The template and theme market isn’t short of some small and big players pushing their goods at discount prices with exceptional quality, in fact it seems that every month we see a new website offering something different. Lately however, we have been following a new start-up company that looks very promising – MOJO-Themes.com.

If you buy or sell HTML templates, wordpress, tumblr or magento themes then you will no doubt be aware of MOJO-Themes.com. With an exciting website design, improved viewing and buying experience than most other marketplaces, and a growing collection of some awesome products at crazy low prices, they are truly placing the MOJO back in to sites on a daily basis!

The MOJO crew managed to sit down with us and go over some insightful questions and then, offered 10 of lucky our readers a FREE $10 credit – read on for details!

First off, we just wanted to say thanks for opportunity to be interviewed on your site. It’s always humbling for us.
MOJO-Themes.com is a buy / sell marketplace for themes and templates. From popular CMS platforms to HTML templates to email templates, our marketplace is growing everyday with new items.

We look forward to adding new, innovative themes for WordPress but we’ve seen great strides in other platforms like Tumblr and Magento. We’d love to set the standard on quality themes in that space.

MOJO Themes is the brainchild of Mojoness, Inc. a startup out of Utah, which was founded by JR Farr and Brady Nord.

Our strengths are rooted in our pasts. We have both been anxiously engaged in the evolution of these online platforms. When it comes to moving forward we’ve actually come up with new ideas that we’ll unveil right out of the gate and some we’re still working out the details.

These ideas are actually what we found by simply contacting designers/developers and asking them what they would like to see in a marketplace setting. I mean after all, our goal is to build a marketplace for them.

One feature we’re most excited about is our brand new collaboration program. Recently, we introduced the very first collaboration program, which will finally unite designers and developers! It’s called JOINT FORCES. We think these features will really open doors for some seriously talented designers and developers.

Another feature we included in our marketplace was making it easier for our sellers to get their money whenever they want it. Not having to wait until the end of the month comes around.

It’s your money; take it when you want it. They would have to have a minimum balance and there is small transaction fee associated to this feature. (*NOTE – If you request money within the first 3 days of the month it’s of course FREE to request payouts. This only relates to requesting money anytime during the month.)

Building Mojo Themes was unlike anything else we have built before. We both have built our own fair share of sites, but we found this to be the most complex by far. For example, there are many security concerns that had to be addressed. The site is unique in its abilities to pull and push cash in a variety of directions.

In addition to that, we really felt it was important when buying items that the user had options. We built in a shopping cart, which is capable of using pre-deposited funds (which will buy the items at a discounted price) or simply using a Buy Now process.

Also, it’s tough to launch a marketplace without having items to sell. We ran the “March Padness” contest to entice sellers to upload with MOJO. The top 3 sellers with the most uploaded items won an Apple iPad. That helped us with our launch and was fun to create some buzz.

In the end, the real challenges were in thinking through every possible outcome that a user may encounter.

Apollo HTML Template – Click to preview and purchase from just $15

What part of your start-up process do you feel has been the most rewarding experience so far?:

Well to be honest, giving away 3 Apple iPads to our users has been very rewarding. As we said ran a contest for the month of March called “March Padness”. The contest was to give away 3 Apple iPads to the top three users with the most accepted items.

Honestly, when people notice the TRUE hard work that went into creating this marketplace. We hope our passion and dedication with MOJO Themes continues to shine through.

In other words, it’s nice to have something to show for all that hard work!

We see Mojo Themes being a real leader among distributors of themes and site templates. The business is built to be very scalable.

Many would answer this question saying that they are going to be the number one in the market or that they are going to kill their competition, or any other over-exuberant rant. Of course we seek to be the best at what we do, beyond that we also seek that Mojo Themes is respected as a leading company in quality design and code.

We also hope to use MOJO Themes as a stepping-stone into new marketplace niches and create new ventures that can add value to current markets that interest us.

Ingenious WordPress Theme – Click to preview and purchase from just $28

The design of MOJO Themes was a crucial element that we felt we had to get perfect! (Literally) In a lot of ways we are perfectionists and therefore the site is constantly “under construction” in our eyes.

