Aroxis is a new Thesis skin from Kolakube, and it’s pretty damn cool.

The main idea of Aroxis is to help serve your content to multiple devices, providing a more elegant experience for users on any device.

Or, in shorter terms, Aroxis has a stunning responsive design. And it’s not like anything you’ve seen in the Thesis community yet.

The best part of this responsive experience isn’t for your readers. It’s for you, the site creator.

Since Aroxis is built on Thesis, you know it sits on some pretty powerful layout options.

You can set your own column widths, create one, two or three column layouts, and even reverse the order of your columns.

A problem with many responsive themes is that they remain static.

As in, you can’t change the widths of columns or set your own custom column order settings. Your stuck with what you get out of the box.

Aroxis solves that problem and integrates perfectly with Thesis’ layout options. And of course, it all remains responsive.

From Flexible Layout to Killer Design Options

Taking a page from Chronicl, Aroxis is a “design first, ask questions later” kind of skin.

Armed with killer design options, you can set your own background color, change textures throughout the skin and even create some beautiful logos:

Click the image above for a full view

The logo settings in Aroxis are impressive:

• Broken circle logo format (far left)
• Rectangle box (left)
• Plain text (right)
• Your own custom logo (far right)

…and you can align your logo any way you want. Left, right, center— and the layout adapts.

That’s Just A Glance…

Aroxis is a pretty powerful skin, and has opened the doors for current and future Kolakube skins to become perfectly responsive within Thesis.

If you want to learn more about Aroxis, you can click the link below to get started:

Learn more about Aroxis →

PS: A huge “thank you” to Matt Gross (@mattonomics) for the help he gave me. Aroxis wouldn’t be as slick without his help!

Responsive web design is probably the hottest topic in the design community right now. And no, I’m not just realizing this.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been reading all there is to read on the subject and been experimenting with a lot of different techniques.

Needless to say, I am ready to start converting my Thesis skins (and all future designs) to be responsive, just as I have on my new personal blog.

People who use my skins are always asking when I will make them responsive, and why it’s taking me so long to do it.

My answer? It’s simple:

Why is it such a big deal?

Believe me, I think responsive web design is a great thing. As a designer, it’s fun to create and as a consumer of content on multiple devices: it can make life easier (or all the more tougher).

But in all honesty… why do you want it so bad?

Have you taken the time to truly understand what a responsive website design does? Do you really need to serve your “mobile” visitors a different layout based on your current content?

Or, have you been programmed by all the hype and what the ‘experts’ are doing and suddenly decide you need a responsive website over anything else?

I Need Your Opinions

I have become so fascinated by not just responsive website design, but how people react to it. I want to know why you want a responsive website, and why this new way of design is such a high priority for your website.

I want to gather as much information as possible, because let me tell you: I am working on a monster post about everything responsive web design soon, and I want your opinion to use towards that post.

So please, leave a comment expressing your honest opinion about responsive web design and why it’s so important to you.

(orig. 3/19/12)

I’m not going to lie and tell you my premium Thesis skins haven’t been selling like crazy. Because they have.

And I also have to mention that I did decide to *proudly* ditch my affiliate program for a ton of reasons a couple of months ago.

Despite an inbox full of requests and tweets telling me how giant of an opportunity I was missing out on— I kept a hard head and kept it closed.

But today, I’m reopening it. And doing it a hell of a lot better than last time.

Here’s What New With The Affiliate Program

A quick look at it, there’s a lot of awesome things about this program:

• Earn a nice 30% cut of each sale (about $11 a skin. Just wait until the prices rise!)
• Access to a growing list of 50 beautiful affiliate banners
• Detailed click, sales, traffic, trends reports
• Full support at the awesome Kolakube support forum

You can learn more about it (and signup) by clicking the link below.

Click here to learn more

Why I Brought it Back

I want to go back and take a minute to respond to my article about why I closed the affiliate program. If you read it, you’ll think I’m an absolute hypocrite for bringing back the affiliate program. I did bash it pretty badly.

In business, there is a difference between being hypocritical and learning. Opinions change in an instant and like most things the past few months, this has been a learning experience.

