During the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate several themes before deciding on CleanSlate by Brian Casel. All three present themselves as clean corporate looking themes with an emphasis on webpage look over a blog look.

First to evaluate was “Application” by Manish Gori. Very clean, reasonably priced, however forum tech support is questionable at best. As a reply to my many questions, Manish’s single reply was use it as is or we’ll refund. So much for the first theme, I accepted his refund. Quick and without issue.

Next, I tried Linen Pro by The Theme Foundry. A bit more expensive, however one expects to pay more for American. Forum tech support is the best part of Theme Foundry. I think they have 3-4 support people who respond within 10-15 minutes of a post. Only problem is that their technology is limited. Theme has many holes and their slider many problems. As responsive as they were, the limiting factor was product quality. Especially when tech support finally asked me to redesign their software to fix the multiple issues. When I said that wasn’t the reason I bought their theme we reached an impasse. The Theme Foundry offered a refund and I accepted. Quick and without issue.

Nearly frustrated that maybe my expectation were too high for a WordPress theme, I stumbled on ThemeJam’s CleanSlate. Working with CleanSlate has been fun. For the first time, I found a theme designer who has really designed a fantastic package. He has added features no one else has even conceived of. Personally I think Brian Casel is brilliant. Additionally, I have no idea how this guy makes money. Just how many can he sell. With the quality received in CleanSlate, I think he could more than double his cost. There is only one negative comment and that is Brian seems to be the only support guy, and questions take about 24 hours for an answer. On the other hand, when Brian answers, his answers are worth the wait.

So, if you are on the fence, unsure of which theme to go for, my recommendation is CleanSlate by ThemeJam. And I will go on further to say, that the industry should watch Brian Casel. The guy is talented and more good things from Brian are bound to happen.

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.

By the way – this feature is also available in our free Gadget theme and will be added to the rest of our theme catalog very shortly.

Kind of like anxiously awaiting a shiny new iPad and tearing open the box to give it those first few taps, or firing up the transmission of a brand new car, breathing in that new car smell, or… you know what I mean.  WordPress 3.0 has arrived, and in case you’re not aware… It’s quite awesome.

We – being the WordPress enthusiasts that we are – have been using the 3.0 beta releases for quite some time now.  So I’m happy to report:

All ThemeJam Themes Work With WordPress 3.0

All of the theme demos have been upgraded, tested, and approved to work flawlessly with WordPress 3.0.  No theme updates necessary.  Of course, we are planning on rolling out ongoing feature enhancements over the coming weeks and months.

Speaking of feature enhancements, a few of our themes already include some WordPress 3.0 awesomeness.  Clean Slate and Gadget both include options to enable custom menu management, giving you full control over your navigation links.

What’s new in WordPress 3.0?

Check out a guest article I wrote on Mashable about a month ago:  The Five Most Important New Features in WordPress 3.0.

You can also watch this official video from today’s blog post on WordPress.org:

Here’s a quick video tutorial on how to install your WordPress theme using an FTP client.  This is the recommended way of doing it.

The FTP software that I recommend is FileZilla.  It’s a free application available for both Mac and PC.  You can download it by visiting the FileZilla website.

After installing FileZilla, you will use it to set up an FTP connection to your website.  That involves entering the server address (or IP address), your username and password.  If you’re unsure about this step, contact your web host and they will provide you with this information.

Once you have your FTP connection set up, follow these steps:

1. Unzip the package you downloaded from themejam.com.
2. Upload the theme folder, which will have the title of the theme you’re installing.  In the video example, we’re installing the Gadget theme.  So the folder you will upload is named “Gadget”.
3. Log into your WordPress admin, go to Appearance > Themes.  Find the theme you wish to install and click “activate”.  You’re all set!

VIDEO:  How to Install Your WordPress Theme

WordPress is a truly unbelievable platform for blogging and content management.  And with it’s famous five-minute installation, it could not be easier to get up and running quickly.  In fact, most web hosts offer a 1-click installation of WordPress, which makes the process even faster.

But once you have WordPress installed, the glorious default them on display, and you’re viewing the dashboard for the first time, there are number of things you should do to optimize your fresh WordPress installation.  Here are a few things for your checklist:

1. Change your username to something other than “admin”

This is a basic security precaution.  Since “admin” is the most commonly used account username, leaving it in place leaves it vulnerable to an easy guess from a hacker.

2. Set a good password

While you’re changing your username, you might as well take the time to set a good password.  Use a combination of letters, numbers, and both uppercase and lowercase.  Replace letters with numbers to further obscure your password.  For example, use 3 in place of E.  5 in place of S.

3. Set your display name

One more user related setting to change… Go to Users > Your Profile and set your “Display name publicly as” to whatever you want.  I often find the default setting (your username) is not always optimal, so I usually change this to my first name.

4. Activate the akismet plugin

Akismet is the anti-spam plugin, which comes pre-installed (but not activated) when you install WordPress.  Written by Matt Mullenweg, Akismet will stop spam commenters in their tracks.  Don’t let this powerful plugin go un-used.  Activate it and enter your WordPress API key.

5. Set your permalinks structure

In Settings > Permalinks, you have the ability to change the way your website URLs are displayed.  For better SEO, it’s best to structure your permalinks with relevant keywords, rather than dates or post IDs.  Use the last option, “custom” and enter:

/%category%/%postname%/

As you probably can gather, this will make your permalinks display as: http://www.yourwebsite.com/category/post-or-page-title.  The sooner you do this the better.  If you already have lots of published posts, changing your permalinks structure can cause 404 errors for users who have bookmarked your blog or high ranking search engine results.  If this is the case, you might want to the redirection plugin.

6. Configure general settings

In Settings > General, you should change the tagline to something relevant for your site.  You may also want to change the date and time format.

7. Enable threaded comments

Who doesn’t love this fairly recent WordPress feature?  It’s not enabled by default, so you probably want to head over to Settings > Discussion to turn it on and set the number of reply levels.

8. Install a contact form plugin

I find that having a contact form is much more effective than simply publishing your contact information on your website for everyone to see.  A) It’s more professional this way.  B) It protects against spammers who can grab your email address off your site.  A few popular contact form plugins are: Contact Form 7, Enhanced WP Contact Form, and Gravity Forms (premium).

9. Install a few more plugins

These are a few plugins that I like to install on almost every WordPress blog or website I design (regardless of niche or industry):

• Subscribe to comments – Great way to keep your readers in the loop and returning to the conversation.
• TweetMeme – Useful and unobtrusive button to allow users to Tweet this blog post or page.
• WordPress.com Stats – Traffic stats right on your WordPress dashboard.  This is good to use in conjunction with Google Analytics.
• All in One SEO Pack – Great set of SEO tools for your WordPress website.

10. Install a great theme

Obviously, we think this is a super important step   The key is to find find a theme that will align with your brand, business, or personality.  It should also offer a feature set and layout that suits your content.  You can browse our selection of free and paid WordPress themes.

11. Install Google Analytics

Sign up for a free Google Analytics account, then drop your tracking code into your theme’s footer.php file.  Of course, if you’re using a ThemeJam WordPress Theme, this is super-easy to do just by pasting the tracking code into your Theme Options Panel (no need to edit theme files).

12. Produce great content

Content is King.  Post often and pack in as much value as you can into each post.  Your readers and customers will thank you