For the design, we decided on bringing in Richard Fang as our partner, who we feel has delivered time after time with quality work. For the most part the design began with a blank canvas. We knew we were going to be working with our fuzzy little monsters and that the site should reflect what we interpret as “their” world.

We went through the process of design with revision after revision until we accomplished the look and feel that we absolutely loved! Even our seasoned design partner Richard was overheard as saying, “wow you guys pushed the creativity to whole new level for me!” This is the level of innovation that was and is important to us.

We knew that in order to attract the world’s top designers to upload their work on MOJO Themes the site had better meet or exceed their expectations.

Signal 8 WordPress Theme – Click to preview and purchase from just $26

With other marketplaces there can be a huge waiting time for the review process, do you do things differently when an item is submitted, and how do you gauge quality on the site?:

Yes, we completely understand this problem that most people have. We have worked really hard to make sure that we either accept or reject a theme within 48 hours.

Right now we are young and hungry enough to keep up with the current pace. It is very important to us as we grow that we continue putting our customers first.

Trying to gauge the quality of a uploaded item is the root of why the review process takes time. There are so many elements that come into play. We have a standard process we follow but there’s really no method to our madness. We recently wrote a post on our site to help our sellers get their items approved.

Absolutely, we love to see diversity in our marketplace.

We have noticed that there is a trend of people loving the clean business looks lately, but we strongly encourage a variety of tastes and niches.

We feel that in the design world, what one person may think is beautiful another might not like at all. And obviously, the trendy designs are what are selling so of course we will be more than happy to have them.

Altered Perspective Tumblr Theme – Click to preview and purchase from just $9

How about instead of an elevator pitch we do a cool giveaway to everyone that’s stuck around this long

Here’s how to win:

• Tell us your MOJO Themes username in the comments below.
• Follow @mojo_themes at Twitter
• Then Tweet this:

Win a $10 credit to use at MOJO Themes (@mojo_themes & @webtipsmagazine contest) RT to enter!

10 winners will be randomly selected and listed here next next wednesday! So get Tweeting!

On to our Fifth and final free wallpaper give-away to celebrate Earth Day!. The official Earth Day website lists events going on around the world, lists core issues that we face and action being taken to improve the situation. They also have “Sign the Earth Day 2010 Climate Declaration” which they are hoping will encourage congress to create a far more comprehensive climate bill.

Our fifth and final free wallpaper for iPhone, iPod and iPad is U.S.A. Here’s a scary fact, although the USA accounts for approximately 4% of the total World population, in 1990 is was responsible for over 36% of the greenhouse emissions – the U.S.A. is the World’s biggest polluter. Maybe not a great surprise to many, but something that we all need to take action about and do our best to reduce. Although countries such as China and Mexico have in recent years reduced the number of manufacturing facilities, it’s still a huge issue. The U.S.A. is also still not part of the Kyoto Protocol which was setup and agreed to by many large nations as a policy for reducing waste and emissions because President Bush stated it would harm the US economy – shame really as it’s already not doing great – at least we could of been working towards reducing our harm to the Earth in the same amount of time. Here’s looking towards a more Earth friendly US in the coming years!

The US contains 4% of the world’s population but produces about 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions. By comparison, Britain emits 3% – about the same as India which has 15 times as many people.

- BBC: The US and climate change (2002)2

iPad Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 5

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

iPhone / iPod Touch Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 5

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

On to our fourth free wallpaper give-away to celebrate Earth Day TODAY!. The official Earth Day website lists events going on around the world, lists core issues that we face and action being taken to improve the situation. They also have “Sign the Earth Day 2010 Climate Declaration” which they are hoping will encourage congress to create a far more comprehensive climate bill.

Happy Earth Day! Our fourth free wallpaper for iPhone, iPod and iPad is Britain. Although active in establishing good practices over the past few decades, Britain has in recent history seen an explosion of it’s population which has resulted in more manufacturing, more waste, larger demands for energy production and of course more cars and more road building – to the effect of destroying what has been beautiful countryside, something Britain is famous for. Although Britain has recently introduced good measures for waste recycling from homes, there is so much to do and change before it can truly start to save it’s long heritage of green and pleasant pastures.

