WordPress Themes

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: , , , , , , , ,

Feb 9, 2011

Which theme? That theme? No, this theme!

Themify WordPress ThemesOne of the first hurdles that I came across in WordPress was how to chose a theme. For WordPress.com hosted blogs this isn’t such a great problem as there are a limited amount of themes available – only about 106!

I have used the following free WordPress.com themes – Titan (The Red Horse Blogs), & Fleshy (Andy Britnell WordPress.com test site) both of which look clean and professional. I am sure you will find a free one that suits your blog and later you can always upgrade to a self-hosted site and find a more professional theme that fits your market and style more closely.

When I decided to have a self-hosted site the possibilities seemed endless. There are many free themes available and you can get snowblinded by all the different colours, layouts and features that each theme has.

Eventually I almost lost the will to live! Another case of too much choice forcing you choose something inappropriate or not making a decision at all. Eventually I had to set up a list of criteria in order to shortlist the themes that were going to work.

These are my guidelines:

    1. No white on dark text – despite it saving energy it is just too straining on the eyes and unclear

    2. Flexible layout for every page (not restricted to just 2 or 3 columns) which means you can have static pages with a different layout which can act as landing pages

    3. Style to fit market niche – knocks out most photography and magazine type themes for my clients

    4. Ability to change fonts, backgrounds, header, colours etc. Allows you to differentiate from other blogs with same theme

    5. Easy to link to social media to make your blog the hub of online activity

    6. Updated and supported theme that is popular – you don’t want your theme to wither and die

    7. Theme that links with content. A personal blog can be more funky than a business blog and a magazine or sport blog can be busier

Having said that once you know the rules you can always break a few to give your blog a design and look with an edge!

What do you look for when you are choosing a theme for your blog?

By Andy Britnell Blog Themes, WordPress Themes 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,