Nothing beats the thrill of starting a new site on the web. You have fresh ideas, your thoughts are wide open, and you’re ready to fill a brand-new site up with all your vision.
As exciting as this moment can be, the prospect of finding just the right WordPress theme to fit that vision presents a daunting task. There are thousands of themes available out there. Which one is best?
Go ahead and browse the web. You’ll find endless free WordPress themes, so many that your brain gets tired and your eyes start to melt in your head. You may not find anything that looks as spectacular as you’d like, either.
So you decide to take a chance on a premium WordPress theme – and it truly is taking a chance. You may end up paying hard-earned money for a theme that isn’t what you expected, isn’t well coded and isn’t really any better than the free themes you could’ve chosen.
It’s easy to get taken in by a pretty package. It’s easy to think that because you’re paying for premium, you’re going to get something really good. And you might, too. You might find yourself enthralled by a great color scheme, spectacular graphics, or some flashy look.
What about the rest of the theme?
With free themes, the risk of making a bad choice is minimized. You can download the theme, try it out and if it’s not to your liking or too complicated to work with, there’s no loss except your time. Scrap it and find another.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to try out premium themes. The demos don’t let you see if the code is a mess or whether the site is easy to use. You can’t know what you’re really getting unless you buy, and if you’re on a budget, the price of a premium WordPress theme may be your only shot.
To help you choose a great theme that not only looks good but is well built, here are my favorites for premium WordPress themes:
Studio Press and themes by Brian Gardner top the list. The site offers a wide variety of themes, and each have nice, clean code. Even James can read it. If you want to get your feet wet and dabble with CSS, you couldn’t do better than one of Brian’s creations.
Studio Press themes offer designs for magazine-style blogs, photo galleries, business sites and real estate companies, to name a few. Following the current trend of offering support forums, Studio Press themes give buyers access to an extensive knowledge base as well as developers and designers ready to answer any question.
We also suggest opting for the Studio Press Pro Plus membership option, if you think you’ll want multiple themes. It gives access to downloads for all themes, plus future releases and retired themes as well.
Thesis is absolute brilliance sprung straight from the mind of DIY Themes’ Chris Pearson. The options panel in the dashboard has a multitude of settings for nearly every aspect of customization.
With Thesis, you can easily arrange your blog to suit your style and taste with a just few clicks here and there.
I’ll admit that Thesis and I enjoy a stormy love-hate relationship. Thesis can be a frustrating theme to work at times, as it has two separate custom files, one for functions (the actions your site performs) and one for custom CSS (the visual styling of your theme).
If you’re used to working exclusively with traditional CSS files, it’s a little harrowing to learn what’s involved in setting functions for Thesis and getting the CSS to cooperate. Be prepared to spend time on DIY’s help forums and going through a lot of trial and error if you don’t have developer skills.
iThemes offers a wide range of themes in their store for you to choose from. Amongst them are Flexx and Architect.
Architect is a lovely little theme, best suited for those who want more of a static site appearance than a blog. This theme allows you to use a larger background image and have main content laid on top, which is great for getting fancy with lighting and texture. The code is easy to work with and customizations are a breeze.
Flexx is another do-it-yourself type of theme boasting thousands of possible layouts. The options panel has different settings to arrange every aspect of your site’s layout. Move navigation around, add or remove sidebar columns and customize which widgets appear where. Just click and save. Flexx also allows for static or rotating header images, with or without fade effects.
The code is a little tricky to manipulate, since so much of the theme’s potential is automated in the options panel.
If you want all the bells and whistles a theme offers, Colorlabs’ Arthemia Premium is the way to go.
This theme has a magazine-style layout, widgetized sidebars and video post capabilities. The lower categories bar below the featured header section can be customized to your color scheme, or if you’re up for a challenge, customize it with images instead of text.
The code for Arthemia isn’t for amateurs. There’s a lot to be found under the hood, and it can take novices some time to figure it all out. If you have that time to spare, Arthemia offers a ton of potential.
Press 75 by Jason Schuller (who also does theme work for Studio Press) has some amazing themes geared towards video blogging.
