First up, Liz Saldana, a wedding, engagement and portrait photographer out of Pasadena, CA (hello, sunshine!). Liz is using the Graph Paper Press theme, Sidewinder, with a custom branded logo. The Sidewinder theme is characterized by its beautiful side-scrolling gallery slideshows and in the case of Liz’s Engagement portfolio and Home Page, featured below, the format helps to tell the story of the charming couples she photographs.

And to gush just a bit, we are loving Liz’s compositional choices!

Next up is another member using the Sidewinder theme, and we wanted to feature Exposed to Light not only because of the gorgeous photography, but also to show how quickly a color and logo change can drastically change the feel of your site to reflect your artistic style.

Bill Raab’s Exposed to Light business is focused on portrait, wedding and event photography, and is based out of Coon Rapids, Minnesota (go, Midwest!). We love his brilliant use of props and settings to create moments of light-hearted humor and tenderness.  The images really look great against the black background. Bill was able to change the fonts, logo and color of the Sidewinder theme using the Theme Options page, without ever touching a line of code.

Finally, we have French photographer Sophie Delaveau. (Ah, l’amour. C’est tres magnifique, non?) Sophie is using the Focal Point theme to highlight the work she does in wedding, portrait, lifestyle and editorial photography in France.  You don’t need a translator to enjoy the gorgeous use of light and composition in her photographs.

Focal Point includes four alternative stylesheets, a homepage post slider, numerous widgetized areas for inserting slideshows and welcome messages. It does not come with the adorable Francophile couple.

We hope you enjoyed this peek at three inspired wedding photographers using our WordPress themes, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Our members really do make us proud. We’ll leave you with one question. Can you feel the love?

Main Features

• Responsive Design – Retouch adapts to different screen sizes so that your website will work (and be optimized for) iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices.
• Galleries – Swipe or click through galleries. View an example gallery post for the full effect.
• Post Formats – Retouch supports the Image, Gallery and Standard post formats.
• Custom Background - Change the background from wood to a custom background of your choice.
• Custom Header - Add a custom header image to bring some personality to your site.
• HTML5 – Why? Because it’s 2012 folks!

Possible Usages

How To Download

To download Retouch, just sign up for an account. If you need access to our support forum or video tutorials, you’ll need to have a paid account.

Responsive Design

iPhone, iPad and Kindle are no match for Emporia. It will adapt to different screen sizes so that your website will work and be optimized for any of these mobile devices. Even the slideshow is responsive. Woot!

Progressive Enhancement

If you are using a modern web browser, you’ll see some special CSS treats such as text shadow, box shadows, columns and border radius. If you are not using a modern web browser, shame on you!

Plugin Integration

This theme was designed to integrate seamlessly with our GPP Slideshow and the GPP Shortcodes plugins. Simply install both plugins to be able to add slideshows and shortcodes.

Theme Options

The theme options page allows you to configure things such as fonts, styles, upload a logo, upload a favicon, add Google Analytics tracking, and fine-tune your layout.

Automatic Theme Updates

When new versions of Emporia are released, you can update automatically from your WordPress admin panel by installing the GPP Theme Updates plugin. Easy as pie.

Download

In order to download Emporia, you’ll need to be a paid member of Graph Paper Press (view plans). If you are already a paid member, then hop on over to your member dashboard and start downloading. Remember, Emporia is a child theme for Base, so make sure you download and install both Base and Emporia. Then simply activate Emporia to get running.

Enjoy amigos!

I have a real problem with the options available to creative professionals who are looking to sell their work online.  The options are expensive, confusing and typically don’t integrate well into WordPress. There are impressive hosted e-commerce solutions, but many tend to be overly complex and time consuming to setup.

We’re going to change all that, but we need your help.

We’ve secretly been working away on a new plugin that will turn any image, pdf, video, mp3 or document into a product that your users can download.  If you can upload it into WordPress, you can sell it.  You will be able to:

• Sell photos, videos and pdf’s online (download & reprints)
• Run your own stock agency
• Keep 100% of all sales
• Log into one website to manage your portfolio, blog and online storefront

Best of all, it will be free. Free as in the wind.  We plan on having version 1.0 ready for download by April 1, 2012.  In the mean time, we’re looking for:

• BETA Testers – WordPress users who have 10-15 minutes every 10 days or so to test the plugin during the development cycle.
• Early Adopters – Creatives with a WordPress site who want to use the plugin. You’ll be featured in Blog posts, newsletters and press releases.

