Where to Find Professional WordPress Themes
Give your WordPress blog a professional look…
You can get free skins or themes for your WordPress blog, but truth be told, only a few of the free WordPress themes that I see are all that pretty, and none of them have any SEO components built into them.
So, I’ve resorted to buying themes for each of my WordPress blogs. Listed below are the design services where I’ve bought themes and templates.
Brian Gardner’s Themes
I use Brian Gardner’s themes here on Net Profits Today, Roamsters.com, 101Date.com and MyEnergyPal (screenshot shown below). I started using his themes when he came out with Revolution News — which is currently in use on NetProfitsToday, albeit highly modified now. You can read about how my average visitor duration increased after I started using his themes.
Brian’s themes come with uniquely-styled homepages, archives, section and post pages. I particularly like the ‘newspaper’ look and feel of the Lifestyle Theme homepage, on which you can display recent posts from categories of your choice, in any order you like, which is infinitely preferable to the endless 10-post homepage scroll on most blogs. The primary and secondary top navigation bars allow you to highlight pages and categories that you particularly want your visitors to see and visit.
I love Brian’s themes – primarily because his designs are fresh and fabulous and better yet, they encourage visitors to poke around the site longer.
Or, you can visit Brian’s WordPress theme site and check them out at the source.
WooThemes
WooThemes was formerly Premium News Themes by Adii. Pictured below is the Fresh News Theme which was designed and coded by Magnus Jepson. You’ll notice some similiarities between this and Adii’s other themes as it was built on the framework of previous Premium News themes.
I use the Premium News theme on RosalindGardner.com (ignore the wonky search button – I was playing around with the CSS and haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet) and what I especially appreciate about these themes is that features such as Flickr, Feedburner and banner ad management are fully integrated.
WooThemes offers WordPress themes in the following categories:
- Business
- CMS
- Magazine / News
- Personal Blog
- Portfolio
To see the themes themselves and everything that is included with these themes, visit WooThemes.
WP Remix
Flexibility and ease-of-use are what struck me first about the WP Remix theme for WordPress – especially regarding the ability to choose and change page and sidebar designs directly from the WYSIWYG editor.
Trust me, after doing the work to create my own category pages and related sidebars, this feature alone sets WP Remix apart from other WordPress themes.
Visit WP Remix | Read my Review
BoxedArt
The design on Sage-Hearts.com used to be a beautiful template from BoxedArt and some elements of that template still exist. However, when I installed the WordPress blog, I morphed the rest of the design to look more like the blog.
Boxed Art offers the world’s largest collection of Original Web Templates, Flash Templates, Print Templates, Graphic Elements and WordPress templates.
Most of these templates are absolutely beautiful – however – complete beginners or anyone unfamiliar with HTML may want to check out the simpler template offerings available at the sites listed above.
Those are just 3 sources for professional WordPress themes. Keep checking back as I add more when I find them.
Related Posts
- WordPress in a Day
- WP Remix Theme: Change Sidebars on the Fly
- Fresh News Theme by Adii
- Premium News Themes Compatible with WordPress 2.5
- Revolution News: WordPress Theme Increases Visitor Duration
Posted / Revised on March 16, 2009 under Blogging, Design Tips  |
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Hey Ros-
Have you checked out WPRemix? They have an entire 50 page “package” that comes with several different layouts.
PS Keep up the good stuff….we’re relying on you.
Renee,
Ask and ye shall receive. I had looked at WP Remix awhile ago and just posted my review above.
Cheers,
Ros
….looked yummy to me, too, Ros…
PS please check out my reply to your email.
Hey Renee,
I think the server was down briefly when you sent your email… ergo, I didn’t get it. Please feel free to send again.
Cheers,
Ros
Would you recommend purchasing the WP Remix over Studio Themes at this time? This will be my first template purchase for my new site. Also, if I were to get the “Lifestyle” theme, can the colors and pictures all be changed? I’m brand new to this so I’m not sure. These templates sure make it easier to get started!
Hi Steve,
I knew that question was going to come up… just not so soon!
While the WP Remix theme makes it easier to work with multiple page and sidebar designs, the backend is actually more complicated consisting of a number of different .css (cascading style sheet) designs.
The StudioPress themes are perhaps a little less complicated and therefore more easily modified and also a little less expensive. Too, their Support is fabulous.
I can’t really comment on the Remix support as I haven’t had occasion to use it. While I did see some negative comments from clients regarding support in the past, the new ownership acknowledged the issue and has stated that they plan to concentrate on customer service.
As to changing pictures on the Lifestyle theme homepage, you’ll set that up using a plugin called “Featured Content Gallery” which is all explained when you buy the package.
Regardless of which theme you choose, if you are completely new to WordPress themes, plan to spend some time learning the in’s and outs or considering hiring a designer to get your blog off the ground faster.
I hope that helps!
Cheers,
Ros
Thank you so much! I notice that Studio Themes has a 2 for 1 special going on until tomorrow night. Something to check out! Do you have another favorite from them besides the Lifestyle theme?
Ros, (or other readers)
Do you have any other suggestions for selecting a theme (from Studio Themes, WP remix, or others) relative to:
-the theme being SEO ready/friendly
-number of columns
-if it is widget ready (not sure what this means-?)
-other pitfalls or things to avoid for a newbie
I am planning a blog that will contain affiliate links in the text and on content pages.
BTW – your new theme looks fantastic, so clean and crisp (just about made the decision for me on themes), and I really liked the logo you had designed (glad it’s still appears in the browser bar!)
Kind regards,
Ward
Hi Ros!
Well, there you go – upping the standard again! I loved it when you used some free skins, because it excused my using the free themes on my websites. I always shied away from paying for themes, because with 4 websites (business4mom.com ; healthsmartmom.com ; momprovement.com ; andpadillaofsanfelipe.com ) I hated the idea of buying something that didn’t work and I still wanted each of my sites to look somewhat unique.
But as you metioned – Brian Gardner’s themes, I can buy ALL of his themes for about the same as 2 themes would cost me anywhere else! Thanks!
Looking at moving over 500 pages of a static site. Opinions on the Ithemes Flexx theme? Thanks, Anna
I read your blog about setting up websites/blogs and I am getting a wordpress theme through Brian Gardiners site Studio Press. Is there a discount code that is offered if we order a theme through your site?
I don’t know If I said it already but …I’m so glad I found this site…Keep up the good work I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say GREAT blog. Thanks,
A definite great read….Barbra Scurley
Thank you so much for the post. I have been trying to get more traffic to my site and didn’t really think about changing the wordpress theme, but after reading your comment about that on this post, I think I’m gonna give it a try!