Theme Competition Prizes
The theme competition offers the following prizes:
- Grand Poobah - $55. The best overall design. A free text-ad (100 characters) on Blogosphere News for one month.
- Plain Ol’ Poobah - $25. The first runner up. A free text-ad (100 characters) on Blog Catalog for one month.
- Mini Poobah - $15. The second runner up.
- Most Creative Design - $30. Most creative use of the theme system - go crazy with your designs.
- Two lucky entries will receive books!
- The most “pixel perfect design” will receive a set of icons.
- One lucky entry that is submitted here and also checked in to the Subversion repository on wp-themes.org will receive $150!
- Out of the Box prize.
- $500 Global Appeal prize.
Please note that judging will be done in an entirely subjective fashion on a variety of criteria, including but not restricted to: general appeal, design sense, creativity, originality, completeness and compatibility. Please keep in mind the spirit of the competition (creating great free themes for WordPress) when entering your design.
The initial prize money has been donated by King Design. I hope that these prizes will be grow in value with possibly new prize categories created as additional sponsors step forward.
This post will be updated with any changes in the prizes.
UPDATE 2005/02/28 - doubled the prize value thanks to Geof Morris.
UPDATE #2 2005/02/28 - added text ad prizes thanks to Brad Jasper.
UPDATE 2005/03/01 - added another $25 of prize money thanks to Mark Ghosh.
UPDATE 2005/03/02 - added books thanks to Craig Hartel.
UPDATE 2005/03/08 - More great prizes!
UPDATE 2005/03/10 - Yet another prize. 
UPDATE 2005/03/15 - Global Appeal prize added.
February 28th, 2005 at 2:28 am
WordPress Theme Contest
Alex King has started another WordPress theme contest. The last theme contest Alex held was greatly successful. With over 100 styles submitted, it’s given WordPress users a great resource for alternate themes.
The new contest is specifically for Wo…
February 28th, 2005 at 9:37 am
I’ll match those dollar values, Alex.
February 28th, 2005 at 11:27 am
Just to clarify: the contest will be judged by you and Geof again? And if anyone else were to contribute to the prize fund, would they also get a position on the judging panel or is it first come, first served?
February 28th, 2005 at 11:41 am
The judging will be done by a panel that I determine. The identities of the judges will not be revealed this time.
There were 5 or 6 judges for the first competition if I remember correctly. I expect that many or more this time around.
February 28th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
It would be nice to consider how well a theme deals with the different pages, like the archives, the category pages, individual entry pages, the 404 file etc. Themes that take all of these pages into consideration and provide templates for all these pages (And more?) should be ranked higher. It shouldn’t only be about the images, and looks, but also about how well information is presented, what is shown on the pages and what is not.
February 28th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
I agree Carthik, that is what I meant by ‘completeness’ in the criteria above. I hope your comment clarifies this as I couldn’t think of a good way to describe it concisely.
February 28th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
Alex, I would like to donate hosting package prizes; please feel free to contact me when you have time. Thanks!
February 28th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
I will throw in another $20 to the pot. Alex, do you have a PayPal account?
March 18th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
When you say in your update the values are doubled, I assume you mean the prizes are now $110 and $50? Or are the values already doubled (odd numbers…).
March 18th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
All prize values listed are current.
March 24th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
Could you clarify the “most creative” design prize? It is different from the “out of the box” prize, correct? Will it be judged on the creativity of the design itself, or on a particularly creative use of the theme architecture?
March 24th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Yes it is different, and the answer is “both”.