As I mentioned above, we need your help. Please use the comments below to answer the following questions:

What are your frustrations or desires with your current e-commerce options for selling photos, videos or pdfs online?

Please post/vent/curse/convulse/spew in the comments below.  We are all ears.

Deal #1

We’re offering $100 off our newly unveiled Forever Theme Subscription to the first 100 people who sign up. This Cyber Monday Deal gives you access to all of our existing themes, all new themes, all theme updates, access to our well-groomed support forum and all of our video tutorials FOREVER.  To review, you get:

• 26 themes today
• access to all of the themes we release in the future
• a license key that will allow you to update your themes automatically forever
• access to our video tutorials
• access to our support forum
• FOREVER

Use this coupon code when signing up for $100 off:

CYBERMONDAY

Sign up here.

This offer is limited to the first 100 people who sign up.  If you are an existing theme subscriber and want to upgrade to this option, add the Forever Subscription on the Add/Renew tab on your member dashboard.  Contact us after you sign up and we’ll give you a pro-rated refund on your existing theme subscription.

This offer is valid until midnight (GMT-10) on Monday, 28 November 2011 or until 100 people sign up, which ever comes first.

Deal #2

Like us on Facebook and you’ll receive a $30 off coupon which you can use for our Annual Theme Subscription.

Do you care how your website performs on mobile devices? Did you know that mobile browsing now accounts for an estimated 10% of all web traffic in the U.S. and is predicted to quickly approach 15%?

Mobile browsing is gobbling up market share faster than knife fight in a phone booth. How people engage with your online portfolio and business is changing. How you respond to those changes is critical to your site’s success.

Why You Might Need A Responsive Website

As more and more people access the internet from devices of varying sizes, you are left with a few choices:

1. Treat your mobile visitors like one big heaping mass and serve them the all the same desktop-oriented website.
2. Build a website targeting iPhones. Build another version targeting iPads. Build a yet another version targeting desktops. Build a website targeting….well, you get the point.
3. Build one website that can adapt to the screen size of any device (build a responsive website).

Clearly, option #3 wins by a landslide for reasons we need not explain further (pssst…if you do in fact need further explanation, post a comment below and we’ll chat).

How do you make your website responsive? It’s simple:

1. Download one of our Responsive WordPress Themes
2. Install it on your WordPress site
3. Done! Ooh la la!

Upgrade Notice

In order to make our themes lightweight and responsive, a few things changed that you should be aware of:

Base

• Shortcodes have been removed and are now available in the GPP Shortcodes plugin. This plugin supports a fluid, responsive grid and can be used in any theme.
• Theme Updates have been removed and are now a available in the GPP Theme Updates plugin. This plugin allows you to update any Graph Paper Press theme automatically when new versions are released.
• Import/Export option was removed and is now available in the GPP Import/Export plugin.

Focal Point

• The GPP Slideshow plugin is now a responsive slideshow plugin, meaning that the slides (images) scale to fit small and large browsers.
• The category slider has been removed and is being converted into a responsive slider plugin.

Sidewinder

• Sidewinder now supports two menu positions: Main and Top.  Use the Main Menu position if you want your navigation to transform into a sleek select box when on mobile devices.  If your menu contains lots of items and drop downs, this ensures it will scale well on mobile devices.

Ready to Update Your Themes Automagically?

The GPP Theme Updates plugin allows you to update your GPP theme with just a few simple clicks. After entering your license key (from our Member’s area), click update, and voila, your theme will be up to date. The plugin will also auto-save a version of your old theme, so you have the option to revert back if you ever need to.

Create Responsive Slideshows

We’ve updated the GPP Slideshow plugin to be responsive and it will now automatically adjust based on browser size. If you’re using a theme like Focal Point that depends heavily on GPP Slideshow, this update is imperative.

Build Fluid Responsive Grid Layouts

The GPP Shortcodes plugin allows you to easily create fluid, responsive column layouts and add boxes and buttons to your Posts and Pages without modifying CSS, HTML or PHP.

Everyone Loves a Discount

Receive $30 off our annual theme subscriptions when you like us on Facebook. Enter the code at checkout to apply the discount. Plus, if you’re one of the first five people to activate a responsive theme and submit it to our showcase, you could win a FREE Annual Subscription.

