Confessions of a Wordpress Theme Junkie
In the immortal words of an (in)famous young pop singer …
Oops I did it again.
It sometimes seems like I’ve changed themes on my blogs almost as often as I change my shirt. I keep coming back to Cory Miller though … the look of his “web 2.0″ style designs just suits my eye.
I really need to concentrate on content with all my blogs. So, I’m going to just go with this nice clean simple theme both here and at my Part-Time Networker Community Blog; and promise myself I won’t change themes again for at least the next 4 months. (so if you’re a reader and a friend, and you see a different theme here any time before April, please call me out on it).
In honor of my “addiction” (?) to wordpress themes though, I did want to highlight a few of the themes that I have used on this site, and some that I’m still using on other blogs. It never ceases to amaze me how many great looking free themes there are out there.
Here’s a short list of some themes that I really like. Maybe you’ll find something here to feed your own addiction.
I’m currently using this theme on my Living in Hawaii local niche blog, and it was also the most recent “victim” of my fickleness here on this site.
Structure is a news style theme that’s very flexible in how it can be used. It has 4 different different sidebars (two on the right, two on the bottom), and at least 3 different looks, depending on the display options you choose in your control panel. To be perfectly honest, I can’t figure out why this theme is free. I’m no expert, but in both looks and functionality, Structure appears to be every bit as good as some of the premium news themes out there.
Nathan Rice is another designer who’s style I really appreciate. I like pretty much all of his themes. I used Elegant Blue here on this blog for a number of months … although in my case I changed the CSS a little to make it “Elegant Green”.
What I like about this theme is the focus on subscription options up in the top right sidebar. It’s very easy to set up, even for those who aren’t terribly comfortable editing theme files. Two other things I really like about this theme are how it only displays the two most recent posts on the front page, then just titles for next 8, and dates aren’t shown on the single post pages. All-in-all, this is very easy to use, professional looking theme … one I’d definitely recommend to somebody just starting a new blog.
Deep Blue is another Nathan Rice design that’s being distributed by Daniel at Daily Blog Tips. Much like the current theme on this blog, Deep blue uses generous doses of blue, orange and green along with the white background. There are two versions of this theme. One set up for Adsense, and one that’s optimized for 125×125 images. Both are relatively easy to edit via an ad.php file included with the theme.
I’m using this theme on my Nintendo Wii niche blog. I’m linking above to the new dateless version (which I may actually upgrade to). Keyword sniper is a version of the popular Modern Paper theme, that Court has optimized to be used for targeting specific niche keywords. It’s looks good, is relatively easy to modify, and based on my experiences, does exactly what it’s meant to do … keyword sniping works.
Finally, for those of you who appreciate a very minimalistic design, this is another theme I found on Court’s site. I’ve just started playing around with it on my new Extra Income blog that I’m considering developing. I really like the abundance of white space, and the collapsing right side bar is kind of cool. I’m not sure how well this theme would on a “standard” blog, but if you wanted to try something different in one of your niches, this could very well be an interesting option.
Well, that’s about all I have to share tonight. But if you follow some of the links found on the sites above, you should have no problem finding even more very attractive and useful themes.
Happy Hunting!
Todd
Update: I’ve recently delved into the world of paid themes (although still in the low price range).
Comments
By Bobby Revell on February 4th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Hi Todd! Your blog looks great. Some constructive criticism (I know you didn’t ask but I’m only trying to help)
I think you’re giving far too much attention to Court. He’s good at what he does, he gets tons of people to link to him using the anchor text “Internet Marketing” - which is basically the mission of his blog.
In order to score like him, you’ll need a few hundred thousand links to this blog with whatever your chosen “main keyword search term” is.
His main tools are article marketing, and revamped templates…which link to him with his keyword (as in your footer).
You probably already know what I’m telling you. The thing about “keyword sniping” is that it’s plain and simple…however much easier said than done, regardless of what most people think.
What is your chosen search term? I’ll help you out with some linkage…just let me know.
Thanks Todd, I apologize if I’m out of line, but I’d really like to see you succeed! It’s just going to take a lot of consistent work and social interaction.
Bobby Revell’s last blog post..Bobby’s Batch #5 - Smart Icy Cool
By Frank C on February 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Hi Todd,
Justin Tadlock is a great theme designer. I’m using his Visionary theme on OpTempo and Structure on my local niche blog.
I don’t care for Deep Blue so much. Perhaps because so many people are using it.
Court has several great SEO optimized themes besides the sniper one. With a few tweaks they can get the same results. I’ve been amazed with what I’ve seen with a few of them vs. the results with other themes.
Frank C’s last blog post..Site Review: Credit Karma
By Justin Tadlock on February 4th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Thanks Todd for posting a link back to my Structure theme. I actually made it a free theme because too many designers were putting out paid “premium” themes that didn’t really cut it (many of them are actually really good though).
