By coincidence, just a bit earlier there have been another slider plugin announcement. Naturally, people started comparing the two products and wondering if Responsive Slider could serve as a worthy free replacement of a fully-featured commercial product. Of course it can’t – it was never meant to be a comprehensive solution.

But all that buzz made me wonder if we could actually turn our plugin into a beasty competitor on the market. And why not? We are DevPress – we provide the highest quality and the best WordPress products to our members .

But simply updating Responsive Slider wasn’t an option – it’s been planned and designed within a narrow scope. So we created Sliders – a slider plugin, rebuilt from the ground up to serve as an universal, comprehensive, and expandable solution.

Sliders utilizes core WordPress features (taxonomies and post types), the existing WordPress interface, and leaves minimal footprint on your site. It’s both simple and powerful:

• The number of sliders you can add to your site is virtually limitless. Want to put multiple sliders on the same page? Each one of them with different size and behavior? Not a problem.
• Each slider use its own settings. You are not limited to the global settings that are common for most plugins.
• Sliders is extremely fast, scalable, and resource-effective. The plugin assets (styles and scripts) are loaded only when they are needed. It doesn’t slow down your site.
• It’s coded in accordance to the official WordPress standards.
• It’s secure – all plugin data is validated and sanitized. You or your users won’t be able to accidentally or intentionally destroy the site by using the plugin.

Having said all that, Sliders is a new product and is rough around the edges. Enjoy using it, but don’t forget to provide feedback if you encounter problems!

PS: Sliders is a premium product, available exclusively to DevPress members.

To Sami, thank you so much for helping us at the support forums and for your contributions in translating DevPress themes. We realize you contribute on your own time without expecting any type of reward or compensation and this recognition isn’t enough of a compensation for the time you’ve put into DevPress. However, we’d like you to know we do appreciate you and members like yourself that make DevPress.com a helpful and enjoyable community to be a part of. Thank you very much!

More community spotlight coming next week…

Of course, this new pricing won’t affect existing members – they are locked in their current plans ($5/year or $25/lifetime). Until they cancel their subscriptions.

Thank you for supporting DevPress and for being part of this community!

We have an important announcement coming in a couple of weeks. It will drastically change the way we operate DevPress and our business model.

Non-Members

For details, learn more and sign up here. If you subscribe today for $5.00 per year and never cancel your subscription, you get to lock in that price for life regardless of the new price or future price increases. Same goes for the $25.00 option.

This is why we auto-renew your subscription on DevPress.com — allowing early supporters to lock in a cheap subscription rate. With other payment systems, we cannot do that.

How to Sign Up Smoothly

• Make sure you can receive email and that your inbox is not full.
• Go to the club page and purchase one of the two available options.
• Pay via PayPal then register your account afterward. Remember to use your PayPal address to register. Otherwise, the system will not recognize you and you will not get access.
• An activation link will be emailed to you. If you don’t receive one, check your spam inbox.
• Click on the activation link. This is absolutely the last step.

Existing Members

This price increase will not affect you if you have an active subscription via PayPal. If you recently cancelled your subscription or paid through e-Junkie, you are not required to but should renew your subscription today by purchasing the $5.00 option or pay a one-time $25.00 fee for lifetime access to take advantage of this grace period before the price increase. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to renew later at a significantly higher price.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but there are too many members for us to handle this manually on a case by case basis.

How to Renew Smoothly

• Login to your DevPress account
• Go to the club page and purchase one of the two available options.
• Do not register another account if PayPal redirects you to a registration page. (You already have an account.)

Afterward, email DevPress to let us know you recently renewed. DevPress is transitioning from the old membership system to the new system. There might be hiccups here and there. It’s best to leave us a note so we can double check on your account making sure everything is fine. In your note, remember to include your PayPal email address, transaction ID, and your DevPress account email address if its different from your PayPal address.

Quiescent will be a photo blog theme and my first experiment with full-screen themes. Unlike the Fanwood and the upcoming Cascade, Quiescent is a laser focused, single solution theme. It’s made for photo blogging, nothing else.

For the preview, I stretched the left sidebar, height-wise, to line up with the right content area. When it’s coded, the left sidebar’s height will always be the height of the browser or screen area. The only thing would stretch beyond this height or scroll will be the content area.