I’ve seen his themes from behind the scenes, and as with the Studio Press themes, the code is clean and easy to follow. Jason also offers support forums for his themes in case you get stuck.
These are just a sampling of the premium themes available today, but that’s plenty to give you a good place to start looking if you’re in the market of building a new site.
Feel free to share your favorite premium themes in our comment section, or let us you’re your experiences with any of these.
I have my sights set on StudioPress’ Corporate theme as the theme that ~seems~ at first glance to match my ideas of what I want for my upcoming site upgrade. Nice clean single page front layout, and nice full pages. However you may have other recommendations.
Though must check out Press 75, never seen them and I like video blogging.
The real danger with picking a Premium theme comes from the start of the blog. Blogs often evolve very quickly at first, as you find what you thought would work well when you were theorising about the site doesn’t do so well in practice. Then you have to either do some serious customisation work, or buy a whole new theme.
Patrick Vuleta – Lawfully Green´s last blog post…Brand New Environmental Law Site
Had a look around at the different themes in the post and ah look at that… the Architect theme layout closely matches the mockup layout you suggested.
I’ll have to check that one out in more detail.
What can I say? Thesis is helping make all my dreams come true.
Writer Dad´s last blog post…Does your blog need a makeover?
I looked at all of those themes for my new site update, but in the end I decided to go with Thesis and have it skinned by @Reese. I just think Thesis looks better overall.
Nathan Hangen´s last blog post…How to Develop an Online Empire – Part 4
@Harry: What if I want them both? I often look at a premium theme and go “I really like how they did this ONE thing, but I hate everything else”. My ideal layout is probably a mix of about three themes. In fact, from reading this post I noticed the ithemes Bravo theme, and I really like how they use the three equal feature boxes at the bottom as opposed to Architect’s two boxes and a posts widget. But then I dislike the top half of Bravo.
I’m offline for a business trip most of this week though, but I’ll give it some more thought and get back to you.
And yeah Mel, in three weeks I expect to move into my very own Men With Pens site. Can’t wait.
Patrick Vuleta – Lawfully Green´s last blog post…Brand New Environmental Law Site
I recently purchased the Thesis theme after scoping out several other premium themes. I’m very happy with how my site turned out. I think it looks slick and does a good job of showcasing the content, which is the most important factor for a writer’s site.
I found it easy to customize, but I also had some knowledge of CSS before installing the theme. Someone with zero experience with CSS might not find it so easy to change certain aspects of their site. The options panel allows the user to change the fonts, the number of columns, and a few other things, but it doesn’t allow you to change the background color, font colors, link styles, etc., so you have to change the CSS file to customize those items. On the other hand, the same is true of most premium themes and someone with no knowledge of CSS is going to find herself stuck in that position regardless of which theme she buys.
Kristen´s last blog post…Guns, Books and Birthdays
Nah Harry, I’m slowly refining my ideas to what would be the perfect layout based on a plan for the blog I’m coming up with. Architect is pretty good, but first impressions is it is a little too narrow and closed up (I like Corporate’s openess for example), and I need in a theme a recent posts gallery in the top half, then three feature boxes in the bottom to show the three other features of the site. Both things aren’t really native to architect.
However, the best thing about Architect as you mentioned is that it works really well for doing textures and layers, and that is probably the number one design criteria for me.
But it is good to look around at all the different premium themes and work out what’s good and bad about each, then sketch a basic layout up. Seeing how other people have designed each theme opens up some really good ideas when you think “Oh – that’s a really cool way to do things”.
As to the themes vs content issue. Well I think a good theme showcases the content more and directs a reader’s eyes to what you want them to see. For example, my problem with many free themes is there is simply no flow. I look at them and just get overwhelmed by information that is placed in seemingly completely random positions, because there’s no contrasting emphasis to direct attention.
