I’ve just updated and refreshed the previously released template called “Gadget“. The new template, “Gadget 2.0″ has been rewritten and optimized to support custom menus, social media and custom sized header images. You can also enable a horizontal flyout menu across the top and bottom of the header (as seen in the screenshot below – Click the image to view the live demo site for this template).

Above: “Gadget” (version 2.0) Click to see the live demo site!

How to enable the flyout menus across the top and bottom of the header area

If you have built your website with JumpStart Pro, you will already have a custom header menu that’s been created for you. You can manage this menu at “Appearance > Menus” where you’ll see a list of all your custom menus as seen below (scroll down to see what the numbers mean):

1) When you click on “Appearance > Menus”, you will see the WordPress custom menu manager. From here, you can…

2) Create a new custom menu – Click the + sign to create new custom menus. You will add items to the menu using the boxes on the left side which hold “Posts”, “Pages” and “Categories” to name a few. Just select the items you want to add, then click “Add to Menu”. You can also create flyout menus, by simply dragging the menu items below one another to create an outline.

3) Theme Locations – The ClickBump theme has two primary custom menu locations: The “Header” menu and the “Footer” menu. When you assign one of your custom menus here, the theme will display it automatically. You can also apply these menus to your site via “Custom Menu” widgets that you drag into sidebars via “Appearance > Widgets”

4) Save – Once you are done with your custom menu, always remember to click “Save” to save your changes. As of version 3.2.1 of WordPress, there is no auto-save feature for custom menus. Also, one slight hassle with custom menus is that if you delete or rename a post, page or category using the post, page or category editor, the custom menu does not automatically reflect the change. You’ll need to manually do this yourself. Hopefully the WordPress engineers will fix this in a future update.

How to create the custom menu under the header

To create the menu you see in the screenshot (the one with the blue background), I created a new Custom menu, using the steps described above, then saved it as “Categories” (you can see it in the red circle adjacent to the #2 item in the 2nd screenshot above). I then applied this menu to a “Custom Menu” widget that I placed into the ClickBump theme’s “Header” sidebar. Finally, in case I had any items assigned to the “menu-top” layout category, I enabled the option to move the top menu items from the header over to the sidebar at “ClickBump > Layout > Move > Top menu items to sidebar“.

Wrapping it all up:

1. Create a new menu containing your menu items and save it as described above
2. Go to “Appearance > Widgets” and drag a “Custom Menu” widget over into the sidebar labeled “Header”.
3. Select your menu from the “Select Menu” pulldown inside the widget and click “Save” as seen below

Note: If you are a current owner of Gadget, the version 2.0 update is included at no cost via your downloads page.

I’ve just enabled a new feature in the version 5.1.5 update of ClickBump theme called “Feature Image Links To:”

ClickBump theme owners can download and install the update (Clickbump 5.1.5) to enable this exciting new feature. You can find the new panel, called “Featured Image Links To:” while editing posts or pages. Its located below the “Featured Image” panel on the right side of the content editor.

Simply put, it allows you to add a hyperlink URL that the theme will apply to the featured image so that when its clicked, it will take the user to the page specified in the URL you enter into the “Featured Image Links To:” field.

I’ve no idea why the creator’s of WordPress didn’t think to include this as a native feature, however with ClickBump 5.1.5, you can now enjoy the benefits of this incredibly useful feature.

So, now that you know what it is, here’s a few things you can do with it (Don’t worry, I’ve  created a companion website to fully showcase the new feature and I’ll introduce you to that in a moment)

Use the Featured Image as an Affiliate Product Link

The easiest and most obvious use of the featured image is to provide an attractive, reasonably sized image of a product, ebook or software box that, when clicked, will whisk the user off to the merchant site, along with your affiliate ID in tow.

Here’s a video that demonstrates how to use this feature to highlight affiliate review products:

To do this, you would simply upload your image and input your affiliate link in the “Featured Image Links To:” field supplied by ClickBump theme, just below the Featured Image itself.

Tip: With my Amazon associates account, Amazon has provided me with a nifty toolbar which is added to the top of my browser whenever I’m on Amazon.com. The toolbar allows me to instantly grab my custom affiliate link for any product I’m viewing at the time. If you have this toolbar enabled (check your associates dashboard to enable it), all you need is the “href” portion of the “Text link” that Amazon provides.