Many of you have asked for a theme with slider, and after we brainstormed the possible solutions, we decided to create a more or less universal tool for adding a jQuery slider to any DevPress theme. And the end result actually works in ANY theme, not only those created by us, or powered by Hybrid Core. Yes, there are already plenty of slider plugins, but none of them works as we’d like. Plus, it had to be ‘responsive’ – just like the existing DevPress themes.

Here is a Demo if you are wondering what sort of thing is that slider.

Credits for the plugin name should go to shapeshifter3, who is one of our most active members :) .

And lastly, we need your feedback! Please download the plugin, play with it and tell us what you think. It’s an early version and the are quite a few scheduled improvements. The detailed documentation and official plugin page aren’t ready yet, so feel free to ask any questions you may have…

Cascade is the theme I came up with (today) while brainstorming how to fix Kansas — a different theme I previewed earlier, but have not published an official release yet. The first version of Kansas some of you have downloaded is not what I had in mind. I mentioned before, Kansas boundary-less design style is troublesome when it comes to integrating plugins like bbPress, BuddyPress, and Jigoshop. That design style simply isn’t flexible enough to make everything pretty. Or at least, I have not figured out how to do it with that design style.

Like Kansas, Cascade will have a portfolio showcase page template to use as the front page too. Speaking of showcasing, Galin is working on a responsive slider plugin.

Cascade, on the other hand, is as close to a perfect, bright version of Fanwood as possible. But unlike Fanwood, Cascade is focused on blogging. The default layout will be a 1 column layout. Below are different previews of three Cascade layout options. There will be 12 layouts total.

One Column Layout

Unlike Fanwood’s default two-column layout. The default for Cascase will be one column

Two Columns

Three Columns

Except for the extra header menu available in Kansas, Cascade and Kansas are pretty much the exact same theme (intended to be the bright version of Fanwood). I think it would be redundant to release both Cascade and Kansas since I can release a modification package for users needing a horizontal header menu. What are your thoughts? Release both themes or just Cascade?

That’s where you come in. Simply continue using DevPress and report any error via The Lounge or through the contact page.

Beyond server migration issues, please help us improve your experience here at DevPress. If there’s anything we can improve like the registration processs, logging in, submitting questions, finding documentations, or downloading themes, please let us know. Thank you.

Earlier today, Galin Simeonov — one-half of DevPress.com’s two-man team — released Hatch Pro.

A minimal portfolio and blogging theme, Hatch Pro is an advanced version of Hatch, providing additional control, layout sections, and extra theme options.

The differences and improvements compared to the original Hatch theme include:

• “Author Info” can contain any HTML content.
• Callout section.
• Additional 3-column layout option.
• Post formats provide an alternative post layout for blog posts – optimized for reading experience.
• The subsidiary sidebar can hold up to 4 widgets (compared to 3 in Hatch).
• Option to turn on/off the built-in Fancybox script – in case you prefer to use another lightbox plugin.

Kansas Theme Update

I’ve released a very basic version of Kansas here. For those that have been waiting for this theme, I’m sorry it doesn’t have the portfolio integration yet. I’ve had quite a few troubles with this theme. The design is a major problem at this point. I’ve tried to force it, but it’s not looking good considering it will need to support BuddyPress, bbPress, and Jigoshop in the future.

I need to modify the design and add more features. But fear not, I will roll out frequently.

It’s no where it needs to be right now, but it’s still great as a blogging theme. If you’re simply looking for a blogging theme with multiple layout options and mobile compatibility, try out Kansas. It’s also a good starting point for a Fanwood child theme.

Galin isn’t a DevPress employee. We’re equal partners.

If you’re a long time DevPress subscriber, you might be surprised by this announcement seeing how the original DevPress team disbanded. I share the same feelings, which is why I’ve declined many collaboration offers and business proposals. None of them felt right until now, which is a partnership I initiated. I feel Galin is the right person to push DevPress forward because he understands what it’s like to be a one-mean team and he’s one of the few theme authors utilizing and mixing the right balance of code and design.

I hope this is a boost of confidence for DevPress club members and a sign of things to come for DevPress in 2012.

• DevPress.com management and support system? Check
• Powerful flagship theme in Fanwood? Check
• An even better set of hands from Galin to create more themes? Check

Progress has been slow here at DevPress.com, but that’s only because I took on two huge projects in a row creating a killer theme with Fanwood and restructuring + redesigning DevPress.com. Now, all that’s left to do is releasing new themes. With Galin on board, DevPress will be on fire.

Thank you for supporting DevPress, here’s to a great 2012!