Mixfolio WordPress theme

Responsive Design

Mixfolio is a responsive theme, adapting to the screen sizes of iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices. Want to see it in action? Grab the corner of your browser window and make the window smaller. Neat, eh?

HTML5

Mixfolio is an HTML5 theme, which adds support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices.

Post Formats

Assign Posts to specific Post Formats, such as Image, Gallery, Video, Standard, Quote and Link. The single post template changes design based on the Post Format you’ve assigned the post to.  Mixfolio integrates with the newly released WP Post Formats Admin UI plugin by Crowd Favorite.  Here is a screenshot of the WordPress Post admin for a Gallery Post Format:

Mixfolio WordPress theme post formats admin

Mixfolio styles each supported Post Format differently and gets rid of the unnecessary clutter (content, meta data, comments, sidebar) when appropriate.  Here are the Post Format examples:

• Standard Post Format Example
• Image Post Format Example
• Gallery Post Format Example
• Video Post Format Example

Theme Options

Use the theme options page to customize all the main design features on the homepage.  You can change or altogether remove the welcome message, select which categories show up on the homepage, etc.

Widgets

Mixfolio contains two widgetized areas for easily adding text boxes, tag clouds, link lists, etc. Add your own widgets on the Appearance -> Widgets page.

Download and Share The Love

Sign up for a Free Account to download Mixfolio.  If you plan on using Mixfolio, we’d love to see your site submitted to our theme showcase.  A Tweet and Like are equally appreciated. Enjoy muchachas and muchachos!

I honestly can’t remember where I originally heard this, but it’s stuck with me for years. This phrase is one of our guiding principles here at Graph Paper Press and it helps to explain the reasoning behind our most recent site redesign.

Becoming Responsive

More and more people access our site from different devices with different screen sizes (iPad, iPhone, etc.).  iPads already account for almost 3% of our site traffic, which is more than users visiting our site using IE 6 & 7 combined. That is significant and will only continue to grow.

“Responsive web design” was a term coined by Ethan Marcotte  in mid 2010.  In a nutshell, responsive web design is a design philosophy that suggests that web sites should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.  For example: When I visit our new site on my 15″ laptop, it displays at 1015 pixels wide with a left-hand sidebar.  When I visit it on my iPad, we lose the sidebar and move the navigation to the top, beneath the logo.  When I visit it on my iPhone, we lose the horizontal columns and some icons and make the site a fluid width.  Resize your browser window to see how responsive web design works.

What Responsive Web Design Means to You

Technology evolves at a rapid pace and the number of new devices and screen sizes grows exponentially each year.  You have a choice: You can build an iPhone-specific website, an iPad specific website and so on OR build one website that responds and adapts to the device that is loading it, making your content more accessible to your readers.  Thankfully, we’re about to do all of this for you.

Making Our WordPress Themes Responsive

We’ve secretly been hard at work revamping our Base theme framework and its child themes to become responsive WordPress themes.  Like the new Graph Paper Press redesign, these themes will also all support HTML5 and more advanced CSS3 techniques.

Checkout this video of our Base theme responding to changing screen sizes (being responsive):

It goes without saying that all our new themes will all be responsive.  These new responsive themes will drop within the next month.

A Responsive Coupon Code

In anticipation of our upcoming responsive WordPress theme releases, we have 100 coupons for 30% off our Annual and Developer subscriptions.  Use this code on the sign up page: RESPONSIVE

While our new responsive themes have yet to be released, why not take advantage of the discount today and be one of the first to download the new themes once they arrive.

Responsive Web Design Resources

• Responsive Web Design
• Media Queries for Standard Devices
• Responsive Fluid Grid Framework
• Pseudo Class Selectors
• Responsive Web Design Tools and Techniques

Enjoy!

In November of 2007, I released my first WordPress theme, Visualization, on my personal website.  Little did I know this would become a truly life-altering event for me.

At the time, I was the director of photography for a publication near Kansas City and I saw great potential for using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) for my photos, video, panoramas and writing.  The problem was, WordPress was largely a blogging platform at the time and all WordPress themes were simple tubular, blog-focused designs. So one month after launching Visualization, I decided to launch Graph Paper Press to help push WordPress theme development into new directions so that photographers, videographers, multimedia producers and other visual artists would see it as a viable platform for their websites.