So, I specifically wanted to address these points I made:

• The sales brought in through affiliates was not worth the time it took to maintain the program
• Many people used “spam” methods to promote through the affiliate program, making me look bad
• Affiliate programs lead to higher refund rates through that spam by creating unrealistic expectations

Note that I based everything in that article based on the old Kolakube of a few months ago.

I even came up with a detailed chart of the differences between the ‘old’ Kolakube and the ‘new’ Kolakube to give you an idea of the data I was working with at the time:

1. Not Worth the Time

The first time I ran my affiliate program, it accounted for about 5% of the overall sales. Between taking the time to pay the few active affiliates, responding to emails and promoting the program, I started to feel like it wasn’t worth it.

Truth is, it wasn’t. How could it be when few people would really recommend my skins on account of the bad service?

Opposed to now, where customer support is the biggest priority here, I think a lot more people would gladly promote Kolakube. And in the end, it will be worth all the time it takes to manage it.

2. Spam Marketing Methods

Let’s understand this now:

No matter what, there will always be spam. I wanted to close the affiliate program because people use spam methods to promote my skins. But why let spam win?

When you get email spam, do you close your email account? When you get comment spam, do you kill off your commenting system indefinitely?

I bet not, because that’s all crazy. You just need to have better management over these things, and accept that you can’t beat spam, but you can control it.

3. Higher Refund Rates

Through these spam methods, people were often promoting my products unrealistically. Advertising things they could not do, promising things that would never happen… leading to high frustration when people found out it wasn’t true, and blaming me. Then getting a refund. Bummer.

I can only trust that people truthfully promote the products around here, and that I continue to keep pumping out great updates to always make them better.

Those are my new beliefs about the affiliate program here, and it is here to stay for sure. But this was the one major drawback of not having an affiliate program:

Missing Out on a Huge Opportunity (For You)

If you’re a customer here, you know one thing Kolakube is all about is listening to what you want. And you wanted an affiliate program to promote the Thesis skins you used and make some money. I’d want that too, money is awesome!

With such a high demand for Thesis skins in the market, promoting a skin only seems natural to be a huge hit in affiliate sales.

So I invite you, whether you’re a customer here or not, to try out the FREE affiliate program and see what you can make with it.

Hey, you! Yeah, the one who’s wasting hours upon hours scrolling through Tumblr for another mildly amusing cat gif.

I know you have better things to do, and if you’re reading this blog then you probably have ambitions for your web experience that extends beyond browsing image sharing sites.

For you happy few, I want to give a bit of a pep talk. To motivate you to commit to your dream of founding the next big thing on the web. We all daydream about stumbling into web-based stardom in one form or another, so why not pursue those dreams in earnest?

C’mon, let’s give it some serious thought.

Consider Pinterest

I think the recent explosion of the relatively new social media service Pinterest is a great example of how ordinary people achieve huge success on the web.

Less than a year ago, Pinterest was a medium level website with a small following and little to no media coverage.

Then seemingly, overnight, the site exploded in popularity, going from a struggling site to one with over 11 million viewers a month within a very short period of time. The developers behind Pinterest run a small operation—less than fifty employees in all—and yet they’ve managed to cultivate massive success.

The most amazing thing about Pinterest is that it doesn’t really offer any groundbreaking features to its users. It’s simply a new platform through which people can share info with other users. Designed to look like a pin-up board, people on Pinterest can pin up text, photos, and videos that they find interesting, funny, or worth talking about.

It’s essentially a refinement of an experience on the web that’s already ubiquitous. And that’s key.

Evolutionary, not Revolutionary

Pinterest’s path is nothing new, but it does teach a valuable lesson to web entrepreneurs looking to stake their claim to fame:

You don’t need to reinvent a person’s fundamental browsing experience in order to create a successful enterprise. All you need to do is identify a pressing demand in the blogosphere, and think of an innovative (and feasible) way to meet that demand.

For example, say that you happen to notice that a number of graphic designers complain about the difficulty with a certain design software.

While it probably isn’t within your skill set to create a more user friendly software, perhaps you could find the resources to build a site for graphic designers to vent about their frustrations and brainstorm solutions to common problems in their profession.

There was a need, and you created a space to address it.

Maintaining Quality

If you ever want to have any success on the web, you have to hold yourself up to the highest standards in everything you do.

