Hey everybody, Mike Linville of Black Dog Education here to answer your
questions about web design web development and online marketing with this week's installment
of Office Hours. This week's question comes in from David who is a DIY WordPress creator
member David writes, Mike you are an incredibly handsome as and well spoken man\'85He didn't
write that I'm just kidding. So David writes, I'm loving the video training so far but I
do have a question WooThemes gives me different pricing options when I check out should I
choose the standard package or the developer package? David that's a great question for
those of you that don't, aren't in the know and don't know what we're talking about, let
me step back a little bit. The DIY WordPress Creator is a program that we put together
that teaches small business owners how to build and maintain their own websites, commercial.
But one of the modules in that training program talks all themes WordPress themes and what
a theme is a series of files and graphics and styles that's really what is going to
give your website kind the kind of the look and feel and the layout of your website. Just
like web developers there are a bunch of theme developers out there and some are really good
and some of them not so much we like to use a company called WooThemes first of all because
it's just fun to say Woo, but second of all they're just good at what they do they've
got a lot of different options. The last time I checked I they had like 125 different theme
options different layout, colors, structures they do have e-commerce options. So for people
who want to use WordPress to sell some products, but more importantly to put my techno nerdy
hat on they've got a really solid framework and that's the basis on which this stuff is
all founded. And while it does sound a bit dorky to talk about stuff like that that's
one of those things that's going to be really important for you as you kind of move forward.
You want to make sure that your website is built on a stable framework. You don't want
your website doing weird things. You want to know exactly what it's going to do and
when it's going to do it. So you know if you go to WooThemes whether you're a DIY word
member or not, go to WooThemes when you find an image you like your going to check out
and pay for it when you checkout they give you two options one option is called the standard
package it's about 70 bucks the other option is called the developer package which is its
double, it's like 150 bucks now both options give you in my opinion what are the most important
features that is support for your theme, video documentation and the ability to access and
online form and ask questions. But also theme updates. Both options standard versus developer
package they also give you what are called bonus themes. Now what a bonus theme is it's
just you can choose more themes so if you choose theme A what they're saying is all
you can also if you have a standard package choose theme B and C. Or if you have a developer
package you can choose 3 options. Personally I really see that as much of a benefit the
reason is because you're going to spend your time your Money your resources and your energy
trying to get your theme as branded as you can to your company so that you have a nice
cohesive marketing message moving forward the last thing you want to do is have a bunch
of different themes that you're checking in and checking out you may go through one and
realize you don't like it and then switch gears go to another one. You're definitely
not going to do it four times. So I don't really see that as being much of a benefit
now the last thing that really separates the standard and the developer package over at
WooThemes is if you go with the developer package they're going to give you what is
called the layered Photoshop files and you know when we create graphics it could be a
background could be a header or something like that, it's usually not a flat graphic
right, it's a layered graphic. There are certain things layered to give you a certain effect
now they're going to give you access to those files. I don't really see this as much of
a benefit either if you go with the developer package here's the reason as developers if
I want to go in there and I'm going to modify it or tweak on it, rarely if ever do I ever
go back to the original layered files and start tweaking on those. I'll just come up
with a brand-new graphic okay so the benefit really isn't there maybe if you're a developer
and you really want to be like an expert at that one theme you might work on it but I
don't really see it. So to get back your question what I would say for me I would save the 80
bucks go with the standard package as opposed to the developer package and then take that
80 bucks take your spouse out for a nice dinner and movie or better yet take that 80 bucks
and spend it on some advertising do some Facebook ads, put another 50 people on Facebook or
your fan page or someone like that. So anyways, that's it for today I really appreciate you
hanging out with us if you like this video make sure that you like it. Share it, pass
it around to your colleagues do that social thing you do if you have questions you'd like
to have answered in this kind of a format, here on Office Hours go to our Facebook wall
as Facebook.com/blackdogeducation and writer your questions out there and we will get to
them in this type of a format. Again this is Mike Linville from Black Dog Education
I want to say thank you for hanging out with me, we'll talk to you soon.}