Britain risks losing its “fabulous inheritance of landscape and wildlife” as the Government allows developments – including its flagship eco-town projects – to spring up across the countryside, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has warned.

- Telegraph.co.uk

iPad Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 4

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

iPhone / iPod Touch Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 4

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

On to our third free wallpaper give-away to celebrate Earth Day this weekend. The official Earth Day website lists events going on around the world, lists core issues that we face and action being taken to improve the situation. They also have “Sign the Earth Day 2010 Climate Declaration” which they are hoping will encourage congress to create a far more comprehensive climate bill.

Today’s wallpaper celebrates Earth Day by focusing on Mexico. Mexico has seen some rapid industrial expansion over the past few decades, so much so that an amazing 10% of it’s natural rainforest are all that is left standing! Rainforest are being cleared for military activities, conflicts have driven farmers away from their lands and during dry seasons forest fires are pretty much destroying all that is left. It’s not all bad news however, tourism although traditionally a catalyst for increasing environmental issues, has been turned in to eco-tourism as the country is one of the top 5 biodiverse countries in the World. The government has also recently started to take these issues in to account and is actively working towards improving things for everyone – let’s hope they succeed and plan for a sustainable eco system for this wonderful country.

Mexico’s forests have a great deal of potential for eco-tourism. While tourism, already one of Mexico’s most important sources of income, has traditionally had negative impacts on the country’s environment through land-clearing and pollution, ecologically sensitive tourism could provide economic justification for preserving wildlands.

- Mongabay.com

iPad Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 3

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

iPhone / iPod Touch Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 3

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

On to our second free wallpaper give-away to celebrate Earth Day this weekend. The official Earth Day website lists events going on around the world, lists core issues that we face and action being taken to improve the situation. They also have “Sign the Earth Day 2010 Climate Declaration” which they are hoping will encourage congress to create a far more comprehensive climate bill.

Today’s wallpaper celebrates Earth Day by focusing on Japan. One of the World’s largest manufacturing countries it has proven to be a massive burden on our environment and as such the country is suffering from acid rain and poor air conditions, along with the massive population and their requirements for agriculture it has seen a massive increase in pollutants and lack of space for growing crops in fertile soil. In 1987, due to the pressure applied by business’ the ‘pollutant pays‘ policy was weakened and it seems that policies are now more controlled by business rather than environmental policy – one that will surely cost not Japan but all the World. Let’s hope we can all find a way to produce our food, and products that help to reduce our environmental footprint and damage.

Air pollution is a serious environmental problem in Japan, particularly in urban centers. Toxic pollutants from power plant emissions have led to the appearance of acid rain throughout the country. In the mid-1990s, Japan had the world’s fourth highest level of industrial carbon dioxide emissions, which totaled 1.09 billion metric tons per year, a per capita level of 8.79 metric tons per year.

- Encyclopedia of the Nations

iPad Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 2

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

iPhone / iPod Touch Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 2

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

You may or may not be aware that we have a special day to celebrate this rock we call home. Earth Day is April 22nd and to celebrate we are periodically releasing a new wallpaper to help with the celebrations all this week. Each wallaper is exclusive to Web Tips Magazine and are for the iPad and the iPod Touch / iPhone.

We decided to go for a grunge look as we thought it portrayed the current state of our lonely planet right now, sad but very true. The official Earth Day website lists events going on around the world, lists core issues that we face and action being taken to improve the situation. They also have “Sign the Earth Day 2010 Climate Declaration” which they are hoping will encourage congress to create a far more comprehensive climate bill.

OK, on to today’s wallpaper – We decided to create flags of particular countries, for a reason. Most of these countries are either large countries that help to suffocate our planet and need to improve how they create and use energy, dispose of waste, or are home to a vital eco system the planet requires to keep itself habitable. First up Brazil, why? Simple it has the world’s largest rainforest and we need to stop chopping the darn thing down! (Note: I am aware that the rainforest isn’t JUST in Brazil – but it is often associated with it the most)

Because its vegetation continuously recycles carbon dioxide into oxygen, it has been described as the “Lungs of our Planet”. About 20% of earth’s oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest.