From the idea stage, to actual design, to execution and implementation— you can only hope to succeed if you remain dedicated at every stage.

A half-brained idea won’t have a chance when you try to design for it, nor will you be able to execute it in an appealing manner.

A great idea isn’t worth anything if you aren’t willing to get down and dirty with the design and coding problems involved in making a site worthwhile.

Stay strong throughout or don’t bother at all; remember, there are millions of hungry entrepreneurs who trying for the same success as you.

Whatever you do, you better make it count.

It must be that time again, there’s a new version of Kolakube’s flagship Thesis skin, Marketers Delight, out again.

I’m usually a pretty modest guy, but I can’t contain myself here:

This is an update for the ages and easily secures Marketers Delight as the most powerful Thesis skin on the market.

This is a (literally) bold statement, but I truly believe that with all that Marketers Delight 2.2 offers, you’re not going to find another skin on the market that can really compare.

Let’s see what’s new.

1. New Streamlined Page Lead System

If you’re familiar with Marketers Delight and the Page Lead system, then you know a Page Lead essentially acts as a “feature box on steroids.” You’ll find plenty and plenty of tutorials around the web that teach you how to create a feature box… but they all require some fairly tricky code.

And that’s why Page Leads are so powerful. You can create absolutely gorgeous feature boxes without touching any nasty code. And the best part is, you can create content in your Page Lead just like you would in a regular post. So, it’s all very familiar to you.

Marketers Delight 2.2 comes with 6 built-in Page Leads:

• Feature Box Lead (with 2 color schemes: dark and red)
• Standard Box Lead
• Full-Width Lead
• 3 Column Lead
• Table Lead (dark) (light)
• Orb Lead

And the new way of using Page Leads have gotten easier. Rather than changing the entire Page Template to use a Lead, I’ve come up with something a lot simpler.

You can see how the new Page Lead system works in the demo video below.

2. New Design Options

This has been an option many people have been dying for. In 2.2, you now have the control to:

• Change the background pattern
• Change the color of the main menu bar
• And other, minor settings

I created the design options page with a few options for now, but have big plans for this page in the future. So, stay tuned.

3. Better Support And Documentation

A huge bright spot in Kolakube is the support forum and documentation sections. That may seem funny to some of you, as when Kolakube originally opened— there wasn’t much of either.

I am used to waiting days or even weeks for answers about other themes I have used. I really appreciate the fast response. I’m so happy to have found this theme and the quick support makes it even better.

The truth is, Marketers Delight is nothing without support or documentation. That’s why we take it so seriously around here, and yes, I say “we” because of a fantastic addition to the Kolakube team.

If you’ve been around the support forum, you’ve probably seen this big shiny head around. That’s because Sean Davis has been monitoring the support forum with me to help Kolakube customers get their skins the way they want them to look.

He goes out of his way to help out, and really adds a new level of greatness to the support community here on Kolakube. So if he’s helped you recently, be sure to send him a big “thank you” on Twitter!

Having said that, we’ve added a bunch of new tutorials to the docs to help make your Marketers Delight experience a whole lot better:

• How to Properly Customize Marketers Delight
• The Ultimate Guide to Customizing Page Leads
• How to Upgrade to MD2.2
• How to Use Page Leads in Marketers Delight 2.2
• How to add a Custom Message After Your xth Post
• How to Disable Share Buttons on Individual Posts And Pages

The two bold articles are probably the most useful. They’ll teach you the right ways to customize Marketers Delight, as well as provide some tutorials for enhancing your Page Leads.

4. Other Improvements

A lot has been changed, added and removed from Marketers Delight 2.2. Here is the full list of changes:

• Refined Page Lead system
• Design options panel
• New widget: affiliate links widget
• Can now add post footer message after “xth” post on homepage
• Disable share buttons on individual posts and pages
• Add custom share codes via Marketers Delight options panel
• Simplified CSS, making it easier to override default MD styles
• Replaced old button system with the DIYbutton set
• Can now use feature box on every page you want
• “Ribbon Lead” and “Feature Box” merged as alternate color scheme options
• Contact page template removed
• Non-English language friendlier
• Better feature box/Page lead styling
• Admin options, Page Lead controls simplified with fewer input boxes
• Fixed search bar “break out” bug

5. Watch the “What’s New” Video!

Now, I’m not a video guy (if you watch, you’ll probably figure that out). But I thought I’d shoot a quick video showing off what’s new in 2.2.