Graph Paper Press grew quickly during the first year, so quickly in fact, that running it solo was impossible.  Luckily, I connected with Chandra Maharzan, an amazingly talented web designer from Nepal, to help customers with web design and WordPress questions.  I can’t imagine what GPP would look like without Chandra’s help.  Soon thereafter, I got married, moved to Washington, D.C. for a new multimedia job at USA Today and continued to use what little free time I had to build WordPress themes.  Life was accelerating at lightning speed.  In late 2009, I left my full-time job to focus 100-percent on Graph Paper Press.  Philip Arthur Moore joined the team soon thereafter.  His ability to help users with support questions while simultaneously squashing bugs, doing QA testing and making our themes translatable into other languages has proven invaluable.  Today, the Graph Paper Press team has grown to seven WordPressers.

The Meetup

Two weeks ago an amazing thing happened.

From left, Chandra Maharzan, Philip Arthur Moore and Thad Allender in San Francisco, CA.

Three members of Graph Paper Press — all who live in different countries and who had never met each other in person — flew to California to attend WordCamp San Francisco 2011.  Most of the Graph Paper Press team has relied on Skype, email, Facebook profiles, and photographs of each other to put faces and personalities to names. We’ve grown closer over the years but have always felt that we were missing something by not meeting in person. Under normal circumstances this would be easy but I live in Washington, D.C., Chandra lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Philip lives in Hanoi, Vietnam.  Time zone coordination for weekly meetings is tough enough; imagine our horror trying to figure out plane tickets and work schedules.

The Highlights

The sheer number of quality speakers and topics at this year’s WordCamp was mind-blowing. The enthusiasm for WordPress and open source technologies was palpable. Each day there were a few talks that left us feeling like we’d left them much more educated about the WordPress ecosystem than before.  Our favorite presentations from WordCamp were:

• Michael Erlewine’s “Building Custom CMS Applications on WordPress” (view slides | view video)
• Daryl Koopersmith’s “Decisions, Not Options” (view slides)
• Sara Cannon’s “Responsive Web Design” (view slides)
• Chris Coyier’s “CSS Pseudo Elements for Fun and Profit!” (view slides)
• Matt Mullenweg’s “State of the Word” (view slides | view video)

Highlights from our escapades exploring San Francisco were:

• Chandra commenting that “I’ve always heard you had to do things fast in America” after getting stuck in the subway turnstile two times in a row.
• Philip intimidating WordCampers with his 6’4″ frame, that is, until they found out he’s one of the nicest guys ever.
• Me (Thad) pretending to be a confused Russian traveler to an even more confused Japanese taxi cab driver.
• Chandra inviting Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) to attend an upcoming WordCamp Nepal.  ”If you can get 150 people to attend, I’ll come,” said Mullenweg. Woohoo!
• Philip striking it up fellow Graph Paper Press users while manning the Happiness Bar.
• Me (Thad) realizing that he still holds the title of World’s Shortest Graph Paper Press Teammate. (Insert statement confirming little man complex here.)

The Future

Individually we left the conference with renewed vigor for WordPress and collectively felt that Graph Paper Press is headed in the right direction.  What direction, you might ask?  We plan on focusing on the following during the next six months:

• Responsive WordPress Themes – Each day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows. Our future themes will adapt to each device to deliver optimal viewing experiences to your site visitors, regardless of which device they are viewing your site from.
• HTML5 and CSS3 – We are updating Base and it’s child themes to support HTML5 and CSS3.  All future themes will embrace these technologies.
• Niche Themes & Vertical Platforms – We’ll be launching more niche themes for photographers and other visual artists and also provide hosting platforms for each niche theme we release.  Building WordPress sites will get easier and easier.

A Shocking Revelation

One of the best things about using WordPress isn’t the code: It’s the community.  Whether you are a WordPress user or aspiring WordPress theme developer, there are many ways to get involved with WordPress.  You can attend one of the many upcoming WordCamps by checking out the WordCamp Central website.  You can also check Meetup.com for WordPress groups in your area.  Graph Paper Press sponsors the WordPress DC meetup group so if you are located in the DC metro area, we’d love for you to attend!

Philip Arthur Moore contributed to this article. Chandra Maharzan’s Canon 7D shot the photo.

