- Experimenting with visitmix.com lab’s Gestalt
- Saint Shenanigans
- Speed, Quality, Cheap. Pick any Two.
- State of Software Design in NSW HSC
- It is not the Apple Tablet, it is the Store
- Facial Update
- Why the Quietness?
- What does Transparency mean to me?
- The long search for the perfect WPF Twitter Client. Over.
- #auteched week begin
- Twenty Years Ago Today
- Where is Nick?
- Sanity Prevails
- 28 Weeks. 18 Weeks Down
- New Windows Home Server
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- Microsoft and Web 2.0 Stuff
- Bing Box on your Website or Blog
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- Fifth Barcamp Sydney, Saturday June 27th
Hunting Wordpress Themes
By Nick Hodge | April 13, 2008
Time to change themes on this site.
I have a simple request: White-space is king, single left hand navigation with fluid right-hand content column. Tweaking the typography to look brilliant is more important than whizzy graphics detracting the eye.
As @evilsue says on twitter: “have reskinned blog.….again.…its the poor girls substitute for buying shoes”
So, with these demands in mind — my first port of call was to put a call out to the Twitterati. Here is my list of sites, in no particular order.
Let’s start the ThemeHunting:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes/Theme_List
What is a theme, and how do you create one?
At the bottom of the page, there is a list of Theme sites.
Very soon you head into nasty MySpace-themed sites with mega-advertisements ugliness.
http://themes.wordpress.net/
This is the uber-viewer of themes, hosted by Wordpress. There is a standard set of content you can apply to various themes.
For instance, for my next theme I would like left sidebar, 2 column, white, no header image and widget-ready.
Either the way the themes are classified in ThemeViewer, or the viewer itself seems borked as you get a mixture of everything when you search.
The themes here seem to be rather plain, but it is the place to start your search.
http://www.elegantwpthemes.com/
Elegant themes seem to involve lots of shading, blue and images.
No magical searching to make life easier to find that theme.
http://www.revolutiontheme.com/
This is an uber-theme that alters the concept of Wordpress as a blog into Wordpress as a CMS.
Advertisements stating “earn $3506 per month from blogging” seem to harangue you on this site; again many pre-built images in the header.
Mega-click through blog with no smart searching. fail.
http://www.templateworld.com/free_templates.html
Interesting list of templates, but seems to be frozen in 2007
http://www.noupe.com/design/60-unusual-wp-blog-designs.html
Now, if I was going super-trendy with lots of graphics and colour — this is the site I would choose first.
There is an excellent list of no-frills themes too in the 45+ Must-see Themes. And I think I’ve found my first contender:
http://www.briangardner.com/themes/blue-zinfandel-wordpress-theme.htm (although in review it lacks right-fluidity)
It is also interesting to see the themes borked by comment form ugliness
http://www.wpthemereview.com/
Des Walsh, of Thinking Home Business, posted this link.
Here, each of the Wordpress themes earns an SEO score: how well the particular theme works with search-engine optimisation. In my instance, I have some WP plugins doing some magic behind the scenes to ensure the searchbots get it right.
From this site, I found my second contender:
http://www.theblogstudio.com/index.php/v5/resources (Branches theme, I would howerver change the top-left image)
http://del.icio.us/popular/wordpress
Of course! follow the tags, son.
First to pop up in the list is http://www.wpzoom.com/
Smashing Magazine has an excellent list of plain well designed themes: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/25/15-more-free-first-class-wordpress-themes/
I like BalanceWhite and TextBack
Meta-theme Generator: http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/
This is fun: Wordpress theme by form. I recall trying this about a year ago, with epic fail. Now seems to be rather cool.
Rocking Themes: http://rockinthemes.com/
The current/to be replaced theme here is Ambient Glo Fluid 1.5. Looking around on that site, I notice that there are some excellent minimalist designs such as http://rockinthemes.com/rockinminimalist-2-column-free-wordpress-theme/
Conclusions?
Wordpress Themes are like shoes. You can shop until you drop, install them all and wear different colours on different days.
Oh, the choices!
Topics: wordpress | 9 Comments »






April 13th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
[…] all rights reserved would also work (didn’t try that yet). Now I’ll have to follow in @NickHodge’s footsteps and go Wordpress theme hunting to find something that matches my swish new […]
April 16th, 2008 at 2:40 am
thanks you
April 17th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
[…] Hunting Wordpress Themes […]
June 9th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Thank you
August 11th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Thank you very much for sharing this information with us.
September 13th, 2008 at 2:43 am
thanks.…
October 19th, 2008 at 9:14 am
thanks
December 6th, 2008 at 8:50 am
thanks
May 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Great Post!!! Wordpress is my favorite CMS and this information is a perfect example why.