Published: April 12, 2012

After what amounted to a long 12 days of testing all themes and plugins submitted for the March Create-a-thon, the GetSimple team has finally come to agreement as to which files get to earn bragging rights.

In the 12 days since the contest ended, we tested every single plugin & theme that was submitted on the 5 qualities we listed out on our Launch page. I think we can easily say this contest was a win for the GetSimple project and it’s community. A lot of publicity and great files came about because of it.

Without further ado, the winners are… (drum roll please…)

GRAND PRIZE: Simplico Theme

The Simplico theme by Makk (Maciej Kopala) is a wonderfully setup theme that includes plenty of additional page templates, great documentation and plugin support for two of the most widely use plugins, all behind a really great looking theme.

This theme had it all and we truly feel it should become the gold standard of how themes should be developed for GetSimple in the future. Documentation + Customization + Plugin Support = Grand Prize worthy.

SECOND PLACE: Simple Backups

The Simple Backups plugin by ReedMurphy took a task that everyone should be doing and made it work without needing to schedule a cron job (unless of course you wanted to). His way of getting around that limitation was ingenious and is something that I will be implementing on some of my own sites in the very near future.

THIRD PLACE: Simple Newsletter

The Simple Newsletter plugin by dshaner (David Shaner) is an extremely useful plugin for those of you who want to add a simple newsletter script to your site. It handles confirmed emails, and does it all without making the installer jump through hoops to get it installed. While this plugin could stand to use a little bit more documentation, its eventual ease and usefulness put it into our top 3.

Everybody Else – Thank you

Everyone who took the time to submit a file to the Create-a-thon really helped the community grow regardless of who won. There were many many files that deserved to be in the top 3, but unfortunately we could only choose 3. Congratulations to all of the GS Create-a-thon winners!

Sponsors!

Also, and this goes with all the risk of sounding like a broken record, this great contest wouldn’t have been possible without the help and generousity of our great list of sponsors. Each and every one of them contributed something to the pot, and for that we are very, very grateful. Please check them out as a thank you!

  • (mt) MediaTemple - Graciously donated 3 years of free (gs) hosting plus a box of  (mt) schwag!
  • BuySellAds - Donated $100 worth of credit
  • AuthorityLabs - Donated a lifetime Basic Account
  • Carsonified’s Treehouse - Donated one month free of their Gold tutorial service for the top 3 winners!
  • Hello Bar - Donated a copy of their javascript notification bar
  • FormStack - Donated a free Starter account for a year
  • FormAssembly - Donated a free lifetime Basic account
  • KISSmetrics - Donated a free year of their Bootstrap account
  • BlueCotton – Helped us get our t-shirts ordered
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