This week’s interview brings us in touch with Sven Salmonsson from Monsterthemes.com. Let’s see how this young theme shop got started, and how Sven works.
Thanks for joining us today Sven, please tell us a bit more about your background, how long you’ve been working with WordPress and about your current ventures.
Sven: Starting out back in 2004, building own websites and freelancing, WordPress was my first choice. Going from HTML and into CMS-integrated design and coding sort of just happened. I remember back then, finding the Theme Contest over on AlexKing.org, and being amazed by the thought theme building. So I’ve been building/designing/affiliating/selling themes ever since.
Can you share with us how Monster themes was born and how you went about promoting it. Do you offer any of your themes on marketplaces such as Themeforest?
It all started about a year ago. I had just started freelancing full time and wanted to create my own premium themes. For years I’d used the themes of Nick over at ElegantThemes.com, and the dudes at OrganicThemes.com. I’m a huge fan of these guys, and seeing what they did, I wanted to do that too.
After a couple of months, I’d acquired the domain MonsterThemes.com and found a WordPress expert developer, Baki Goxhaj. An albanian WordPress wonderchild, and owner of WPlancer.com. Together we set off building themes and the MT website. We’ve advetised with BuySellAds.com with poor results, but also sponsored some podcasts over at CSStricks.com and wpCandy.com.
Right now we are letting our themes talk for themselves. No active promotions are in process. We have discussed adding our themes to Mojo Themes or ThemeForest, but ultimately decided not to, as we want to keep our themes ours 
. The way it works here at MonsterThemes.com, when we build a theme we give it so much love and time that just the thought of selling it somewhere else is unimaginable.
What are some of the challenges you have encountered when it comes to creating responsive themes?
We have not faced many challenges on the technical part of it. However, our first themes where not built with mobile in mind so we had to put extra effort into them to streamline the code’s mobile support.
Where do you get inspiration from when designing new themes?
I get inspired by:
1. Ongoing trends in web design – It is vital for me in terms of evolving as a web designer to stay updated and follow new ideas and concepts in web design.
2. Considering myself a person with a certain degree of imagination, who strives on creativity, I try to absorb all new impressions of any environment and situation. And since web designing is what I do, that’s where I apply it.
As a web designer/developer, what are the online communities (e.g. Dribbble, Twitter etc) you like to hang out at and what value do each of them provide?
I just recently got invited to Dribbble, which I have quickly grown to love and appreciate. There is a sense of community, people commenting and participating which I haven’t experienced in other forms of social media.
Can you mention some plugins that you find yourself relying on when developing new WordPress sites?
We don’t use any plugins to start development on. All we use is WP_DEBUG set to true and we are good to go. We do however use a library for custom meta boxes that several of our themes make use of. The rest of the code is custom built.
Tell us a bit about your development setup (hardware + software). Can you show us a picture of your desk?
Sven: MacBook Pro + LED Cinema Display + Photoshop CS5 + Smultron text editor + MAMP + Safari (Developer extension)
Baki: 15.6 inch Laptop, Ubuntu, Git, XAMPP, Bluefish, Firefox/Firebug
What new features would you like to see in upcoming versions of WordPress?
I would like to see the WordPress backend interface more responsive, to make it easily accessible via mobile devices. When I’m out of office I often publish, or prepare posts on my iPhone. While I manage most tasks, image uploading and code tweaking is out of the question.
Any other online tools or resources you use on a daily basis?
Yep, we use beanstalkapp.com for automated deployment of our system and themes since the host we are right now does not have Git installed.
Tell us a bit about your future plans, any new projects in the pipeline?
Besides maintaining a steady flow of new themes on MonsterThemes.com, we’ll soon be launching a fully-fledged support forum. We’ve also got other web properties, such as PremiumPSD.com, WPlancer.com and wpStyles.org, which we will keep making better.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure to subscribe to WP Mayor’s RSS feed.
About Jean Galea
Jean Galea is a WordPress developer, trainer and consultant. He is the founder of WP Mayor and is available for freelance work. You can get in touch via his website at www.jeangalea.com.
Share this:
Email
Print
Interview with Sven from Monsterthemes.com is a post by on Jean Galea on WP Mayor.
A good WordPress site needs to be visible on mobile devices, because that's where more and more of your users are. Check out our review of the best WordPress mobile plugin.