For example, <a href=”your-affiliate-link-will-be-here“>link text</a>. You’ll paste the “your-affiliate-link-will-be-here” part into the “Featured Images Links To:” input field.

By default, ClickBump theme displays the full size featured image on posts and pages where you’ve assigned a featured image. Its displayed within the content area to the top left side with a text wrap around it. However, If you happen to be using Adsense in the main content area, ClickBump theme displays a thumbnail version of your featured image, moving it to the opposite side of the content from the ad block. You can, however, on a post by post basis, elect to remove the Adsense ad in order to show the default presentation of the featured image. To do this, just add the “don’t show ads” category flag to the post. For pages that have ads on them, look under the “ClickBump Page Options” and select the “Don’t Show Content Ad Box” option)

Use the Featured Image Graphic as a Product Images Listing

With a bit of planning, you can also use the featured image graphic to show a group of product images (aka Pushdown images) above your posts. People who are familiar with the “XFactor” method, where we display 4-5 product images just above the post title, will recognize this technique but may not be familiar with how to accomplish it using the featured image option.

How can I have multiple product images side by side using the Featured Image graphic?

You can definitely do this. We’ll just combine all of our product images into a single wide image and upload that as our featured image.

First, we’ll need to create our single featured image graphic so that it contains multiple product images side by side. What I mean by that is that your single graphic will contain all of your product images side by side on a white (or transparent) background as if they were multiple images.

To do this, open one of your images in your favorite image editor (Photoshop is the obvious choice for most, however, the free online tool, pixlr.com is perfectly capable of doing this as well).

Once you have the image open, from the “image” menu, adjust the “Canvas” to a wide enough size to accommodate all of the images you are planning on adding to the graphic. For example, a width of 550 pixels is wide enough to display a row of 4 product images sized 125 pixels square with a 10 pixel margin between images (and that’s the size I’d recommend, no more than 600 pixels which is the average size of the content area for most ClickBump templates).

So, you’ll just open each of your product images and paste them into this larger sized image. When you are done, you’ll have a single graphic that contains 4 product images side by side with a small amount of space between them. Now that you are done, just save the image as a .png or .jpg file at 75% quality and upload it to your product page using the “Featured Image” upload tool. Once its been uploaded, be sure to click the “Set as Featured Image” link at the bottom of the Image inspector dialog window.

As an optional task, you can elect to add a hyperlink to your featured image as described above, using the “Featured Image Links To:” input field. Otherwise, just leave it blank.

By default, the featured image is displayed inside the main content area, with the text wrapped around it. If we want our featured image graphic to display across the top of the post, above the content and post title, we just need to tell ClickBump theme to display our featured images above the post title (as opposed to the default, which is inside the content area). To do this, enable the option at “ClickBump > Images > Featured Images > Position > Above Title“

Using Feature Image thumbnails in “Related Links” menus

One really useful benefit of adding featured images to your posts, is that ClickBump theme can be configured to list thumbnail versions of your featured images in the “Related Articles” menus that are shown below each post.

Enough with the theory, let’s see some of this in a real world website. Head on over to http://amazonia.clickbump.com to check out my example site that showcases this feature.

To celebrate the start of the holiday shopping season, and with “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” fast approaching, I’m introducing “Gifted“, a new template skin package for ClickBump C5 and CE4 (for ClickBump Express, Engine and BizLocal)

Above: “Gifted” (click the image for full screen preview)

This template installs with one click into your existing site (requires the ClickBump core theme, which can be purchased at http://clickbumpengine.com). This template has a gift wrap style background and is framed with a nice soft drop shadow effect using CSS3′s “box shadow”. The default colors are set for a holiday theme, but you can change them in a couple of clicks to any of millions of color combinations. This includes the header background, the gift wrap background color, the headline fonts, tagline fonts, excerpt fonts, menu backgrounds, etc… You are in complete control to customize to your liking.

Custom Header in one click

As with all ClickBump template’s, you can upload your own custom header with one click via “ClickBump > Images > Header Image > Upload“. I’ve included a layered header template that you can open and customize at pixlr.com. For more on customizing header’s via Pixlr, see this post. The image is 100 pixels tall by 960 pixels wide.

