of our own touches for good measure.  Neatly organized sections to separate options;  Anchor link navigation makes for a snappy user experience;  Save buttons under each section minimizes scrolling.

Take a look at the expanded theme options page for Clean Slate.

Five Built-in Color Schemes

A ThemeJam theme wouldn’t be complete without a selection of hand-picked color schemes to choose from.  Clean Slate comes with five.  Have a look:

• Clean Slate Demo
• Clean Slate details / purchase

This theme was inspired by action/extreme sports culture (snowboarding, skateboarding, X-Games) etc.  However, it could be deployed in a wide variety of settings.  From a colorful and image-packed magazine layout to a cool and fresh blog, MistyFlip will give you the bold stand-out presence you need.

Theme Options Panel 1.1

Notice, we have upgraded the Theme Options Panel to version 1.1.  The biggest addition are the color pickers, which allow you to have full control over every color.  There are 35 different elements you can choose a custom color for!

And if you’re looking for a tasty color scheme hand picked by us, we’ve built in 5 pre-designed color styles, which can be switched and activated with 1 click.  Check out the demo to see them.

The really cool thing about these color options is that the background texture stays intact no matter which colors you choose.  That means you can pick custom colors, and they’ll automatically blend nicely with the background pinstripes and gradients, thanks to some nifty PNG images.

Other Tricked-Out Features in MistyFlip

Rock-star featured posts slider?  Check. This one sports a unique overlay effect, merging the title and text nicely with the post image.

Widget areas galore?  Check. Is five widgetized areas enough for ya?  Plus, we built in a custom widget called “Featured Posts”, which lists posts from a featured category, along with thumbnails.

Unique PNG shading. This theme uses lots of semi-transparent PNG images, which creates a smooth and unique shading effect throughout the theme.  You’ll see what I mean when you start to play around with the color pickers.

Developed with care. As with every theme we produce, this was built with the highest practices of web development, fully adhering to web standards.  We take pride in our profession, and we think it shows in our theme development work.

What do you think?

We’d love to get your feedback on this one.  Tell us what you think in the comments, or tweet us!

Clicking around the front-end:

Back-end theme options:

Say hello to FolioJam, the latest addition to our collection of WordPress theme packs.

As the name implies, this one is a portfolio theme designed for, well, designers   Of course, it works just as well for photographers, artists, agencies, or anyone else looking to showcase their work with a sleek and impressive portfolio site.  But wait, FolioJam works just as well as a personal blog too!

Here are few of things we think you’ll love about FolioJam:

Fully utilizing WordPress gallery functionality

As with our other themes, FolioJam certainly makes good use of the new post thumbnail feature found in WordPress 2.9 and above.  Along with that, we leveraged core gallery functionality, which makes it super easy to add multiple images to each portfolio project.  Auto-resizing?  All done by utilizing the WordPress core as well.  No fancy scripts or plug-ins needed.

A multi-category portfolio

We know many of you are jacks of all trades.  So instead of showcasing all of your talents in one long list, FolioJam gives you the ability to sub-categorize and filter your portfolio.

For example, if you’re a designer, you might want organize your portfolio with the following categories: “web design”, “print design”, “illustration”, “photography”.  Your visitors (potential clients) can then easily filter your portfolio using the cool “Filter” dropdown, built into the theme.  Sounds like this requires a complicated set up?  Nope.  All you have to do is choose your parent portfolio category, add some projects and you’re good to go.

Want a multi-category blog as well?  No problemo.  You can have it all with FolioJam.

Dressed to impress with jQuery and CSS3

One of the first things you’ll notice as you click around FolioJam are the many jQuery and CSS3 enhancements that add some nice UI touches (OK, and just a bit of dazzle).  From bold thumbnail rollovers, opacity effects, and tooltips to shadowbox slideshows and animated dropdowns.  This theme will turn heads and help you stand out from the crowd.

Unique fixed positioned layout

Basically what this means is, the left side bar is fixed (doesn’t scroll), while the main column (containing your images) scrolls.  It’s a somewhat subtle touch, but it really helps to frame your showcase while offering easy and quick navigation around the site.

It comes with configurable options, allowing you to turn of fixed positioning, or only use it on the project pages.  By the way, if the user has a small screen (like a netbook or iPad), this theme will automatically detect it and ensure no content ever gets cut out of view.  Pretty cool, huh?

NOTE:  Fixed positioning is not viewable in the main theme demo (due to the theme/style switcher).  Click here to see fixed positioning in action.

Easily customizable with CSS

We always build our themes with developers in mind.  That means we craft every line of code neatly so that you can easily go in and make any mods you like.

With FolioJam, we made it even easier.  Simply set the style option to “CUSTOM”, then style to your hearts content within the provided “Custom” stylesheet.  Everything can be edited, mixed and matched.

FolioJam Deluxe Theme Pack

As with all of our paid themes, FolioJam is available in multiple formats:

• FolioJam WordPress Theme
• FolioJam Site Templates
• FolioJam Email Templates
• Get all three (and save) with the FolioJam Deluxe Theme Pack

And as always, every format comes packaged with the layered Photoshop files, unlimited use license, and lifetime customer support.

What do you think?

We’d love to hear your feedback.  Tell us what you think in the comments!

After nearly half a year in preparation, we have finally launched ThemeJam!  Today (2/1/2010) is our first day open for business and we cannot be more excited!

Today’s launch has been a long time coming.  From planning the business and conceptualizing our product line to the nitty gritty of the theme design process and testing, testing (and more testing), it has been grueling but passionate work every step of the way.  Not to mention all of the effort put into designing and building themejam.com!

Launch Week Special!

To celebrate our grand opening, we’re running a 25% off sale on every purchase now through Sunday, February 7th!  That’s on top of our permanent Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off special on all WordPress Themes and Deluxe Theme Packs.

Looking Ahead

As much as we’d like to step back and take relief in the fact that we’re finally live, that’s just not our style.  We’re pushing full speed ahead.  We’re already designing and prepping several new themes, which will add depth and variety to our catalog.  But we’ll unveil the details and teasers for those in upcoming posts, tweets, and Facebook updates.

Please have a click around our shiny new website and check out everything we have to offer.  If you haven’t been following our preparation process, you might want to check out the following areas:

• About us
• Pricing
• WordPress Theme Gallery

And if you have a website or blog and you’re looking to earn serious cash, you might want to consider signing up for the ThemeJam Affiliate Program.

Feedback Welcomed

What do you think of our new site?  Let us know what you think in the comments section or on Twitter.