Yesterday we learned of a vulnerability in a popular image resizing library called TimThumb, which is used in many WordPress themes and plugins, including a few of our older themes. The vulnerability was first reported by Mark Maunder in a post on his blog, and has been confirmed by the author of TimThumb.

The vulnerability allows third parties to upload and execute arbitrary PHP code in the TimThumb cache directory. Once the PHP code has been uploaded and executed, your site can be compromised however the attacker likes.

Affected Themes

Three of our themes (Modularity, Photo Workshop, Widescreen) used this script as a fallback approach for generating thumbnails if a user didn’t set a Featured Image in WordPress.  This script helped users who hosted images elsewhere (PhotoShelter, Flickr, etc) to have thumbnails generated for their posts without uploading images into WordPress or setting a Featured Image for each post.  Because we have removed this script from our themes, users will need to always upload and set a Featured Image in WordPress if you want thumbnails for your Posts or homepage apps.

The Fix

If you are using version 2.9.5 or earlier of Modularity or any of its child themes (High Def, F8, Modfolio, Modslider, Workspace, On Assignment, Workaholic Pro et al) you have three options:

1. Delete the timthump.php file, the cache and temp folders from your Modularity theme folder in WordPress located at /wp-content/themes/modularity/includes/.  Only users who didn’t upload or set a Featured Image in WordPress might have relied on this file to generate thumbnail images for Posts.  If you use a third party image hosting service, like PhotoShelter, and have used their PhotoShelter Official Plugin for adding images into your WordPress site, you will need to upload and set a Featured Image for all Posts that are missing thumbnails.  Here is a video tutorial on how to assign Featured Images in WordPress.
2. Upgrade to Version 3.o of Modularity and it’s child themes.  We have removed the file that has the security hole from all of our themes (it was only added to make it easy for users to create thumbnails for posts who didn’t know about WordPress’ Featured Image tool).  You can download the latest versions of Modularity and it’s child themes from your member dashboard.
3. Upgrade timthumb.php file in your theme folder and delete all the content inside your cache and temp folders.  The author of the script released a security update today that fixes the exploit.  You can download the updated script here.  This option is NOT RECOMMENDED.

If you are using version 1.1.1 or earlier of Photo Workshop you have three options:

1. Delete the timthump.php file, the cache and temp folders from your Photo Workshop theme folder in WordPress located at /wp-content/themes/photo-workshop/includes/.  Only users who didn’t upload or set a Featured Image in WordPress might have relied on this file to generate thumbnail images for Posts.  If you use a third party image hosting service, like PhotoShelter, and have used their PhotoShelter Official Plugin for adding images into your WordPress site, you will need to upload and set a Featured Image for all Posts that are missing thumbnails.  Here is a video tutorial on how to assign Featured Images in WordPress.
2. Upgrade to Version 1.1.2 of Photo Workshop.  We have removed the file that has the security hole from all of our themes (it was only added to make it easy for users to create thumbnails for posts who didn’t know about WordPress’ Featured Image tool).  You can download the latest versions of Photo Workshop from your member dashboard.
3. Upgrade timthumb.php file in your theme folder and delete all the content inside your cache and temp folders.  The author of the script released a security update today that fixes the exploit.  You can download the updated script here.  This option is NOT RECOMMENDED.

If you are using version 1.5.1 or earlier of Widescreen you have three options:

1. Delete the timthump.php file, the cache and temp folders from your Widescreen theme folder in WordPress located at /wp-content/themes/widescreen/includes/.  Only users who didn’t upload or set a Featured Image in WordPress might have relied on this file to generate thumbnail images for Posts.  If you use a third party image hosting service, like PhotoShelter, and have used their PhotoShelter Official Plugin for adding images into your WordPress site, you will need to upload and set a Featured Image for all Posts that are missing thumbnails.  Here is a video tutorial on how to assign Featured Images in WordPress.
2. Upgrade to Version 1.5.2 of Widescreen.  We have removed the file that has the security hole from all of our themes (it was only added to make it easy for users to create thumbnails for posts who didn’t know about WordPress’ Featured Image tool).  You can download the latest versions of Widescreen from your member dashboard.
3. Upgrade timthumb.php file in your theme folder and delete all the content inside your cache and temp folders.  The author of the script released a security update today that fixes the exploit.  You can download the updated script here.  This option is NOT RECOMMENDED.

We have updated all of these themes to remedy the issue and we strongly suggest that you update your installations as soon as possible with one of the three fixes above.