Weekly WordPress News: Envato Support Policy Update, Transparency Reports & More.

A piece of news I noticed this week was that Envato have implemented a new support policy which shows whether an author supports the product ( A blue badge is added if so) and now customers receive 6 months free support with the option to purchase extra support for additional cost, the support cost is calculated as follows:

1. 37.5% of the item price (30% of the list price) when purchased at the same time as the license;
2. 62.5% of the item price (50% of the list price) when purchased during the support period; and
3. 87.5% of the item price (70% of the list price) when purchased after the support period has ended.

I see this as a good move for the authors, they are no longer expected to provide lifetime support for free which can prove unworkable the more customers you acquire. Adding in an extra revenue stream while also taking some of the burden off should help improve the level of support you can provide and this move also ties Envato authors in to the more common method between WordPress theme companies of providing support for one year after purchase.

Here is the rest of the week's news ...

WordPress News and Articles

• Behind The Scenes at CyberChimps & A Look at Their First WooCommerce Theme - How the recent acquisition of CyberChimps went.
• How Writing One Plugin Changed My Lifestyle - Chris Klowsowski talks about Work Life balance and working full time for EDD.
• The Billion-Dollar Tech Company With No Offices or Email - LinkedIn article about Automattic.
• How We Increased our Renewal Rate by 154% – WP Rocket Transparency Report 7 (July 2015).
• Proposal to Overhaul the Shortcode API in WordPress Goes Back to the Drawing Board - A change in syntax for shortcodes is being reconsidered.
• Competition Between WordPress Plugins - Surviving as the Underdog.
• What We Learned From Launching Our Most Feature-Rich WordPress Theme to Date - CodeinWP Transparency Report #6
• Some Random Thoughts on Default Themes - I agree that default themes should be for experimenting.
• Envato Licensing and Bully Authors backed by Envato - Some legal problems between Envato, Visual Composer and the Ultimatum theme.
• ThemeFurnace Review — A Premium WordPress Theme Bundle - Nice review of our offering at ThemeFurnace.
• Just How Big is WordPress Exactly? - A look at WordPress market share.
• Envato Implements Item Support Policy for ThemeForest and CodeCanyon - New Support policy on Envato.

Tutorials and How-Tos

• An Introduction to Beans - A Free Light-Weight WordPress Theme Framework
• Who Should Be Using Version Control For WordPress Development? - Intorduction to using GIT for version control.
• Simple Tips To Improve Your Contact Form Conversion Rate - How to improve your contact form.
• How to use SSL and HTTPS for your WordPress Website - Good primer for using SSL on your WordPress site.
• Mastering WP_Query: An Introduction - New post series covering the WP_Query class.
• Toolbox of the Smart WordPress Developer: Series Finale - Final roundup of the developer tools series of posts.
• How to hire a WordPress developer when you know nothing about code - Tips for finding a WordPress developer.

Resources & Freebies

• 10 Best WordPress Syntax Highlighter Plugins - Plugins for embedding code in your posts.
• Give - Democratizing Generosity - Empower your cause: start accepting donations on WordPress with Give.
• Popup Builder - Create powerful popups for promotion. Manage popup dimensions, effects, themes and more.
• Really Simple SSL - No setup required! You only need an SSL certificate, and this plugin will do the rest.
• Robo Gallery - Gallery with highly customizable interface, advanced and FREE WordPress images gallery. Responsive gallery with advanced mobility support.
• WP Super Simple Speed - Super Simple Speed is a stable and powerful plugin that dramatically increases your page speed without any hassle (or clutter).