With all the latest action here with UpThemes like our new Tumblr theme business and our announcement of collaborating with Crowd Favorite to begin incorporating Carrington Build in our themes we haven’t had much time to share our biggest announcement yet: the impending release of the most feature-packed theme for bands and musicians WordPress has ever seen, Garage Band.

More Than Just a Theme

Garage Band is more than a theme, it extends WordPress to become the perfect CMS for bands and musicians. This “theme” contains advanced tools for managing upcoming shows, tours, albums, music videos, user-powered fan photo galleries, and even band members! Excited yet? So are we. Read on if you’re ready to rock.

Album Management

Uploading and managing your albums couldn’t be easier with our album management tools. Simply add the name of the album, purchasing information, your tracklist with playable audio clips and album art and off you go!

Custom audio player pulls in songs from latest album.

On the backend, simply enter your track information with links to purchase or download and Garage Band does all the rest! The image below shows how easy it is to manage, just click the image to see a large preview.

Manage tracks with ease with our easy-to-use album management tools!

Show and Tour Manager

Thanks to custom taxonomies with WordPress, you can categorize shows by location and tour to make it easy for fans to find shows in their area. Simply type in a title, description, and add the show time and off you go! It really is that easy!

Custom widgets allow you to display upcoming shows, new albums, and more!

Fan-Generated Photo Galleries

A great way to connect with fans and build some fan-powered content, our Garage Band Theme will come with the ability to allow fans to submit photos to fan galleries defined by you! Simply add new “collections” and configure your fan photo submission form to your liking and your fans can post awesome photos of anything from your recent shows to events or even your drummer’s latest haircut!

Let fans upload images and share fun times at your band's latest concert!

The features mentioned above are only a few of the awesome things planned for Garage Band and we hope to be finished with the theme by the end of September so we can share it with you all! We’re definitely excited about this theme and hope you are too. Make sure to follow @upthemes on twitter and keep up with our blog’s RSS feed as well!

We’ve been making some big changes here at UpThemes, and one of those changes includes expanding our theme business to a new platform — Tumblr! We’ve been exploring the possibilities with Tumblr themes for quite some time and finally made it happen with our first Tumblr theme release to date.

Mint allows you to add a custom logo.

Our first Tumblr theme – Mint – is a slick one-column theme with AJAX pagination, gorgeous Pictos icons (available starting at $29 from Drew Wilson’s website). and some advanced options on the backend, including Disqus comment integration, Google Analytics integration, and the ability to swap out your logo and avatar in the header with custom ones.

For more information, check out our first Tumblr theme – Mint!

Mint includes the Pictos icon set, thanks to Drew Wilson.

Disqus Comment Integration

Add your Disqus site shortname and the Mint Theme will automatically enable Disqus comments, which bring additional functionality to your Tumblelog.

AJAX More Button

Twitter-style pagination makes browsing smooth easy!

Google Analytics Integration

Drop in your analytics site ID and off you go! Track your traffic with ease!

Beautiful Single Column Style

The Mint Theme comes as a single column Tumblr Theme and keeps everything looking sleek and slender!

Supports All Standard Tumblr Tags

Don’t worry about having something missing on your Tumblr, this theme supports all the standard tags as required by Tumblr in their official theme directory.

We have an extremely exciting announcement to make regarding our WordPress themes here at UpThemes. A couple weeks ago, we signed a deal with Crowd Favorite (founded by world-renowned plugin developer Alex King) to include Carrington Build in our WordPress themes moving forward. If you’ve not heard of Carrington Build, please continue reading…

What is Carrington Build?

Carrington Build is a page layout engine for WordPress that can be added to themes and plugins that allows WordPress editors/authors to build advanced page layouts without creating new theme templates or adding in complicated CSS per page. Now you can “build” pages with multi-column layouts with the click of a mouse. Designers like Trent Walton and Yaron Schoen might get jealous of Carrington Build’s powerful layout engine.

Which UpThemes Will Include Carrington Build?