Patrick Vuleta – Lawfully Green´s last blog post…Brand New Environmental Law Site
@ Patrick, I know some very cool guys who are genius itself with setting up and customising themes and websites *whistles innocently*
Melinda´s last blog post…How to Increase Repeat Readers
I wonder if themes are really too much overkill? As a writer myself, I pay for a URL and host it at WordPress.com and use one of their stock themes (The Jouralist One because I wanted a stripped down minimalist theme). I’m not knocking themes but I’ve asked myself how many folks visit my site directly and how many monitor it using tools like “Google Reader”? I rarely visit a site directly unless I feel led to comment (such as on yours today!) I simply don’t have the time even when reading a good post that I’m not going to comment on to visit each site. So does the theme really make the site or is it content?
Maybe once I finish my first ebook and offer it for free on my site, then I might have to do something with it. Not sure at this point. I’m thinking out loud here because I want the site to be easy to use, easy to find things, and easy to manage. I’ve thought about migrating the site over to WordPress.org where I have more flexibility but at the moment, don’t see the need since I’m just writing there and nothing more.
Just thinking out loud here…Thanks for the good content here!
Scott Cheatham´s last blog post…Read To Grow – Part One
@Patrick: I did look at Studio Press Corporate for you and went with Architect because it’s always been a good theme for people who want the emphasis on a site rather than a blog. Of course if you’d rather have Corporate, it’s not too late…
@Writer Dad: hehe, that reminds me of Pedro from “Napoleon Dynamite”. Then again, it’s still early and coffee hasn’t been had yet. What do you like best about it?
@Kristen: I didn’t exactly have zero knowledge of CSS the first time I customized a Thesis theme and I still found it frustrating. Of course now I keep extensive documentation on everything I do with it for various projects, so it’s getting easier each time. I think for me, it just seems like an extra step to search out the right hooks or functions to make a change that would have been faster had it been in a traditional CSS or .php file format. Change a background color? No problem. There it is right in the body section of the CSS at the top. Change it in Thesis? Hey, wait, there’s nothing in the custom CSS….oh, I need a “hook”? What’s a…and then it’s off to search the support forums.
@Mel: Already on it!
Hi Harry,
You’re exactly right about some of the frustrations with the Thesis theme. I’m comfortable making changes to the CSS but I haven’t done anything at all with the custom functions file because I don’t have any php experience and I’m wary of breaking the theme. To change the colors and add some other styles, I just copied the appropriate sections from the main CSS file into the custom CSS file and modified them to suit my design. I installed a plugin called Thesis OpenHook to make other changes but so far the only thing I’ve done is change the footer text and the 404 error page text because I’m not entirely sure what will happen if I change anything else.
But, Thesis does come with a fantastic support forum. I think it’s important to consider the level of support offered with each theme, especially for someone like me who would rather focus on the content but still wants a nice-looking site.
Kristen´s last blog post…Guns, Books and Birthdays
@Scott: Themes aren’t overkill at all. It all depends on what your focus is and how you want to present it. For us, the blog’s theme is a showcase of what we do. Not only do we write excellent content, we also do design.
Both go hand in hand. I’ve seen many sites with great content fall short on design and totally turn me off to visiting directly, and by the same token, I’ve seen some kick ass design paired with crappy content. Getting both to work in perfect harmony is a beautiful thing.
@Kristen: If you save a copy of the file before working on it, you can’t really break your theme, no matter what theme it is. I always tell people to copy and paste whatever page or CSS they’re working on before they start working on it, this way if something goes wrong, you just replace it with the original version and start over.
Or better yet, if you do a lot of customizing, get a program like Dreamweaver that makes it easier to adjust php and css files. The way I work is I’ll have the site on one screen and Dreamweaver open on the other. I make the changes and upload and refresh the page. Theme got blown apart? Ok…say hello to Mr. Undo! Then I’m back to to the state the page was in before the change, no previous work is lost and I can try again.
Support forums are another good point and before buying a new premium theme I always check the support forums, to see how good they are, what kind of special tutorials may be there and what issues people run into.
Open Hook is a great little plugin, however be careful. Using the plugin will require that you make sure it upgrades when Thesis does.
@Patrick: Oh my…what have I done? Did I just give you option paralysis?