- Blue Planet Biomes

iPad Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 1

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

iPhone / iPod Touch Wallpaper – Earth Day Wallpaper 1

Click here to download both the iPad and iPhone / iPod Touch wallpapers

If you were one of the lucky people who grabbed yourself a new Apple iPad’s this weekend, then you may be a little disappointed with the selection of wallpapers available on the fantastic little device – fear not, help is at hand.

We have created a set of guides for all you budding and professional artists out there who wish to create your own. The download below offers a fully layered Photoshop (CS4 or earlier) file with guides added and an overlay to make sure you understand the process – let me explain.

The native screen size of an iPad is 768 x 1024px, or (and this is the funky bit) it’s 1024 x 768px – as we all know you can orientate the iPad either horizontally or vertically dependent on our preference of display – the iPad simply rotates the wallpaper image when you do this and as such we have to create an image that is 1024 x 1024px – to cover all the bases. There is also, because of this method, 4 corners of your image that will never be seen, regardless of it’s format.

Here is a reduced size of the download for you to get a clear idea on how things work.

The download includes the following formats for your convenience:

• Layered Photoshop
• TIFF
• JPEG

Please – NO HOTLINKING TO THIS FILE – I fully support linking to this article however.

We look forward to some designs from our small community, and we have lots more goodies in store for the iPad owners out there – stay tuned!

Yup! You read that correctly – to celebrate the launch of his very first WordPress Theme at ThemeForest.net he has decided to give away – completely FREE – the photoshop layered files of this amazing design here on Web Tips Magazine!

Here is what Jonathan sent us:

The HTML / CSS version of this template is one of the largest selling templates on ThemeForest and with the addition of the all new WordPress Premium Theme and the new Email Template I thought it was a good time to say thanks to everyone and for those without much money or who have not seen this product of mine before I thought it would be a perfect time to give away the never before for sale Photoshop Files only.

If you like the photoshop files, and don’t want to code her up yourself it’s already available as HTML here ($15), WordPress Theme ($30) and an accompanying Email template ($10) here.

The package includes a total of 5 complete and layered / grouped photoshop page designs including home, contact, portfolio, services, and about pages.

The images in the portfolio and sliders etc are from the creative commons section of Flickr and therefore you cannot use those images – they are simply there as placeholders, albeit VERY pretty ones – attribution in the form of a full list of those authors is available in the readme file contained in the download file.

OK so here are some gorgeous screen shots for you to drool over and then follow the download link below to start grabbin’ the swag!

Modern Business 3 DARK Photoshop by Jonathan Atkinson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

PLEASE RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF ALL ARTISTS – ESPECIALLY THOSE KIND ENOUGH TO SHARE!

Once again our friend Dany Duchaine at DDWebStudios is offering another fantastic, and free, website template in layered photoshop format. Once again this design is available as a pre made HTML template over at ThemeForest.net for those wanting to spend just a small amount of cash ($12!!!) to get all the work done.

The layered photoshop file contains all the pages of the paid version including the home, blog, contact, portfolio and contact. A super clean design with modern touches enable this to be used either as a portfolio site, business or application / product based site.

Once again thanks Dany for sharing your awesome work with everyone – what are you waiting for? Head over to DDWebStudios now and grab the swag.

Our good friend, Dany Duchaine at DDWebStudios has just announced the launch of his own personal blog and is offering 2 stunning, free, photoshop templates for download in celebration. The designs, Magnifico and Ambition are available for purchase at ThemeForest as both HTML and WordPress Themes. Both designs have proved to be extremely popular with buyers and have in excess of 400 combined sales.

Perfect for both a personal portfolio site, or a corporate solution these pixel perfect clean designs provide a great starting tool for your next site. Fully layered and even light and dark version of Magnifico, it’s an awesome give-away and we wish Danny as much luck with his new personal blog as he enjoys as a top author at ThemeForest.

Head on over to DDWebStudios now and pick up your 2 free photoshop templates.