Packaging and Selling the Magento Theme: Support and updates

A parenthesis needs to be done on the support and on the updates of the theme. Keep in mind that your theme will be visited and bought by a lot of people.

They may find some issues or problems that you can solve or help to solve.

1. Fixing the bugs and adding new features

Reserve some extra time to collect all the bug fixes and release all the updates for the theme once in a month. This will ensure that the theme is always updated and that users can rely on your products and services.

To do this, you can collect some bugs and fix them in the current version of the theme; once fixed, repackage the files and resubmit the new ZIP file in the marketplace.

To maintain a report of the modifications you make for each version, you can create a file called changelog.txt and add all the fixes or the new features in the following manner:

Version 1.1 (September 6, 2013)

  • FIX: Minor Css bugs fixed
  • FIX: Top Cart Background fix
  • FIX: Responsive Menu
  • FIX: Fixed bug in Google font selector
  • FIX: Mobile Account links made like Flags and currency dropdown
  • NEW: Animated Scroll to top on top Cart click for better user experience
  • NEW: Animated Scroll to top on Menu click for better user experience

Version 1.0 (September 1, 2013) – Initial release

Through this file, both the final user and you will have a report of all the improvements you make to the theme.

The update approval of ThemeForest usually takes about 24 hours, and the users who buy the theme can choose to be notified when the theme is uploaded through their account. In this way, the users will be notified once the theme is updated.

2. Supporting final users

You have to also consider the possibility of helping the users who buy the theme with the theme installation or to fix some problems. Some of the people who buy the theme already know how to install it and how to work with it, but many people don’t know how to install it on Magento (even if you provide documentation). In this case, many of them will contact you to ask if you are available to support them during the installation phase. You can provide this service for an additional cost, or you may choose to not provide the support. However, keep in mind that good support is very important and will provide confidence to the people, who will probably come back to buy your products if they are satisfied.

Source: Sacca Andrea (2014), Mastering Magento theme design, Packt Publishing; Illustrated edition.

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