Above: The header image preview and options at ClickBump 5 > Images > Header Image (Click for full screen preview)

Above: The header.pxd file inside pixlr.

Included with your template purchase, is a layered header.pxd file which you can open and edit at pixlr.com. It contains 3 layers, a layer with the package graphic, a layer without the graphic, and a texture layer. The image is 100 pixels tall by 960 pixels wide. You can paste your own image over this if you like and scale it to fit. If you want to create a taller header image, just use pixlr’s “Image > Canvas Size” function to resize the image to meet your needs. You can then increase the header area size in ClickBump at “ClickBump > Images > Header Image > Custom Height“. Once you are done, just save the image as header.png and upload it to your website using “ClickBump > Images > Header Image > Upload.

Slider Enabled in one click

Every ClickBump template is enabled with an optional point and click Slider widget. With the slider enabled as you can see below, your site can feature your top product recommendations as attractive slides, complete with images, videos, teaser text and hot links directly to your affiliate landing page at your merchants site (Amazon, Ebay Partner Network, Wal Mart, ClickBank, etc).

Above: The Slider is being used as a lead in for key site reviews on hot holiday products like the new Kindle Fire. (click for full screen preview)

The slider is implemented as a WordPress custom “Text” widget and is enabled with one click via theme options and can be configured and customized via “Appearance > Widgets > Header > Slider“.

Google Web Fonts pre-installed for a professional look

I’ve fully embraced Google Web Fonts with ClickBump 5. You can enable this option with ALL premium and core templates just by selecting your desired fonts at “ClickBump > Text > Headline Fonts“. You can choose a “Primary” headline font as well as a “Secondary” headline font. The primary headline font will be used for your Site Title, Tagline, and all Headings throughout the site. The secondary headline font will be used for your Tagline and post excerpts.

In screenshots above, I’m using  ”Jockey One” for the primary font and “Satisfy” for the secondary font. You can easily customize this to your liking and choose from any of the over 290+ available fonts.

Achieve an unlimited number of color combinations with point and click color changes. Easily customize the header graphic, header background color, body background color, flyout menu color, and accent colors and fonts.

This template will be available for purchase and download beginning Sunday November 13, 2011 from the ClickBump owner’s dashboard for $10.

Starring: Scott, Jennifer, Caleb & Josie

Also, I found the video below earlier on cnet.com. This is creative!

Today I get to introduce “Alligator Sky“,  the newest Premium template design for sites running ClickBump 5 (includes Express, Engine and BizLocal).

Above: “Alligator Sky” for ClickBump 5 (click for full screen)

This template features a full width slider widget for maximum graphic impact on the home page. The slider extends to 977 pixels wide by 375 pixels tall. As with all ClickBump 5 templates, you can add as many slides to the slider as you like and C5 will automatically display them as you see in the screenshot.

The slider’s callout text overlays the image and features a semi-transparent background. This helps with readability of the callout text in the event your slider image has a dark background. Its best to crop your slider images with the focal point slightly right of center to allow for the overlay text of each slide. You can see how I’ve done this in the example above. I’ve also created a feather on the left side of the image to provide a smooth transition from text to image. You can easily do this by using a wide radius (400px) eraser at pixlr.com and knocking off the hard left edge of your images with the eraser tool

The template, like all ClickBump templates, has full Ad support. For example, here is an inside page with stacked 336 ads:

“Alligator Sky” is imminently flexible to accomodate as many sidebar and footer elements as you’d like to include, on the home page or interior pages, you decide. Just drag and drop widgets over into the appropriate sidebar using the built in Widget manager.

I’ve included a small avatar image in the header, along with the site title and tagline. You can upload your own custom header image to fill this area. You can also opt to hide the site title and tagline by point and click at “ClickBump 5 > Layout > Hide > Site Title” and “ClickBump 5 > Layout > Hide > Site Tagline” if you choose. Personally, I like to use these (as opposed to creating the text title and tagline embedded the header graphic) and create my custom header image with this in mind. This is very easy with ClickBump 5′s new Google Web Fonts integration, so you can choose from any of their library of over 270 fonts with point and click ease.

