In Episode #5 of the WP Elevation podcast I had the pleasure of talking a fellow Australian Japh Thomson who is WordPress Evangelist at Envato, the company behind several creative marketplaces like ThemeForest and CodeCanyon. Japh is very active in the WordPress community and I thought it would be interesting to learn how he balances his love of WordPress with the commercial nature of Envato. I was also keen to talk about the politics of the GPL and commercial themes and plugins. Ooh, juicy stuff indeed.
We're giving away $100 worth of credit for you to spend on anything you like in any of the Envato Marketplaces so watch the interview to learn how to enter.
Congratulations Steve! Japh has chosen you as the lucky winner of the competition! Thanks for your contribution and keep elevating! (October 2013).
Japh was very generous with his time and how open and transparent he was talking about some of these issues that have been widely covered in the WordPress space. He also gives some great advice to freelancers about how to differentiate yourself from the pack.
He also mentions the awesome work of Tom McFarlin on the WPTuts+ website as a point of reference if you want to start writing tutorials and makes an excellent reference to Hanlon’s Razor (listen out for it).
Freeagent Central and Helpscout are 2 apps that Japh likes and the quote about the beginers mind and the expert mind comes from Shunryu Suzuki.
You can reach out and thank Japh on his twitter @japh.
Japh suggested I interview Tom Wilmarth. Tom, keep your eyes on your inbox.
Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below and tell us what would you like to see in the future of Envato.
16 Responses
Hey Troy and Japh its great to see other Aussies, showing the world how to do WordPress and do it well. I’m also from Melbourne. Anyway, My response to your competition is not really something I would like but cannot buy on the marketplace currently, its more what i would like to see offered for web designers on the Envato marketplace in general.
I would like to see a better way for web designers/developers to offer themes and plugins, and other Envato services to their clients. For instance if i want a theme for my client, i purchase it under my account so that i get the support, but technically, we want the client to have the license. But for us to handle all support tickets. Lets say we are charging our client for ongoing support for their site and the theme. We kind of become the middle man when something needs fixing, which is, i would assume easier to speak with the developer because we are essentially in the same field, not our customers. But when a customer no longer wants our support, or decides on another web designer etc. Changing the rights over to the customer can become tedious and annoying. (pretty much I tell my customers that they need to purchase it themselves to get the ongoing support.) This then has some initial problems, like not wanting the customer to know that their is such a marketplace, and that they could in theory just buy a new theme and update their site with a new design, instead of using my services. (Although i prevent my user roles for my customers from been able to update themes). My solution would be this.
I want to see an option in the downloads area of the market place, so that i can assign a customer to that theme or plugin. It would be safe to assume that I would be using the marketplace more and more, and managing the licenses should be made easy to manage for web designers. I want to see an option box introduced to the download area with a check box saying something like “is this to be used on one of your own sites, or a customer”. If a customer is selected, then you can define, the customers name and web site url, for license purposes. Maybe some other details, (not sure). Then if the client changes to a new design you can just update the details, and you can offer this template to another client, or Purchase a renewal license, to use on a new site (which ever is fairest). On a plus side this should make tracking miss uses of themes easier, because the theme should in theory be associated with a domain name and valid license.
Just a thought. Cheers, guys.
Chris.
I would like to buy Avada theme and WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter plugin using your envato Marketplaces credits.
Thanks
First of all I love envato actually I breath envato ;). I would love to get the salient or neighborhood theme and My Mail Email Newsletter if got the envato marketplace credit. yaaahhhhoooo.
Hey Santosh,
Thanks for dropping by. The idea with the contest is to let Japh from Envato know what kind of digital products you would like to be able to buy from Envato that they currently don’t offer.
That way they get some feedback to help them improve their offering.
Hey Hammal,
Thanks for dropping by.
See my note from above:
The idea with the contest is to let Japh from Envato know what kind of digital products you would like to be able to buy from Envato that they currently don’t offer.
That way they get some feedback to help them improve their offering.
I second Chris comment with the idea of buying a theme or plugin as a company for a client and giving the customer access to the download and info section without giving him the company password (what of course can’t be done) or access to other clients themes etc.
Also I’d like to see a WordPress plugin that allows me to manage clients from the wordpress backend and autogenerate recurring bills including the ESR number for Swiss Post orange inpayment slip with reference number (ISR).
I’d like to see and buy Themes built on PyroCMS https://www.pyrocms.com It’s an incredible CMS with lots of potential and many have been creating awesome things with it. As you might know PyroCMS is built entirely on the CodeIgniter Framework so it has a solid foundation and it’s lightweight among other good things…
That’s what I’d like to be able to buy on Themeforest.
Hi. I had the pleasure of meeting Japh in WordCamp Europe (Leiden) and i can only say good things about him.
As a domainer, I would like to buy/sell domain names on Envato. I think there is space for an aftermarket there, so that’s my idea.
Best,
Joao
Try InfiniteWP (http://infinitewp.com) to help you manage your clients WordPress sites. It may not help with the recurring bills but will handle just about everything else. Make sure to checkout there Addons section.
I have a further real thing i would like to see on Envato, and cant for the life of me find, so maybe its not there, how about some wireframe builders in codecanyon, or even a wordpress theme builder.
Thanks so much, Joao! It was really great meeting and chatting with you 🙂
I would like to see some way to connect my Envato account with my WordPress installations so I could have quicker, more automated theme updates, rather than needing to download the new theme file and upload them to WordPress.
I would like to see more themes packages with apps … so that everything is tied together… ie, you update your wordpress site and it pushes new content (what you have selected) to your mobile app … I know you can buy the odd app now, but you cannot buy a complete package of app (apple, android) … theme … that all work well together and that the design ties everything together well.
Just an idea for something new that I have not seen around …
As a video producer that works with a lot of clients remotely I’d like to see a nice brandable WP theme you could used to self host your video proofs for review. It would have a video player that a client could easily add markers, callouts and comments to various points in your video. It would be scrubbable to the extent of enabling a client to click at a point they have already played without having to wait for the video to rebuffer (well as much as possible). It would have assignable user permissions ie play permissions, share permissions, download permissions; automated watermarking of videos that can be switched on and off for various clients; an integrated uploader perhaps that talks nicely with dropbox, plus much much more.
Hi Jonathan, this actually exists already! You can download the plugin from here: https://github.com/envato/envato-wordpress-toolkit
Click the “Download ZIP” button in the sidebar on the right.
Hey Steve! As I tweeted, but just so it’s on record here too, I’ve chosen you as the winner for this one.
Congrats! 😀