This video shows:

• New design options panel
• New post options
• New feature box options
• New affiliate widget
• How the new Page Lead system works
• Why Alex shouldn’t make videos

Haven’t Bought Marketers Delight Yet?

Marketers Delight is one of the hottest Thesis skins around right now. There’s a lot it has to offer your business, and this post doesn’t even cover them all.

Click here to learn more about Marketers Delight →

Already A Customer? Login For Free Updates

Marketers Delight 2.2 is free to all current Marketers Delight customers. Just login to the forum to grab your copy, and read the upgrade guide for instructions on upgrading from 2.x to 2.2.

Share Your Thoughts

Marketers Delight 2.2 is a huge, huge release. After reading this post, please spare a minute or two to leave a comment and let us know your experience with Marketers Delight, and of course post any questions too.

Also, be sure to subscribe to the Kolakube newsletter below to be the first to hear about Marketers Delight, new skins and more.

Sure, coding isn’t the most attractive solution to most people — but it’s honestly not tough to wrap your head around if you really want to do it.

In this tutorial, I want to go over how I created alternate sidebar layouts throughout Kolakube.

A lot of people have been asking me how I have all these different sidebars on different pages, so I figured I’d write a tutorial on how to do it.

To get an idea of how extensive you can get with creating these alternate layout schemes, I’ve taken a screenshot of the 3 places on Kolakube where I’ve used the techniques I’m about to share to create a diverse layout:

Click for a larger view

Click for a larger view

Click for a larger view

Step 1: Prep A Few Numbers↩

Before we get started any coding, we need to know a few numbers:

• The page you want to create the custom layout out (you can grab the page ID, or a conditional tag
• The width of your content column (found in Thesis → Design Options → Columns → content column)
• The width of sidebar 1 (found in Thesis → Design Options → Columns → sidebar 1)

For reference throughout this tutorial, here are my settings (using the Thesis 2-column layout):

• content: 480
• sidebar 1: 195

Step 2: Filter All Sidebars↩

Thanks to this handy article from DIYthemes, we can easily remove all sidebars from the layout of whatever page we specify through the use of conditional tags.

Don’t worry, we’ll add them back in the next step. Paste this code into custom_functions.php:

See that code is_single()? That tells the function which page it should remove the sidebars on. is_single() controls the layout for all blog posts, so by firing this function— you’re removing the sidebars on all blog post pages. Like I said, we will be adding them back.

A few of conditional tags I use the most are (see full list in the Codex):

Save that file, and check out your site. You should notice that there is only your content box left in the content area, and no sidebars.

Click for a larger view

Step 3: Add A Custom Body Class↩

For styling purposes, we need to add a custom body class to the page. You may know the default body class Thesis assigns to all pages is custom, as in:

We need to assign another class to only whatever page we just filtered the sidebars out on. Paste this into custom_functions.php:

See that is_single() again? That’s targeting only single post pages, since we don’t want to add this class to any other page.

You can add as many targeted body classes as you want. Just add this right before return $classes:

Now we have the following body class on all our single post pages:

Still with me? Let’s go deeper:

Step 4: Adding Sidebar 1 Back↩

Going back to the DIYthemes tutorial, we can go ahead and add back our first sidebar to the layout. Paste this into custom_functions.php:

}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom','restore_sidebar',1);
[/php]

This will bring sidebar 1 back to the layout, but underneath the content area. Here's where that custom body class we added comes into play.

Add this CSS to your custom.css file (you will have to adjust these values to your own):

How did I get the value 51.4? Easy.

Thesis sets the #content column (the section that holds your post content) to whatever number you assign in the design options (mine is 480), and adds the margin (spacing) around the #content column to the total width.

So, if you look into the layout.css file (or use Firebug) and search for #content, you should find the width already calculated for you. Replace my value, 51.4em, with the value created for your content column.

After that, you should have a layout put together a little something like this:

Click for a larger view

Step 5: Play Around!↩

We've successfully recreated a sidebar in Thesis and are ready to roll.