Seriously, that’s not a problem. If you want 3 equal featured boxes at the bottom, we can do it. Nothing is set in stone.
I’ve been thinking a lot about themes lately. I have a TypePad blog right now; I’ve been with TP since 2006 and I know how to work it, but lately I want more out of my site. I’m just not sure how much additional work would be involved in using a WordPress theme (probably Thesis) and what I’d have to do to migrate my site over to WordPress. If there’s a site or post somewhere that explains how a WP site works, I’d love to see it.
Catherine Cantieri, Sorted´s last blog post…Save the date: How-to-handle-paper workshop July 31
@Patrick: *looks up from diligently taking notes* That’s true it is good to look around and get ideas, and long after your theme is done, you’ll still find ways to tweak it and make it better.
A good theme does help guide the reader, and that’s where the design and content start to work together. Many of the free themes are created to appeal to as wide a base as possible, so it’s very difficult to find one that has at least most of what you need it to do. That’s what I liked about Brian’s themes from the start, they had a lot of the base features and were (and still are) highly customizable on top of that.
@Catherine: Wow, that’s almost a post in itself. There’s a bit of ground work to migrate from TypePad to WordPress (for one, if you have a lot of images, those won’t export like they would when exporting a WP blog). What you could do is sign up for a free WP account on wordpress.com and poke around in there.
Ultimately, if you want full control over customization of a WordPress blog, your best bet is to go with a self hosted installation. WordPress.com is very limited with what you can do with both the theme and the plugins.
Hi Harry
Yes, I’m another fan of Thesis. I’ll probably never use all the cool features as my site is primarily my business site – there is a blog but not on the home page.
Why Thesis? Well as someone with minimal technical knowledge it’s pretty easy to use (a friend helped me with the custom CSS and background initially but I can still manage to play without breaking it – so far). The support forum is great – all of my questions have always been answered quickly, and it had some recommendations from people I trust. Plus I think that I’ve ended up with a site that doesn’t look overly ‘Thesisy’ (especially considering the minimal amount of changes made to the custom css)!
Sally, Snappy Sentences´s last blog post…Are you past it? Or just plain last?
Good choices, Harry. I am using Arthemia Premium on one site and have purchased Thesis for the other. I also quite like some of the themes from Woothemes.
Sharon Hurley Hall´s last blog post…The Portable Writer
Oh boy, browsing through WordPress themes is a trap. Before I know it hours have gone by and I’ve done nothing except drool and get dissatisfied with my own theme (Granted it needs a major facelift but I’m using a free theme
)
There are a lot of bloggers who can’t afford a premium theme. What I’d like to know is if you’ve come across some cleanly coded free WordPress Themes?
Samar´s last blog post…Learning on the job
@Sally: There may be more options than you need, but it’s nice to know they’re there if you need them!
@Sharon: I’d like to see what you’ve done with Arthemia and what you will do with Thesis after you’re done. Keep us updated
@Samar: There is one that I like very much and it’s called “Frugal” This is a bare bones theme, but the code is very clean and the theme is easy to customize.
well, I prefer mine, after like months of research I found the perfect one for me
evam´s last blog post…Clean out Your Email Box Easy & Simple
Nice discussion. I am also interested in StudioPress Corporate theme like Patrick. I have some experience in Thesis and think it’s a wonderful theme. However, sometimes it seems a bit overkill, especially when you want a website/blog combo.
I was looking for a nice “static looking” theme with the ability to transform into a full-blown blog and the Corporate theme to me looks like a perfect match. I will most likely delve into the StudioPress world very soon.
Dan
Dan´s last blog post…Graphite Design Aura Shaft Review
I know for people like me, making a theme is hard but I am willing to learn and hoping at least i could make some one day. Thanks for sharing your themes guys, i really appreciate it!
I am just overwhelmed with all the comments and actually lost. I have zero knowledge of PHP, CSS and hesitating to install wordpress on my site because I know nothing technical. With all the plugins and updates, I am too scared to try it. If there is some solution for a newbie do let me know … Till then I am quite okay using static HTML pages….Thanks