At the moment, we are planning to release two themes with Build included in them. The first is Garage Band, which we’ve built to be the ultimate theme for bands, performers and musicians. Garage Band includes custom tools for managing albums, shows, and even fan photo galleries that uses a custom submission form for fans to submit images. The second is called Agency, which is a solid theme for design agencies to manage portfolios, service offerings, and create custom page layouts with Carrington Build!

Make sure to stay updated on our theme releases and updates. Follow @upthemes on twitter and subscribe to our blog here at UpThemes.com.

We’re extremely excited to announce our favorite UpTheme to date, Evo, the successor to Gallery Pro, a revolutionary new WordPress theme that makes building a user-generated gallery, photography showcase or personal portfolio easier than ever. With awesome AJAX-powered pagination, David DeSandro’s Masonry plugin for jQuery, and a custom post submission page, Evo is the best gallery theme we’ve seen this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Buy Evo Now for $50 or $75 (with original PSD artwork)

Features

Three Beautiful Color Schemes

In addition to the default light theme, there are two additional color schemes as well, which can be enabled on the Evo Colors & Images Options page.

User Submission Page

By popular demand, Evo includes a submission page that can be customized to fit your needs inside the UpThemes Framework on the Submission Form options page.

Flexible Thumbnail Sizes

Using the built-in image sizes, you can set the thumbnails to any size, allowing Evo to look good with a few images or a few hundred!

AJAX Pagination

Evo uses a custom twitter-style pagination to allow you to continue loading new posts into the page without being taken to a new page.

WordPress 3.0 Menu Support

Custom menus allow you to configure your navigation the way you want it! Evo features two menu zones in the header and footer, as well as unlimited widget menus.

Simple Video Embedding

Easy video embedding using the Simple Video Embedder plugin from Press75.com makes video embedding easier than ever. Requires installation of Simple Video Embedder plugin, download separately.

Resizable Thumbnails using WordPress 3′s Featured Image

Thumbnail sizes are completely under your control! Simply set your desired image sizes in ‘Settings > Media’ and a featured image for each post and off you go!

Ad Zones Built-in

There are now two ad zones that accept plain HTML and Javascript below the header and above the footer.

Three Beautiful Color Schemes

In addition to the default light theme, there are two additional color schemes as well, which can be enabled on the Evo Colors & Images Options page.

User Submission Page

By popular demand, Evo includes a submission page that can be customized to fit your needs inside the UpThemes Framework on the Submission Form options page.

Flexible Thumbnail Sizes

Using the built-in image sizes, you can set the thumbnails to any size, allowing Evo to look good with a few images or a few hundred!

AJAX Pagination

Evo uses a custom twitter-style pagination to allow you to continue loading new posts into the page without being taken to a new page.

WordPress 3.0 Menu Support

Custom menus allow you to configure your navigation the way you want it! Evo features two menu zones in the header and footer, as well as unlimited widget menus.

Simple Video Embedding

Easy video embedding using the Simple Video Embedder plugin from Press75.com makes video embedding easier than ever. Requires installation of Simple Video Embedder plugin, download separately.

Resizable Thumbnails using WordPress 3′s Featured Image

Thumbnail sizes are completely under your control! Just set your desired image sizes in ‘Settings > Media’ and setting the medium size image to the desired width and a height of 9999 (for images of various heights).

Ad Zones Built-in

There are now two ad zones that accept plain HTML and Javascript below the header and above the footer.

Integrate Facebook into WordPress Seamlessly & Effortlessly

We’ve been working on some things under the radar over here at UpThemes and have been planning some big announcements. One of those announcements is finally here, and the big news is that we’ve been working on a new Facebook plugin for WordPress (and BuddyPress) that is now available as a BETA release absolutely free of charge!

So what makes this plugin different than the rest? Here are the features of WP Facebook (with more to come soon!):

Download WP Facebook

WordPress 3.0 was released yesterday and with it a number of features that put it at the top of the list for CMS platforms. Below are a few of the big features that have been implemented and our thoughts on each.

