Feb 10, 2011

WordPress and other blog themes

Wordpress ThemesFollowing on from my recent post about themes let’s take a look at specific themes for WordPress self-hosted sites & other blogging platforms.

Most of the free themes are pretty good, some are better than others. Be aware that they may come with some limitations:

    1. The person who wrote the theme might stop supporting it or upgrading it

    2. Not designed for the increasing mobile traffic to blogs

    3. Might not work the same with all the different browsers

    4. May not have the features for designing the site the way you want it to look

    5. It will almost always be outshone by people with premium or tailor designed themes and blogs.

In other words a free theme will mean you have to compromise in some way.

My favourite free themes for WordPress include Mystique (see Work From Home Wisdom Blog) and Organic which I used for the Leading & Developing High Performance blog.

Then there are the more commercial or premium themes that you can pay for. They often come with an option for a standard theme, only for use on one site, or a developer theme which allows you to use it for many sites. For this blog I use the Themify – Bloggie Theme.

I am very impressed with both the flexibility of this theme and the support you get when you come across something that baffles you. The team responds quickly and updates are made pretty frequently to add new features and to improve and develop the theme. I would highly recommend you have a look at them if you wish to have a professional looking flexible theme.

Other blog themes that I would recommend are WooThemes – Premium WordPress Templates. I particularly like Skeptical – it’s a free theme too. The other ones you can buy as a single theme or pay for access to all of them. Some funky and contemporary designs here.

Of course once you have installed a theme you don’t have to stick with it. It is easy to install and preview different ones with your content and most theme sites have demos so you can get a feel for how your blog will look.

You might have to fiddle with your widgets if you do activate another theme and make sure you backup your site and database before you make the change.

Other People’s Choices for Best WordPress Themes:

50 Best Free WordPress Themes of 2010

25 Best Commercial WordPress Themes of 2010

More WordPress themes than you can shake a stick at!

Blogger Themes for those of you that are tired of the default themes (there are only 16).

By Andy Britnell Blog Themes, WordPress Themes 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , ,