New: Marketers Delight 2.1, Feature Box Tutorials & More

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:

Single Post Only Optin Form

This is a pretty nifty feature you’ll enjoy.

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

[alert]

Thank You!

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has purchased and used Marketers Delight on their blog. This is the most committed I’ve ever been to a project, and have some great things lined up for it in the future.

I’m also grateful for all the readers, customers and people I’ve met since re-launching Kolakube 10 days ago. It’s been a great time so far, and can’t wait to keep going.

Until then, see you around the community!
[/alert]