Thanks! The offer is now over. If you haven't received an email yet, you'll be getting one. If not, that probably means your request seemed like it belonged more to the Developers License category, which was not being given out at the moment. Thanks for the responses!

"There is plenty going on in Market Theme world at the moment, and all of it is good".

Secondly, I've added a Paypal + Google Checkout Add to Cart module to the Download Center. If you'd like to add an alternative payment method to your ajax cart, you now can. Simply visit the download center and download the alternative cart directory, upload it, change two lines in one of the files, and you're ready to go.

Next due to some requests I am putting together an alternative single.php module which will allow for product reviews and ratings on your items. I'm hoping to have this done by Thursday, if not than after this weekend at the latest. The Market Product Manager has also been updated to version 1.1 to fix an annoyance issue which caused the plugin to redirect to the normal write post page instead of the add product page.

"Market itself is indeed for sale."

Finally, the rumors are true - Market itself is indeed for sale. I have been focusing all of my time and effort on this theme for the past four months, and have neglected client work and been unable to start anything new. The site is currently listed on Sitepoint, but if I do not receive any offers I like it will not be sold. I'm hoping to find a new owner who shares the same vision as I do in regards to what this project already has accomplished and what it still can do. Meanwhile, it is still business as usual. As I've said above, I've been adding and I am in the process of adding more and more modules to the Download Center, so please consider buying a license.

Note: If you are a developer / investor interested in purchasing the rights to the Market Theme, please email me at hi[at]astereostudio.com.

Market 3 is an entirely new engineered version of the popular e-commerce theme for Wordpress. Market makes running a blog and a storefront extremely easy, and Market 3 takes the level of simplicity even farther. Designed and developed by Astereostudio, an experienced Wordpress user and theme designer, you are getting a high quality premium theme loaded with features.

The changes and improvements with Market 3 can be found in both the backend and frontend. First, you will notice an entirely new layout - one that promotes the use of a blog alongside of the storefront interface. In earlier versions of Market, the normal blog functionality was basically stripped out. In Market 3, it has returned and is now displayed by default. Still want to focus on just store items and not on a blog? Use the "Storefront" template to create a new page and set it as the static homepage in the Wordpress options panel to return Market 3 to its former grid based glory.

Improvements and new features include the following:

• Entirely New Layout [Frontend] - A two column layout with a widgetized sidebar. Shows all normal posts on the left column and the latest 15 products on the right while on the homepage. On all inner pages and normal posts, you will see the widgetized sidebar on the right side. The individual product page has its own layout.
• Buy Now and Add to Cart [Frontend] - Now the buy now and add to cart buttons will display side by side. No longer do you have to edit code or download a different version to get one or the other. Don't want to have the add to cart option or a straight up buy now button? Simply remove the form in single.php - it is plenty easy enough to find.
• Dynamic Price [Frontend] - One of the requests I heard many times in the forums was what if you only have a few of a certain item, and that item sold out. Obviously you do not want a buy now or add to cart button there if there are no copies of your item left. Now when you remove the price from your item, the buy now / add to cart buttons will no longer display. But the items will still be listed as products. You will not have to delete the whole post.
• Market Product Manager [Backend] - The Market Product Manager plugin, developed by John of Simply-Basic, makes adding products a cinch. Using javascript, image uploads are as simple as browsing to the image and clicking upload. The custom field data is set and saved for you. You can set the price, additional specs, and even color and size options from a new "Add Product" page from your dashboard. It is very self-explanatory and hands on. Beyond adding products, the plugin also gives you a nice "manage products" tab which will show you the item price, additional specs, and if a main product image and additional product images have been set, just like the normal manage posts section of the dashboard. Plus, the Market Product Manager works with any version of Market. Even if you wish to use an old version, the plugin will still work.

Current Market theme owners can grab the plugin and the new version of Market from the download center. Market 3 is now the default version that the main download link will link to. All the previous versions are still available in the download center. If you have set to purchase the theme, why not purchase a license now? At just $55, it is extremely affordable and worth it. If you have any questions, please use the support forum to ask them. I will gladly answer as many as I can.

Over the next few days I will be adding new information to the product tour page and hopefully a new tour video as well, highlighting what is new with Market 3. For now, take a look at some of the full screenshots below. (click the thumbnail to open a lightbox version of the image. Then click on the expand arrow to see the full original image size.)

