As I said yesterday, I’m a big fan of using WordPress, which is one of the reasons I picked Media Temple as my host of choice. Of course, as soon as I set up WordPress, the first thing I want to do is find a great WordPress theme for my new blog. Where do I go?
Well, there are a ton of free WordPress themes out there, but honestly, most of them are rather craptastic. Trust me — I’ve tried more of them than I can count. Over the last year or two, premium (which is code for “it costs money) themes have been growing in popularity. There are a few companies out there who make some great premium WordPress themes. I’ve tried a lot of them as well. My personal favorite is WooThemes.
WooThemes is run by three guys who really know what they are doing when it comes to WordPress — Adii, Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester. Their business model is unique. They recruit some of the top designers on the web to crank out some beautiful blog layouts, and then they use their expertise to code something really wonderful. WooThemes adds lots of extra functionality to their premium themes, and those features come in really handy for someone like me who doesn’t want to waste a lot of time installing plugins and hacking code myself. I also love the fact that they include multiple color schemes for each theme.
WooThemes also has great prices — $70 for a single user license for a theme or $150 for a developer license, which lets you use the theme on multiple sites. You also get the Photoshop files, so if you’re a designer, you can make some tweaks on your own. One more thing — they are having a permanent 2-for-1 offer, so be sure to take advantage of that.
I personally own quite a few of their themes, and I’ve used them a good bit on other sites. For this particular blog, I’m running Typebased, which is actually free.
To wrap things up, if you’re looking for a great WordPress theme and you don’t mind spending a few bucks, be sure to check out WooThemes. You’ll be glad you did.