What we basically did was go around in a complete circle. We removed the sidebar from the page, and then added it back. The only difference? More control.

Going back to Step 4, you'll see that's where the key to the customization lies. You can replace:

…with anything!

What that code does is just recreates the sidebar Thesis registers. Remove that code, and place your own there — and now you'll see the true power of this tutorial, and how easy it will be to create these alternate layout schemes, such as you see on Kolakube.

Let's get a little more specific here…below, I've outlined some codes you can use to create multiple columns all in different order.

Content | Sidebar | Sidebar↩

You must have the 3-column layout enabled in Thesis → Design Options → Columns

Replace the function from Step 4, restore_sidebar, with this function:

}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom', 'content_sidebar_sidebar');
[/php]

Alternate: Sidebar | Sidebar | Content ↩

Using the same function as above, paste this into the CSS:

As always, adjusting the content width.

Sidebar | Content | Sidebar↩

You must have the 3-column layout enabled in Thesis → Design Options → Columns

Replace the function from Step 4, restore_sidebar, with these functions:

function kol_column_wrap_open()
{
if(is_single())
{
?>

}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom', 'sidebar_content_sidebar_2', 1);
[/php]

…and replace your old CSS with this:

Match the #content width as explained in Step 4, and make sure the #sidebars width is the same as #sidebar_1.

Widgetizing Your Custom Sidebars ↩

If you want to make these sidebars a little more dynamic, you can very easily create new widget areas to them. Go back to any of the functions you just made, and replace any instance of:

With this:

Now, you need to add this somewhere outside of the function. I recommend placing it right after add_action():

',
'before_title'=>'

',
'after_title'=>'

'
));
[/php]

Make sure the name values both match. Now, you can go into the Widgets section in WordPress and drop widgets into your new sidebars just like you would with the other Thesis sidebars!

How Have You Implemented This?↩

Do you plan to, or have you already done something like this in Thesis? What do you think of the layout methods I created for this tutorial?

I have a feeling there will be plenty of people who need help implementing these layouts into their own site, so feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or issues with this tutorial!

I’ve been busy here on Kolakube, and can finally show you what I’ve been working on! I call it: The Kubicle.

The Kubicle is my little office space on the web where I (and other authors) create and release some pretty sweet stuff that’ll enhance your website.

And for the starting lineup, I’ve got some pretty cool stuff for you to play with on your site.

KolFolio Thesis Skin

New Thesis Skin: KolFolio

For starters, I’ve released a new Thesis skin called KolFolio.

It’s a simple portfolio skin that was based off the short-lived Kolakube v3 design, and it’s all yours — for FREE.

Learn more about KolFolio →

Marketers Delight 2 PSD File

Marketers Delight 2 PSD File

My popular Thesis skin, Marketers Delight comes highly customized right out of the box. It’s easy to make your own customizations, but you may not have as much control as you want.

So, I am offering you the Photoshop file of Marketers Delight to give you that little bit of extra control.

It’s fully layered, organized and easy to build around. This is the perfect tool for those looking to really take their installation of Marketers Delight to the next level.

Buy Marketers Delight 2 PSD →

…And Plenty More at the Kubicle

I’ll always be updating this new section with new freebies and resources as I make them. Of course, if you want to submit your own resource — shoot me an email. You’ll get plenty of exposure by the Kolakube community for your site.

What do you think of everything so far? Let me know, and don’t be afraid to make some suggestions for new resources you’d like to see in the Kubicle!

Guest posting is a crucial, highly effective way to pour traffic in to your site and rapidly build a name for yourself. No doubt it fits perfectly into any content marketing strategy.

You’ve read plenty of are articles on how to write a great guest post. But how about attracting more writers to your own site?

Guest writers are always looking for the right website to submit their guest post to. Sites like Copyblogger, ProBlogger or Think Traffic probably get dozens of guest post submissions every day.

How can your own site, which probably gets a significantly lower amount of traffic and buzz, get any guest post submissions at all?

Here’s what guest writers are looking for when selecting the site they want to send their guest post to:

Trust.

There are a lot of things that factor into the selection process. Like anything else, nothing outweighs the big trust factor.