Above: The “Quick Help” overlay showing the customizable areas of the header (click for full screen view)

Notice that you can customize the default blue gradient color at the top (color 2) as well as the “terra cotta” colored accent in the footer. You can easily upload your own custom header to replace the avatar or upload an edge to edge image to fill the available space and make a dramatic impression.

The Google search widget is included with ClickBump 5 for drag and drop use with all premium templates.

Update: I’ve just added an “Alt” version to this package. You now get 2 templates in one. The “alt” version is shown below. The main differences are:

(1) Default accent color is green – you can change this to any color you wish and you can also change the blue gradient to any color you wish, with one click

(2) The slider widget is the same width as the main content area (has margins on either side) and is 245 pixels tall.

(3) The slider callouts are also wider in this version.

Above: “Alligator Sky Alt” (click for full screen preview)

In the “alt” version example above, I’ve uploaded a custom header logo (header.png at “ClickBump 5 > Images > Header Image”) and also removed the site title and tagline text (“ClickBump 5 > Layout > Hide”). I’ve also removed the “Back to top” link from the home page (“ClickBump 5 > Menus > Back to Top”).

I’m looking forward to hearing your comments on this one. Its my favorite template to date and I’m expecting many success stories and unique uses for it. I especially like the edge to edge slider and header option.

ClickBump owners can purchase this template beginning today at the owner’s dashboard.

~ s

As with most of my templates, I draw inspiration from music. This template’s name, “Alligator Sky” is taken from a song by American synthpop artist Owl City (comprised solely of Adam Young from Owatonna, MN) from his third studio album All Things Bright and Beautiful. It was released as the lead single from the album on April 12, 2011.

Thanks to ClickBump owner Chris Manning for suggesting this template.

With the latest update of ClickBump 5, the WordPress theme that runs ClickBump Express, Express with JumpStart Pro and BizLocal, I’ve integrated full support for Google Web Fonts via point and click. Here are a few examples to give you a quick taste of what this is all about…

Above: “Magnetic” template skin using google web font: “Kreon”

Above: “Gadget” template skin using Google web font “Annie Use Your Telescope”

Above: “BlackJack the Ripper” template skin using google web font: “Nosifer Caps”

If you are unfamiliar with Google Web Fonts, a bit of background on the current state of fonts on the web

99% of all websites use one or two of only a handful of “Web Safe” font families. These are the 6-10 fonts that are common between Macs and PCs and include fonts like Arial, Times, Courier, Verdana, Georgia, and a few others. The reason for this is that prior to this development web pages were limited to only using those fonts installed on your computer (or tablet, cell phone or other device) when viewing web sites. So, If you didn’t have the font that the site designer specified, the site could render in a manner that the designer did not intend. This could result in adverse layout or readibility issues when interacting with the site.

Modern browsers support for @font-face make Google Web fonts possible

With the enhancements of modern web browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft’s IE7-9*, and specifically, their support for web fonts in the form of the @font-face CSS property, designers can now specify almost any font they wish, taking the web one step closer to the design asthetics of the print world, but with all the advantages of the interactive medium that is the web. *interestingly, IE has supported @font-face since 1998

In short, this is a huge, watershed moment for web design and usability. Not suprisingly, Google has taken full advantage of the opportunity by offering a freely available library of over 270 designer quality web fonts (and growing) that web site owners can use in their sites.

ClickBump 5 is one of the first WordPress themes to integrate Google Web Fonts without need of a Plugin and without requiring code copy and paste

Take a look here at Google’s Web Fonts Viewer to check out all thats available for you right now on your existing web sites running ClickBump 5.

Ok, now that you know what Web Fonts are, let me introduce you to one of the coolest new enhancements to the ClickBump theme, perhaps since I introduced the automated ad rotation feature:

I’ve integrated Google Web Fonts in a very big way. You don’t have to use them, but if you would like to take advantage, you can dramatically improve the look and feel of your web site, with just a couple of mouse clicks. There is no code to learn and nothing to copy and paste!

