Premium Wordpress Themes
Review of Wordpress Premium Themes
If you are new to Wordpress, check the bottom of this post for a free guide to setting up a Wordpress blog which I created.
Should I buy a Premium Wordpress Theme? Do I need a Premium Wordpress Theme?
Good questions! The main reasons to purchase a Premium Theme are:
1) Superior design to free themes (not [...]
If you are new to Wordpress, check the bottom of this post for a free guide to setting up a Wordpress blog which I created.
Should I buy a Premium Wordpress Theme? Do I need a Premium Wordpress Theme?
Good questions! The main reasons to purchase a Premium Theme are:
1) Superior design to free themes (not always the case!)
2) Support (forum and email support in most cases)
3) More flexibility than free themes
4) Constant upgrades to keep up with new releases of Wordpress
But, before I go any further below is a quick summary of my recommendations – based on my personal use of some of these themes.
Recommended Themes
1. Woo Themes: cheap, extremely high quality, good support, easy to use
2. DIY Themes: aesthetically not as pleasing out of the box but extremely flexible theme. Great for people with design skills.
3. Solostream: Nice designs (some look a bit too similar though…), good support, great theme features built into the admin panel
Based on my experience to date I would have to say Woo Themes are the best in terms of value for money and they have a vast selection of themes to choose from.
Before you decide on a Premium Theme you should do a number of things - see below for some suggestions! Then decide based on your own findings
1) Go to demo sites and take a tour of the demo template you are interested in.
2) Go to any of the forums/comments section on the site. If they don’t have one then you should re-think.
3) Contact those who comment directly to ask them questions/feedback on the theme
4) List up your own requirements and see how well they match up to the theme you are considering buying
When deciding on whether or not to purchase a Premium Wordpress Theme, you really need to look at what you want to do with your site. If you just want a pretty looking site which only needs minimal changes to the design (or use as is), then you need to select a design which more or less matches up to the type of site you are looking for, or at least comes close.
If you are a complete Newbie, you have to make sure that the support is there to guide you through how to use the theme. If there are no instructions or help when you first start out it can be very frustrating, so make sure the theme you choose has support. If a theme has good support it is probable that the developers of that theme will also make constant upgrades. If the theme is not very popular and the comments on the forums are scant, you can bet that the theme is probably not being constantly upgraded. So beware of this before you purchase. A mistake I made when I first started blogging was I always used free themes which had no support, which also meant they weren’t upgraded to the most recent version of Wordpress. So I kept looking for new free themes until I got tired of running around in circles.
What Wordpress theme to choose?
There are a number of professionally produced Premium Themes with great support from a select number of companies. In terms of superior design and value for money my best experience so far is with Woo Themes. They have an offer which allows you to buy 3 themes for $70 and the themes are really slick and have an easy to use admin panel. I use their ProductM theme on this site and I had the site looking beautiful in about 10 minutes. Another company worth mentioning is DIY Themes, who produce the Thesis Theme. This design is extremely flexible and allows you to change a number of things without any coding or html knowledge. The only drawback is that the ‘out of the box theme’ is a little plain and you have to tweak it a bit before you get it looking pretty. I have also tried the Solostream Themes which has nice designs and good support.
The main providers of Premium Themes are Woo Themes, DIY Themes (Thesis), Solostream, Rich WP Themes, Press75, Elegant Themes, Studiopress and WP Zoom. From personal experience I recommend the Woo Themes, and depending on your needs the Thesis and Solostream themes are also very good.
Below is a list of Premium Themes that I recommend but you should check out the sites yourself, go to the forums and choose one! if you aren’t ready to splurge on cash there are also a lot of good free Wordpress Themes, but the main issue will be support. Remember, the main reason to buy a Premium Theme is because of the superior design, flexibility and most importantly the support.
If you want to change your design a fair bit but have zero experience then I recommend using a developer. Depending on the theme you choose there are usually developers who are experienced at creating sites based on particular themes and it can save you a lot of headaches if you fork over some cash and get them to do the hard work. But, be careful that you are very specific with you instructions. I have been burnt in the past by being too vague and having to go back to the drawing board when it hasn’t been done correctly. You can usually look for these developers on the theme sites.
Well, Happy Blogging and any comments are welcome!
1. WOO THEMES
Visit Woo Themes Site
WooThemes was started by three designers – Addi, Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester. Some positives:
- Easily change your logo
- Add Feed Burner URL
- Add Google Analytics
- Add Flickr photos
- Add Twitter updates
- Great value for money (3 themes for $70)
- You can use the theme on unlimited domains without extra costs
The last point is quite important when you compare the pricing models to other companies. Most sites have a single-use license and multiple-use license. The multiple-use license is obviously more expensive. Woo Themes allows you to use their themes on an unlimited number of domains for the one price.
Woo Themes has a variety of different designs which include Magazine/News, Personal Blog, Portfolio, CMS, Business, Free and Multimedia. Among these designs there are about 56 themes to choose from. They have a great deal where you pay $70 and get 3 themes. As I said, I’m using the ProductM Woo theme for this site. I also started experimenting with one of their photo templates and I have to say I was really impressed. Very easy to use and a lot of layout flexibility from the admin panel, so to get something like that for around $25 is a real bargain. It is still a work in progress but this is the site I am in the process of setting up which uses the Object theme.
They also have a deal where you pay $125/month to get access to all of their themes, but I wouldn’t do that unless you are a serious developer.
2. THESIS THEME
Visit Thesis Site
Probably the best site for SEO (search engine optimization) theme because of its great coding. If you want to change the colour, columns etc., not being a coder is a non-issue because the thesis option panel allows you to change aspects of the site which normally would have to be done by time consuming coding.
One of the fortes of the Thesis theme is the ability to produce unique designs easily from the admin panel. A great feature is the layout generator which allows you to choose a 1, 2 or 3 column layout within seconds.
What is different about Thesis is they have one design which can easily be tweaked. Other themes have multiple designs, but you have to pay for each different design. The main drawback to Thesis is that it doesn’t look slick out of the box. You really need to work a bit on adding the various components and playing around in the admin panel until you get it looking the way you want it to – but that is also one of the advantages…
3. SOLOSTREAM THEMES
Visit Solostream site
Previously run by an individual by the name of Michael Pollock, Solostream was bought by the Jigsaw Group in 2008.
Very professional looking out of the box with over 20 different designs. The templates can be customized to almost any color palette and personalized with logos and photos. They have put a lot of thought into the ad placement to allow webmasters to monetize their site easily and the tutorials are useful and easy to follow.
I bought this theme when it was called WP-Vybe. As mentioned above, the company has since been sold to the Jigsaw group but still maintains a high level of support. The themes have moved on and the new designs look really slick. What impressed me about this theme was the really good tutorials and the ease of use. It didn’t take me long to get my site pretty much looking the way I wanted.
4. RICH WP THEMES
Visit RICH WP site
Rich WP offers about 9 different themes listed below:
BigNews (Magazine)
Personal Agency
Superblogger Theme
Daily News (Magazine)
Showcase (Photo)
Rich Magazine Theme
RichBIZ Theme
Blogbeast (Magazine)
Photo Theme
All Themes Package
I don’t know too much about these themes, but from what I hear the Showcase (Photo) theme is good if you want to make a Recipe site!
5. STUDIOPRESS WORDPRESS THEMES
Visit Studiopress Site
Nice looking colour schemes (about 13 of them), widget-ready, integrated Adsense units and optimized for search engines. The Studiopress sites certainly look nice although I haven’t purchased one yet. To tweak the themes you require a working knowledge of HTML/CSS and an understanding of how Wordpress Themes work.