If you don’t look like a site that can be trusted — you have a long way to go before you get anyone wanting to write for you.

How do you build trust with guest writers? The obvious things stand out, like writing consistently, building a reader base, a social media presence, etc. etc.

But if you really want people’s guest posting testosterone to kick in, try implementing these 3 tricks now:

1. Make Your Content Beautiful

The design of your site is the sole most important thing your website has going for it. So, it better look stunning.

This includes the content of your post. You know, having great typography, pretty-looking headlines, post images, author boxes, etc.

If you use one of my Thesis skins, you’re pretty much covered there. A well-designed content area (it doesn’t hurt to actually write good content too) can be the difference between getting a guest post and losing out.

You wouldn’t want your child running around a gas station all day, just as a guest writer wouldn’t want their post on a site that looks like it was designed in a gas station.

Think about it like this:

You have to drop your child off at a daycare center. Are you going to bring them to the one that looks like a gas station, or the one that looks like a legitimate daycare center?

You wouldn’t want your child running around a gas station all day, just as a guest writer wouldn’t want their post on a site that looks like it was designed in a gas station.

Design is important. Take extra time to make your posts look stunning and make people want their content on your site.

2. Making Submission Easier

Everyone wants the easiest way to do something. Guest post submissions need to be easy, or writers may bail at the last minute and submit their post elsewhere.

From my blogging experience, I’ve found the best way to handle a guest post is to give the writer control, and keep everything streamlined by:

Create a Guidelines + Formatting Page

When I was managing my old site, Blogussion, I created a page that explained the following things:

• Basic rules for writing a post (originality, grammar, quality, etc.)
• Explained the process, and how getting a guest post published would go
• Created dummy content with examples of the custom post formatting in posts

You can see that page here, to get an idea.

By creating this page, it really cleared up a lot of questions people had about writing a post. It would be wise of you to do the same.

Easy Submission Form

Apart from having guest post guidelines, it’s vital to make contacting you easy.

I recommend building a custom contact form. That way, you can personalize your submission form and make the whole process easier.

I use Contact Form 7 (and Andrew Norcross’ optimization trick), as you can build unlimited forms and quickly insert them into pages.

Allow Registrations

I’d always recommend letting your writers register to your site. That way, they can submit their post to your actual site instead of doing it through email.

This also creates a new level of trust and personalization. You’re giving them their own account to fill their profile information in and essentially become a part of your site.

Speaking of filling in profile information…

3. Create Custom Profile Fields

The “holy grail” of guest posting is the quick author biography that gets put at the bottom of each post. In that biography, is usually a quick link back to the author’s site.

I usually let my writers fill in their biography by editing their profile and adding their own link in themselves.

Now, WordPress can do a lot. But the profile manager sort of… sucks. For whatever reason, you can enter your AIM, Yahoo IM and Jabber usernames to your profile, but not Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I don’t even know what Yabber is, and I haven’t used AIM since I was in 7th grade. And I’d bet that 99.9% of my guest posters would rather have their Twitter link in their author biography over this other stuff.

So, I created extra profile fields for my guest writers to input their information in and make customizing their profile easier (this is also in Marketers Delight):

The profile stuff (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) links at the top are generated from these fileds in each users profile on Kolakube

Here’s how you can do it too.

First, place this function in your themes functions.php file (if you use Thesis, use custom_functions.php):

function kolakube_bonus_fields($user)
{
?>
<table class="form-table">
<tr>
<th>
<label for="kol_twitter"><?php _e("Your Twitter Username:"); ?></label>
</th>
<td>
<input type="text" name="kol_twitter" id="kol_twitter" value="<?php echo esc_attr(get_the_author_meta(‘kol_twitter’, $user->ID)); ?>" class="regular-text" /><br />
<?php _e("Exclude @ symbol. Example: <a href=\"http://twitter.com/afrais/\" target=\"blank\">afrais</a>"); ?>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<?php
}
add_action(‘show_user_profile’, ‘kolakube_bonus_fields’);
add_action(‘edit_user_profile’, ‘kolakube_bonus_fields’);

// Saves data

function kolakube_save_bonus_fields($user_id)
{
if(!current_user_can(‘edit_user’, $user_id))
{
return false;
}
update_usermeta($user_id, ‘kol_twitter’, $_POST['kol_twitter']);
}
add_action(‘personal_options_update’, ‘kolakube_save_bonus_fields’);
add_action(‘edit_user_profile_update’, ‘kolakube_save_bonus_fields’);
[/php]

To add new fields, simply add a new table row after the last row:

…and add a new save command to the function kolakube_save_bonus_fields:

You can output the field information on your website by putting this line of code in your templates:

Your Writers Will Thank You

Following these 3 tips will ensure your writers are always happy and, your blog full of great guest posts.