Just go to “ClickBump 5 > Misc > Headline Fonts” and click “Enable”. Then, choose a font from the Google web fonts pulldown menu and you will instantly see a preview of a line of text set in that font. When you find one you like, just click “Apply Changes” and preview your site. That’s all there is to it!

You will see that your Site Title, Tagline and h1-h6 level headings are automatically drawn in the font you’ve chosen.

You can also specify a letter-spacing value if you would like to extend or condense the font to best suit your tastes.

Have fun with Google Web Fonts and please give me your feedback here on what you think of this exciting new feature. Here are a few more examples:

Above: “Blue Halloween” template skin using Google Web Font: “Eater Caps”

Above: “CTR-Plus” template skin dressed in Google Web Font: “Cuprum”

Above: “Amaze” template skin dressed in Google Web Font: “Oswald” (my personal favorite)

Above “Velocity” template skin dressed in Google Web Font: “Nova Slim“

NEW: Live Demo Site for Magnetic

Warning: This template package will give you a completely UNFAIR advantage against others in your niche. If you are sensitive to the feelings of your competitors, read no further.

But, if you want to crush the competition with one of the most unique and “Sticky” WordPress premium templates available anywhere, read on.

“Magnetic” Premium Skin for ClickBump 5

Today I’m releasing the ClickBump “Magnetic” 8-in-1 template/skin pack. All 8 templates feature a “magnetic” menu across the top which holds the site menu (featuring WordPress new “Custom Menus” that combine posts, pages and categories into a single menu complete with flyouts) as well as the ClickBump exclusive Google Search widget.

The unique thing about it is that this menu stays anchored at the top of the user’s browser while they scroll down the page. This means that your site menu, and most importantly, the Google search widget, is always in view and accessible. That alone would be enough to boost CTR, but there’s much more to magnetism than stickyness. These templates are designed to give a sense of depth and dimension to showcase the main ad block like never before. This one really makes the ads Pop!

Like all ClickBump premium templates, all 8 skins in the magnetic 8 pack feature clean, SEO optimized, w3c-validating html5 compatible markup for some friendly Google love.

With the “Magnetic” template pack, I’ve taken it a few steps further. Each template has a unique background image. The background image gives the template its unique look and character. “Smile” for example, resembles a smile. “Clouds” features a unique 3D parallax effect that makes the clouds appear to part when the user scrolls the screen (video demo to come, you really have to see this to appreciate it).

Here’s a preview of a few of the template/skins available in this pack (click the images for full size previews):

“Magnetic Smile” Premium Skin for ClickBump 5 – Greet your visitors with a smile

“Magnetic Helix” Premium Skin for ClickBump 5

“Magnetic Uncorked” Premium Skin for ClickBump 5 – Care for some bubbly?

“Magnetic Chill” Premium Skin for ClickBump 5 A crisp fresh look to entice your viewers to stay longer

“Magnetic Helix Too” Premium Skin for ClickBump 5

All skins in this series are hand-crafted with a unique blend of cutting edge CSS design (including a few tasty morsels of CSS3 background, shadow and border effects for modern browsers), html5 compatibility, as well as the ability to morph into any color scheme you can envision, using the ClickBump 5 point and click color options.

You could literally build hundreds of unique looking websites with this template pack

Just add your unique custom headers, logos and your matching color options to create an infinite number of designs to suit your tastes.

You can easily add a custom header graphic (to replace the default avatar character) and I’ve included a layered .pxd file with the package so that you can easily create your own custom header image to make this your own. You can open the .pxd image at pixlr.com, edit it, then save it as header.png for uploading to your site. If you don’t care to use a header graphic, you can easily disable the header graphic with one click at “ClickBump 5 > Images > Header Image > Disable”

The template also features a vast array of color customization options. Here is the help overlay that you will see at “ClickBump 5 > General Settings > Show Help” (click the image for full size preview)

By default, the color values are preset to match the examples. However, you can easily customize these colors, along with the header image to instantly transform this template into your vision. As you can see in the screenshot below showing ClickBump 5′s point and click color swatches (1-4) that you will use to set those colors:

Adding the ClickBump Google Search Widget to the template

At the top right corner of the screenshot, you can see the Google Search Widget, specially formatted and anchored to the top right corner of the template’s header area. Its a snap to add this to your ClickBump enabled site.