Custom Menus

Something that has been lacking from WordPress for a long, long time, custom menus are now fully integrated into the platform, allowing users to implement any number of menus with custom-defined sets of menu items. The best part is the ability to use menus inside a new WordPress widget called “Custom Menus.” This makes it very easy to drop a set of links or full-blown menu with drop-downs (if styled with the appropriate CSS) in any widgetized area.

Custom Post Types

Another huge new feature, Custom Post Types allow users to add custom content types like products, video posts, music, or even baseball cards! By simply creating custom post types inside your themes and plugins, you can avoid using custom post meta values, custom post templates, custom write panels, etc. By default, custom post types are separated from your standard WordPress RSS feed but can easily be added, if desired. In addition, WP 3.0 adds support for post type templates – no plugins required.

Custom Taxonomy API

If you don’t know what taxonomy means, it essentially is a way to group things together. No doubt taking a cue from Drupal with its ability to create custom taxonomies, WordPress finally has added support for theme and plugin developers to work with custom taxonomies more simply. Working hand-in-hand with custom post types, the new taxonomy API makes developers lives much easier. There is a great post on custom taxonomies on Nettuts that provides an in-depth explanation.

Putting It All Together

I think one of the best examples of what you can do with these new features (along with the other new features and enhancements littered throughout WordPress 3.0) is building an e-commerce site by combining custom post types and custom taxonomies.

The first problem with building an e-commerce site with previous versions of WordPress is that it was quite difficult to create products with varying metadata, then display them using different post templates within a theme. The second problem is that it was very difficult to add additional taxonomies to group products by similar features. Now, with the new custom taxonomies API, we can more easily define those common attributes and assign them to products, allowing us greater flexibility in searching filtering products. We are currently working on an example of this for our upcoming theme, SimpleCart Pro.

What are your thoughts on 3.0? Let us know in the comments!

Social Plugin Widgets

Integrate Facebook’s Social Plugins into your WordPress blog using WP Facebook’s built-in, customizable widgets.

Facebook Open Graph Integration

With Facebook’s recent release of the new Open Graph, you can now update your fans on Facebook when something on a page they’ve liked has changed! WP Facebook puts your posts, pages, and other types of content on Facebooks Open Graph where they belong!

WordPress Account Creation/Login via Facebook

Allow users to register on your site by having them log in through Facebook! Make it easy for users to connect to your WordPress blog and allow them to use advanced Facebook-exclusive features like attaching comments when using the “Like” button, showing which of your user’s friends are connected to your website, and allowing them to comment on posts on Facebook!

Replace WordPress Comments with Facebook Comments

If users are logged in via Facebook, you can choose to replace WordPress comments with Facebook’s Comment System, bringing the discussion to the place where people are actually talking – Facebook! Spark some conversation by taking the convo to your users’ friends and families.

Allow Users to Post Comments Directly to Facebook!

Using the Like Button widget or Facebook comments widget, users can post comments on your articles and content directly to their stream!

Use Shortcodes to Embed Facebook Widgets

Want to place a Like button directly in an article? Simply use a shortcode to quickly place the button exactly where you want it! All social plugins have shortcode support enabled.

For Developers – Custom Open Graph Hooks

Got a custom post type that needs to be registered differently on Facebook’s Open Graph? Simply use a hook for “type” to modify how your post is identified by Facebook’s new API.

Plugin Support Now Available with EVERY Theme Purchase and Club Subscription

Do you have questions about integrating WP Facebook into your website? Purchase any theme or club membership to receive forum support for WP Facebook, as well as the theme or membership package you’ve purchased.

It’s been a while since we’ve released a new WordPress theme here at UpThemes, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t working hard to bring you the best themes possible. Today we’re proud to (re-)release Old School, a grungy, old-looking theme that really enables you to showcase your photos and blog about your passion. With a timeless, unique design style and some cutting edge features like CSS3 @font-face usage and webkit animations, Old School really packs in a lot of great features in a lightweight package.

Old School is currently 25% off for the next two days, so buy it now and use discount code 05C48F to get your 25% discount by May 18th!