What tips would you add to this list? I can think of a few, more obvious things that what I talked about above. But what are your thoughts? Don’t be afraid to leave a comment below!

—
Featured post image by Der Toco

It’s really an awesome time to be a Marketers Delight customer.

On Thursday, the DIY crew released Thesis 1.8.3 to all Thesis customers. It came with some new features that increased performance, WP Network support and more.

Unfortunately, the way Marketers Delight 2.0 was coded, it couldn’t support the new update. This is because it was considered a child theme and lived outside of the Thesis installation (woops).

Thesis uses a “skinning” system, which basically means you have to create your custom designs inside of Thesis, rather than outside.

When I created Marketers Delight 2.0, I made the decision to code it as a child theme based on the following things:

1. From researching around the Thesis community, I decided that child themes were the superior way to go
2. Child themes are making a huge splash in the WordPress community, and I figured this was the way to do it
3. A few other Thesis designers I’ve talked to were in love with child themes over skins

In short: if this wasn’t Thesis, child themes would be the way to go. But since I believe choosing anything over Thesis is wrong, then child themes are also wrong.

So from the ‘transition’ from a child theme to skin, Marketers Delight 2.1 now fully supports the Thesis design system and will be more futureproof for future updates.

New Features in 2.1

I also took the liberty of adding a few new features to Marketers Delight 2.1 that I think you’ll enjoy:

3 Column Footer

Marketers Delight 2.1 comes out with a bang, and introduces an awesome 3 column widgetized footer. Widgetized, meaning you can add new content to your footer just like you could with your sidebar.

And what that means is you can add all the custom Marketers Delight widgets, including the optin form, popular articles, orb lead and more. You have the potential to build just an absolutely gorgeous footer.

Here’s how it looks on the demo board. This literally took me 5 minutes to make:

Click for a larger, more pretty view

Single Post Only Optin Form

MD2 makes optin form management the easiest you'll ever see

In the MD optin widget, you now have the ability to display an optin form on a single post page only.

So, if you don’t want too many optin forms on the homepage, you can simply check the “Show on single post only” button, and rock a single post optin form with ease.

Easier Share Button Management

Rather than toggling all your Twitter, Facebook and Google+ share buttons at once, you how have separate controls for disabling/enabling share buttons on posts and pages. Neat, huh?

Bug Fixes

There have also been plenty of bug fixes which have been added to the changelog after you upgrade to 2.1.

Upgrading Instructions

Since MD2.1 is now a skin, the upgrading process is a little different. But, the upgrading and installation instructions have been well-documented in the docs section.

• http://kolakube.com/docs/marketers-delight-20-to-21/
• Upgrading Marketers Delight 2.0 to 2.1

New Feature Box Tutorials

The documentation for Marketers Delight is pretty extensive. It goes over everything from installing the skin, to customizing it with gorgeous buttons, optin forms and more.

Now, it teaches you how to create a kickass feature box.

The feature box built-in to Marketers Delight is already pretty great. But, combine it with these extra tutorials, and your site will look even more incredible.

Read: Creative Tutorials For Making the Most of the MD Feature Box

The Community Reaction to Marketers Delight

In short: people love Marketers Delight. Here’s a little look around the community at what people have been saying about MD2, and how some have used it to create an amazing site:

I am buying Thesis because of your theme (skin).

I own all the major landing page style themes for WordPress, but they all have a fundamental issue–well actually they are at polar opposites of the same issue. They either have crappy looking web form options or info-marketer style ones–both of which have a negative impact of conversion when marketing to a “discerning audience.” Your theme is the perfect balance of both worlds.