1) Go to “Appearance > Widgets” and drag “Google Search Widget” (a ClickBump 5 exclusive widget not found elsewhere) over into the widget area labeled “Sidebar“. Once you’ve done that, it will look like this:

As you can see from the screenshot, I’ve already pasted in all of the default script for you. All thats left for you is to place your Adsense Pub ID into the space provided. You’ll get this from your Google search widget code at your Adsense dashboard. You can also see that at the bottom of the widget panel you have even more control over where the widget appears on your site via the “Widget Visibility” panel, another ClickBump exclusive. You can selectively show/hide the widget depending on whether its being shown on the home page, on posts, on pages, on category pages, on the search page, on 404 pages or on tag pages. No one else gives you this level of control right out of the box.

Adding Your Ad Code to the template’s Main Content Ad Area

To add your Main Ad code to the template, you have two options (for Adsense), you can use your Adsense Client ID and Slot ID or you can paste your entire Ad code block. I’m using a combination of both in my example, so that I can rotate ads between the two. However, you can use one or the other. Of course, you are not limited to Adsense. You can use ANY AD NETWORK, such as Chitika, Amazon, Ebay, ClickBank or whatever. Just paste your Ad code or script into the spaces provided at “ClickBump > Ads” and you are all set to go with global control over your ads.

To enable the stacked 336×280 ads as you see in the screenshot, open your site’s admin dashboard and click on the theme options panel (ClickBump 5). Once you have that open, just click on the “Ads” tab and click the “Default to Stacked Ads” option and paste in your Google Client ID and Slot ID for your saved large rectangle ad like so (click the image for full size preview):

Note that I have a few extra options selected in my example. These are all optional (as all of the ClickBump 5 settings are). By placing ad code into the “Alternate Ad Code” block, and checking the “Turn on Ad Rotation Script” option, I’m enabling ClickBump 5 to rotate the ads that the viewer sees between the Adsense main ad (the one I’ve specified at the top with the Client ID and Slot ID) and the “Alternate Ad Code”.

What’s cool about this feature is that I can place ANY ad code I want into the “Alternate Ad Code” box, and I’m not limited to Adsense. I can, for example, rotate between my stacked 336 Google Adsense blocks, and a high commission ClickBank product with affiliate link (or whatever). You get the idea. This is very powerful.

Adding Custom Menus to ClickBump 5 Templates

The Magnetic series (and almost all premium templates) is pre-configured to present the WordPress custom menus as you see in the screenshot, with the current post or section automatically highlighted. It also will display any posts you’ve flagged with the top-menu category and place them in the blue bar across the bottom portion of the header area. If you built your site with JumpStartPro!, the installer automatically created a custom menu for you. However, if you did not, click on “Appearance > Menus” to create and configure your menu similar to this (click the image for a full size preview):

The custom menus are flyout enabled, so that if you drag and drop them under one another, they will automatically orient themselves as flyout menus on the live site.

To flag specific posts to appear in the blue bar below the custom menus, just add the “top-menu” category to the post and ClickBump 5 takes care of the rest. To do this, click on “Posts”, then for any post you want to appear in the blue bar menu, click “Quick Edit > Categories” and click to select the “top-menu” category. Then click “Update” to save the setting. That’s all there is to it. The menu is now set as a top menu item and will appear in the submenu under the main header menu.

Adding the footer boxes

The four boxes you see at the bottom are optional. However, these are great areas to showcase special Amazon or ClickBank products that relate to your niche. Or, you can just place additional content into them. To create them, just go to “Appearance > Widgets” and drag a few “ClickBump Box x” widgets over into the “Footer” sidebar as you can see below. You can use as many or as few box widgets as you want. Magnetic will auto adjust the boxes to fit equally in the footer area alongside one another!

Note from the screenshot above, one of the unique capabilities of the ClickBump 5 theme that set it apart from other themes, the ability to set widget visibility. For example, in this case, the widget will only be seen on the home page.

Feel free to use the comments are below to ask any questions you may have about setting up the new “Magnetic” template pack for ClickBump 5.