Frank C, thanks for the compliments.
Justin Tadlock’s last blog post..Even Simpler WordPress Contact Form
By Tim E. on February 5th, 2008 at 4:23 am
I’ve been to two of your sites, and they look great.
As far as court’s advice and themes, I’m using his theme on two sites and his advice on another. So far my results have been pretty darn good. And that after only one month.
Tim E.’s last blog post..Ah, The Glorious ?80’s
By todd on February 5th, 2008 at 4:39 am
@Bobby - You’re not at all out of line.
The simple fact is, I’ve learned a lot from Court’s site, so I don’t mind “giving back”. I literally smiled when I first saw the SEO’d themes on Court’s site … it actually made the “free” teaching on his blog make sense. If what he’s teaching works, and people use his themes, he gets some pretty good quality back links.
But, I’m quickly realizing that things aren’t always as simple and clear cut at they seem …
For example on this post, for simplicity’s sake, instead of downloading and resizing the screen captures of the blogs I was talking about, I just (hot) linked to the images on the download page. Four of them are still working fine … I’ll give you one guess which image out of th 5 I just had to replace.
Also, I noticed something else last night. The “D-list” is prominently linked and promoted on CourtneyTuttle.com, so I’d always *assumed* that he was a practicer of “do follow”. Not so. The comments on Court’s blog are no-followed … and even more ironic, most of the links to blogs on the D-list itself are also no-followed. In hindsight I’m almost glad I was turned down for inclusion on the D-list because at the time I was using the LinkLuv plugin and required 3 comments before following. (disclosure: right now my own comments are no-followed, mainly because I assumed that Andy’s CommentLuv plugin turned it off … apparently not). The D-list is there for one purpose, and one purpose only (and I don’t think it’s primarily exposure for the listed blogs)
Ok, enough ranting. I really do appreciate what I’ve learned from Courtney Tuttle. But, I think it’s naive for any of us to ever assume that *good* Internet marketers are going to help us just out of the generosity of their heart .. there’s always an angle.
Todd
By todd on February 5th, 2008 at 4:52 am
@Frank - yes, Visionary looks really good on Optempo.com. lol, I almost wrote exactly what you did about Deep Blue … it’s a good looking theme, but with DailyBlogTips having such a high readership, I expect it’s not at all uncommon to see this one around the blogosphere.
Todd
By todd on February 5th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Hi Justin,
Thanks for stopping by. And I was by no means complaining about your theme being free. I’m sure the some of the premium themes are good, but your theme serves my purposes just fine.
I’m looking forward to the start of your Project Community Theme … it will be interesting to see how a theme is developed.
Todd
By todd on February 5th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the feedback. As I said yesterday, I love humor on your blog … very fun and unique approach.
Todd
By Lin on February 5th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Hi Todd,
I like your new theme, it looks really nice. I also liked your previous one as I’ve said before, and am using it on my dental blog right now.
Personally, I really like Court’s SEO themes, and his tutorials, and won’t stop recommending them anytime I’m posting about such things.
Lin’s last blog post..5 Last Minute Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas
By todd on February 5th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Hi Lin,
Glad to hear you got the dental blog up and going. lol, and don’t get the wrong impression about my little rant above. I still like Court’s themes and blog posts too.
By Lin on February 7th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Hey Todd,
I wanted to ask you if, when you change themes, does that mess up your RSS feed links or anything where you have re-do links or widgets?
I’ve been checking out some other wordpress SEO themes in case I wanna try a new one for my dental blog (I’ll show it to ya later), but wanted to ask first if changing a theme would mess up what I already have set up. ???
Lin’s last blog post..Thank You For Commenting Emails and Blog Comment Policies
By todd on February 9th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I sent this by email, but figure it couldn’t hurt to put it here too.
Hi Lin,
If you’re using the Feedsmith plugin, it should be fine no matter what theme you use. If there’s also an email option, you might have to set that up manually in your new theme files.
The other things you might have to redo with a new theme, are tracting scripts for google analytics or webmaster tools. Same thing for mybloglog/blog catalog, if you’re not using the widget, but still want to track visitors.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
By Justin Tadlock on February 11th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Todd
Oh, I know you weren’t complaining. Feel free to stop by the site and contribute to the community theme as much as possible.
Justin Tadlock’s last blog post..Project Community Theme: Design
By Sire on February 28th, 2008 at 10:21 am
It must be bad being a Junkie…lol I admit I usually go through a lot of themes but when I find one I like I tend to stick with it. I still have two blogs that have non widget old themes…maybe I should think of changing them
Sire’s last blog post..Will A Pill Give You A Bigger Penis?