After building the WP Dispensary plugin and and add-on’s like MMJMenu Sync, WooCommerce Connect, Inventory Management, & Locations it was time to work on a top shelf theme that brings the entire package together.

Last Friday over at WP Dispensary, I released CannaBiz, a commercial WordPress theme for businesses in the cannabis industry.

The original idea for the theme came when I noticed that Theme Forest had a contest with a $2,000 prize for best WordPress theme for a business type that wasn’t covered yet in the business themes category.

The cannabis industry is nowhere to be found in their marketplace, so I thought it would be fun to create a theme, enter a contest, win a cool cash prize and have a theme to compliment the WP Dispensary plugin.

I had no idea at the time that there is a 30+ day queue time in order to get your item reviewed.

So after waiting and waiting and waiting (did I mention waiting?), I finally seen an email from Envato in my inbox.

I was excited.

‘hell yeah, time to make some money’

Oh, if it would only be so easy. I opened up the email and received one of the most generic, stale and unhelpful decline messages I’ve ever seen.

After completing our review, we’ve determined that ‘CannaBiz’ isn’t at the quality standard needed to continue forward with the review process on ThemeForest. As the submission is too far off the standards we require, you’ll be unable to re-submit on this occasion.

There’s no set standards for WordPress themes as far as I can tell, and the email gave me zero information about what parts of CannaBiz wasn’t up to their standards.

I expressed my frustration on Twitter recently, and Ryan from WebDevStudios echoed what I was already thinking:

https://twitter.com/modemlooper/status/739064258332229632

This article is my hope that the ‘content is king’ still holds true and the more I blog about the work I’m doing, the larger the following and usage of each product.

CannaBiz Features

The main goal of this theme is to make it as easy to customize as possible, without being overwhelmed with too many options.

I made sure to utilize the Customizer so users can see changes instantly on the screen, hopefully making the process of setting up the theme to match company branding a breeze.

You can check out the CannaBiz page on WP Dispensary with all of the customization details.

Current Version

You can view blog posts with release notes for each version of CannaBiz below.

• Version 1.0
• Version 1.1
• Version 1.2
• Version 1.3
• Version 1.4
• Version 1.5
• Version 1.6
• Version 1.7
• Version 1.8
• Version 1.9
• Version 2.0
• Version 2.1

The future of WP Dispensary

It’s no secret that I want WPD to become the go-to product for dispensary owners, bringing them over to WordPress in the process if they aren’t already using it.

Now, not only can users download and use WPD freely along with the free WP Dispensary’s Coupons & age verification add-ons, there’s now the CannaBiz theme to style the menu and make a website uniquely theirs + over a half dozen extensions.

The CannaBiz theme is the next step in the evolution of what WPD is becoming, but it doesn’t stop there.

As of September 21st, 2018 there are 11 add-on’s for WP Dispensary to extend it even further.

I will continue to release add-ons along with the WP Dispensary updates that get pushed out. I also have plans for a few more themes on the to-do list.

Additionally, I am working on an update to the documentation for WP Dispensary which will add in a better UX and a lot of code examples.

The goal with the documentation is to have a complete resource center for freelancers, boutiques, agencies and conglomerates who want to help the cannabis industry online.

It’s a large goal, but one I am ready to take on … CannaBiz is only the beginning of a very hot summer 🙂