I’ve just finished a 4 pack premium halloween templates package for the Halloween costume and accessories sales season. This template series is an updated “Remix” of last year’s halloween templates for WordPress, “Blackjack the Ripper” and “Blue Halloween” templates. I’ve updated them to support flyout menus, a slider widget, social media icons and background images. I’m also including two additional templates, “Grey Ghost” and “Pickled Pumpkin”, with this package.

Halloween Templates for WordPress

“Pickled Pumpkin” for ClickBump C5
Click for full screen

If you have ClickBump Engine, Express, BizLocal or JumpStart Pro, you can purchase & install this package now via Paypal. You get all 4 templates for one low price of $15

All 4 templates are based on the same basic high converting layout and structure, each with a unique header image and colors. 4 premium templates specially designed for the halloween and fall sales season. These templates require the ClickBump theme to operate. If you don’t have it, you can get it here.

They all feature background image support that ties into the ClickBump C5 background image manager and you can achieve some pretty phenominal 3D like effects with that feature alone.

“Grey Ghost” for ClickBump C5
Click for full screen

Perhaps the coolest thing about them though, once the holiday season’s over, you can take any one of these templates, change out the background colors and header and have a template for all seasons. I can’t wait to finish the video to show you the 3D effect you’ll get with a fixed position background image on any of these 3.

“Blue Halloween 2″ for ClickBump C5
Click for full screen

“Black Jack the Ripper 2″ for ClickBump C5
Click for full screen

If you have ClickBump Engine, Express, BizLocal or JumpStart Pro, you can purchase & install this package now via Paypal. You get all 4 for one low price of $15, an incredible value for premium halloween templates for WordPress.

I’ve just released ClickBump 5, the latest edition of my core WordPress theme that’s at the heart of ClickBump Express, Engine, BizLocal and JumpStart Pro! ClickBump 5 is available as a free upgrade to existing owners of those products.

Here’s a screenshot of the updated theme options interface:

Click for full size

The main feature of this release is speed.

The key to the incredible performance of sites running ClickBump 5 is its use of highly efficient CSS and Web Standards coding practices.

ClickBump 5 is one of the first widely distributed WordPress themes to be fully compatible with the HTML5 and CSS3 specifications and validates as W3C compliant HTML5.

In addition to numerous speed and performance enhancements, there are two main highlights of this release:

First, is the revamped options panel. I’ve organized the options in more logical groupings and categories and highlighted each function by its main keyword (Adsense, Ads, Images, Site Menu, Sidebar, Footer, Show, Hide, Move) etc, so help you quickly find the option you need by its most logical keyword.

Secondly, you now have a background image manager. This will allow you to create some pretty stunning website designs by attaching a single background image and color that you control via point and click.

For example, you can tell C5 to repeat the image horizontally (repeat-x), Vertically (repeat-y), in both directions (repeat), static, scrollable, etc…

If you’ve ever seen a website that scrolls the content vertically while the background remains fixed in place (a very neat effect), you can now do that with C5 with just a few mouse clicks and your custom background image.

Here’s a look at the updated “Images Manager” along with the background image options…

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About ClickBump
The “ClickBump Engine” consists of this core theme, along with complimentary products including “ClickBump SEO! for on-page SEO optimization, JumpStart Pro! for one click site setups, BizLocal! for creating full HTML5/CSS3 compatible local business sites and soon “Keyword Miner!” for finding profitable niche site opportunities without leaving your web browser.

About Red Mountain Media
Red Mountain Media, LLC is a privately held company located in Birmingham, Alabama. We produce the ClickBump suite of products for marketing professionals and website owners. Scott Blanchard, President and Founder of Red Mountain Media has been developing web sites and software using Web Standards since 1998

Jan 6, 2012 Update: Keyword Miner version 1 is complete! Before it can be released we are still working on a downloads site and support infrastructure. There will be a free version and a paid “Pro” version at launch.

Dec 13, 2011 Update: Keyword Miner has been converted to a native browser extension! We have it running in Chrome and will soon port our work to Firefox.

Deploying the app as a native browser extension allows much faster execution than Greasemonkey allows, plus more control. For example, when you hit the Adwords keywords tools page, we can default the “Match Type” to “Exact” (no more mistakes with that annoying little default “broad” search)

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