People who have been designing themes for several years and have significant resources at their disposal haven’t been able to do what you have done. You have a very bright future ahead of you Alex. I am looking forward to seeing (and buying) more of your work.

— Will Franco

Marketers Delight

…is the shit.

Truly the most valuable theme I’ve ever not-purchased.

Easily worth $5,000 as a custom theme.

Well freaking done.

— Willie Jackson (legacy members got MD2 + 5 other skins free)

Need a WP theme? Get this, its rad.
— Jon Nastor

Great work on MD2. Beautiful stuff. Well thought through.
— Chase Reeves

Holy f*ck! Alex, MD2 looks FABULOUS!
— @CoachDrague

Check Out These Great Customizations:

I found a few great uses of Marketers Delight 2 on some people’s blogs. Check them out for yourselves:

• Half-Time Training
• EvenMinds
• The Last 3 Reps
• The Hijrah Society
• The College Startup
• Ruth Zive Copywriting

Running your own business is no joke. Whether you’re based online or in a fancy Palo Alto office, chances are, you’re putting in more work and more hours than anyone else you know.

But are all these hours you put into your business the thing that drives it? What about luck, or fortune? Do these things have roles in how successful a business is?

I read this quote on Twitter about a year ago (wish I had saved it so I could credit who said it), and it went something like:

Entrepreneurs work 12 hours a day so they don’t have to work 8 for somebody else.

That quote has stayed with me ever since, and I share these words with many people I encounter looking to start their own business.

This doesn’t only apply to the entrepreneurs who don’t want to have a boss, but to anyone starting and running a business, period.

Why Luck & Fortune Have No Value to You

Yes, luck has helped people win millions of dollars in the lottery. Yes, fortune has placed people in the right place at the right time. All that relies on chance, and the truth is — that makes for a horrible business model.

You simply can’t run a business based on being the luckiest entrepreneur around, or the most fortunate. Your business needs you to be hands on, and always in control. But most importantly, you need to be accountable and always available to make decisions.

Anything and everything that happens (whether it’s good or bad) has a reason to why it happened, and can almost be traced back to something you did.

To give a few examples:

• You get a post retweeted by Mashable, or another high-profile tweeter
• The product you released sold hundreds of copies on the first day
• Your company posts a 50% decline in total revenue for the year
• Your guest post was accepted to Copyblogger
• People give your product or company negative reviews

None of this is determined based on how lucky (or unlucky) you are. You have no advantage over someone because you’re taller, live in a bigger house or have a cuter pet.

You truly are the reason your business thrives or dies, and all the hard work and time you put into it will show that. And that is your advantage.

Successful Businesses Are Built Through Passion, Sacrifies and a Sore Back

I’ve learned time and time again that you can’t be successful building your business on the premise of making a lot of money. You need something extra to keep you going.

Look, you can’t realistically expect to be successful in a business you don’t have much interest in. For example, if you were to go into real estate and… hate real estate.

Just because you’ve seen others be successful there, or think that’s where the money is, doesn’t mean you should go there for the sole fact that you may be getting into something you don’t love.

The more you see as something as a “routine” or a “burden,” the less of it you’ll actually do.

That’s why I tell people all the time: think about what you really want to do. There aren’t any quick fixes or fast money in the business world. It’s all a process, and you are going to break your back doing all the work.

That, and you will be saving yourself a lot of time in the future. I’ve learned time and time again that you can’t be successful building your business on the premise of making a lot of money. You need something extra to keep you going.

Happiness is the New Money

…and you heard it here first:

Making money gets old. It’s exciting at first, but once you’ve figured out how to create an income stream for yourself, it just loses its touch after a while.

Don’t get me wrong, you always want to make money, but I’ve found that the greater reward and the larger sense of accomplishment comes from creating something great and making people happy.

So Don’t Undermine Your Accomplishments…

After reading this post, I don’t want you to ever tell people how lucky or fortunate you are to be where you are with your business.

It’s just not fair to you to say that everything you have or everything you achieved was through luck or fortune, when it really all came from your tireless work, sacrifies and dedication.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts. How does this all apply to your business and personal mindset? Don’t be shy, leave a comment below. Can’t wait to read your response!

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Featured post image by NoneOther