Introducing AppThemes

It’s certainly been one heck of a busy year for the ClassiPress team and now after months of hard work, we are pleased to announce our new website, AppThemes.

As you could probably tell, AppThemes is not your typical WordPress premium themes business. Our goal is to fit a much needed niche of providing business software easy enough to use without requiring a technical person to setup. What better system to build these apps on top off than WordPress.

Not only that but we also take pride in the quality of our code so developers can easily understand what’s going on. How many of you have ever downloaded or purchased a premium theme before only to discover the code is a mess or doesn’t even work properly? I’ve been there before and it’s frustrating especially after you already spent the money.

I call this the Great Oz effect. You have this powerful-looking character that looks great on the outside only to discover that behind the green curtain is a tiny little old man. I regress.

The Story

The idea of an apps theme business came up a few months after I bought the ClassiPress business back in March 2009. The only problem was I had to put it on hold until I saved up enough money to quit my day job. That day finally arrived in January 2010 and I then was set free to start my journey.

Once all the business logistics were taken care of, I focused on building ClassiPress 3.0. I had a promise to keep to my customers and it was important to get that monumental update done before I could expand the business. I was heads down for two straight months.

ClassiPress 3.0 was released almost one year to-the-day from when I bought the company. It ended up being a huge success and essentially served as our “proof of concept” so that we then felt comfortable expanding the business into new areas.

So in a nutshell, that’s how AppThemes came into existence.

What does this mean for existing customers?

We will continue to provide our excellent support and product updates as usual. In addition, customers will get exclusive sneak previews and special offers on our upcoming themes. They will also benefit from our new customer portal which gives them instant access to download the latest and greatest versions (anytime and from anywhere), a new affiliate system with real-time stats, and a single sign-on for the portal and the forum.

All in all it’s a win-win deal for everyone.

So what’s coming next?

Our next premium theme is called, JobRoller which is a job posting app. It allows you to list and sell job postings similar to a Monster.com or Craigslist with the ability for applicants to submit their resume. It’s due out in August and existing customers will get an early sneak peek and special offer to purchase it first.

Following JobRoller will be Vantage which is a business directory theme. You will be able to charge people to list their business and visitors can leave feedback and reviews similar to Yelp. I know many of you have modified ClassiPress to do this exact thing since there are no decent directory themes out there today. The good news is we have begun working on this theme and the release date is late September.

Last and certainly not least, ClassiPress 3.0.3 will be released in the next couple of weeks. It’s a maintenance/bug fix release with much better support for child themes. ClassiPress 3.1 is scheduled for September and will include several new features which Seth or myself will expand on in a separate post.

Lastly, we’d also like to thank those of you who sent us “congrats!” & “great new site!” emails. We look forward to building more themes and growing the business!

~Your AppThemes Team

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The Story

What does this mean for existing customers?

So what’s coming next?

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