Before you go take a look around at what else Market has to offer, please take a moment to help promote the theme with a friendly Digg!

To check out how things are looking go here.

Interested in seeing what Market 3 is looking like? Head over here and use the Theme Switcher to select MK3. Note that the theme is not yet complete yet, but it's getting there. Let me take a moment to point out a few highlights of this release.

• Blog compatibility out of the box - For those of you that have the Market license, you have probably seen the "Market Plus" version of theme currently available in the Download Center. This version allows you to have your blog running on top of your shop items. By my own omission, it was very poorly done the first time around. I rushed it just to get it out there as a feature. With Market 3, by default the theme will act like a regular blog, with products on the side. Simply follow the instructions to create a products page. And if you still want to have the grid based product layout when viewing the homepage, just create a page and use the included alternative homepage template to restore the homepage into just a storefront.
• Code swapped around - I've reworked how some of the coding was done on the single.php page. Now, if you sell out of an item but still want to list it, simply delete the price custom field and the buy now button will no longer show up, and "Sold Out" will display next to the item name where the price previously was.
• Comments on standard blog posts - The comment form, which was removed from all versions of Market, is back and is used only on regular blog posts, not product posts.
• Larger product images - The main product image (known to current theme owners as the "pli" ) has been increased from 250x250 pixels to 350x350 pixels.

These are just a few of the things being done so far. Stay tuned.

I'll keep everyone updated on the status of everything.
Stay tuned.

Check out the mock-up here.

Some Notes about this plugin:

• Plugin, not custom Write Panel - This will indeed be a plugin which will create it's own Tab in the Wordpress Admin. It will mimic the post screen but will be changed around to be much easier to follow. Custom fields will have their own sections where the keys will be selected in the background for you, and setting the values for those keys will be much easier to do.
• Based around easier 2.5 - The panel design is based around the Wordpress 2.5 Admin hack which restores the sidebar to a much more practical, 2.3 like view.
• Uploading without uploading - I hope for the ability to browse to images and upload them via ajax right in the write panel itself, without the useless Wordpress 2.5 image uploader which needs to pop-up and ask a thousand questions before you can actually add an image. From the uploaded image, I hope to have it automatically inserted as the "value" for that particular custom field.

All of this is subject to change, but this is how I see it going right now. As for a time frame when you can expect to see something like this, I'm shooting for late May or early June. I am no PHP master, and I will be looking to have a reliable plugin developer put this together for me and do it right. I have spent a fairly large amount of money on advertising in the last few weeks, so at this current time I don not have the funds to get this completed in the next few days, but if sales continue to climb, I should have someone for the job very soon. If you have any recommendations at a developer who might be able to handle this, please let me know in the comments below.

Thanks!

Next, the News page was updated to actually look like most normal news pages. Check it out if you want to catch up on some posts you may have missed. There are plenty of tidbits around there that might be worth checking out. I also added a comparison page which compares the Market Theme to the WP E-Commerce Plugin. Check it out here.

Most importantly on the client side, I have finally added an "Upgrade License" option to the Download Center. This has long been requested, and I was always very lazy and never got around to it. With the upgrade license option, you can now purchase a standard license to give the theme a try for yourself, and if you need to use the theme for development purposes you can simply upgrade to the Developers License via the link in the DC (when you are logged in). I'm sure a few of you will like this.

That's it for now. I'll be checking back in soon.

Next, the number of developers licenses sold is also increasing. This is more great news because it means that people like me are using the theme to build projects and client work of. I'm very excited to see what some people do with it.

Also, as mentioned a few days ago, I am in need of 1 or 2 people with Authorize.net merchant accounts who would be willing to do some testing for me so I can complete the Authorize integration with the theme. I was initially limiting this to current customers only, but if you have not purchased the theme and would like to be a tester for the Authorize integration, you can save $10 off the license purchase price (standard license) or $20 off of a developers license. Please let me know in the comments below if you are interested!

Finally, I am encouraging all current theme owners to share their shop in the community forums. I would like to create a gallery section of the site to not only promote each and everyone's storefronts, but also to let those interested in the theme see what kind of creative ways different customers have customized the theme to their liking.

Enjoy the weekend everyone. Thanks for reading and continuing to support the project!