wordpress themes

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WordPress themes are considered premium, regardless being free or so-to-speak “paid” themes. 2 years ago, we all could only dream about having a wordpress theme for our blog with Ajax and JavaScript features, where featured posts slide, portfolio items fade in and out, and, of course — the comments are posted without refreshing the page. All these things were sought after and cost a lot of money, requiring plenty of custom development. Could we guess back then that cu3er will be offered on free wordpress themes? Well, today I made a selection of best wordpress theme that make the neatest yet most powerful use of the javascript integration… enjoy!

Since late 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250. Originally only a small number of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers created paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system. However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spread, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon trying to cash on the new trend filling up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes. However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what specifically makes a premium WordPress theme premium? Some characteristics that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme are listed below:

Quality and Unique Design
Premium WordPress themes should be just that – Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free.

Features
While all themes are different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

Customization Options and Flexibility
People want options, so Premium WordPress themes should be customizable. Buying a premium theme will set you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium themes should be able to be easily customized further, whether it be for the layout, colours, images, or all of the above.

Live Preview or Demo
There should be a live demo or preview of the theme so you can test it and check it out before buying. If there is no live preview or demo that should be a warning sign. You should ask why don’t they want you to test the theme first? All reputable premium theme sellers will have a live demo full of content for you to test. Explore the live demo thoroughly, testing all pages to see that the theme works properly and there are no errors or mistakes.

Full Support
If you’re buying a premium WordPress theme it should also come with a certain degree of support from the designer. The level of support can vary however and will range from personalized individual support from the designer, to the provision of forums or blog comment sections for asking questions and obtaining support from the designer and other people who have purchased the theme.

Supporting Documentation
Premium WordPress themes should come with an instruction manual or document. This should explain how to upload and install the theme and how to manage any of the options that are built into the theme.

Free Updates
Wordpress is continually being updated and improved and a premium WordPress theme developer should be offering you free updates of the theme when required.

Well Coded
There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium WordPress theme. The theme has cross browser compatible and been tested to work properly on all the major browsers, plus the theme should have clean and valid code and adhere to strict XHTML and CSS standards.

Guest post by Preecha Saisaard from www.free-templates-design.com and Kathleen Mulder from http://webhostingstar.us

People are aware of the purpose of a wordpress theme, but what they are not aware of is how to identify a good wordpress theme. This is a prominent problem with majority of the people who require a wordpress theme for their blog. In order to completely achieve the purpose of using a wordpress theme, one has to select the right wordpress theme for one’s blog. In this article, you will know about some essential things that must looked for in a wordpress theme that you are searching to be used in your blog.

Flexibility is the essence of a good wordpress theme. This means that once it is installed on your blog, customizing it should not give you any difficulty. If the theme lacks flexibility in usage then it would make it cumbersome for you to customize the blog by yourself and you would most probably need to hire someone to do job for you. An ideal wordpress theme should also be apt for search engine optimization. To enable people to find their way to your blog, you have to ensure that keywords pertaining your blog are present in the related search results, thus bringing people to your blog for the information that you have provided for others. SEO customized templates of wordpress themes are ideal for one’s blog as these themes are naturally designed in a way that will help you in the optimization of the search results of your blog.

It’s easy to see why WordPress themes are so worthy of one’s attention. With the optimal theme, you can adjust all the nifty little widgets and codes, and also ensure better search engine rankings and loads of fresh traffic daily.

Design Yourself

The web is quite over-saturated with wordpress tutorials, but only a few of them really teach you how to make a GREAT WordPress theme yourself, here are our best picks:

In my opinion, these tutorials will help you to design your own web 2.0 theme that will blow visitors attention away, and be just as good as the ones offered on WooThemes and ThemeForest.

Need your PSD coded? We recommend PSD to WordPress Conversion from $99 only, offered by SramekDesign.com to our readers.

But, before you get overwhelmed with the design process, there are certain factors you need to consider to make the correct choice of WordPress theme? Here are five essential ones:

1. Theme Width and Columns

Generally, WordPress themes are available in 2-column or 3-column formats, with widths in the range of 500 pixels to 960 pixels. In case of non-profit purpose blogs, a 2-column theme can appear more compact and reader-friendly. Since you have fewer images of goods or links to other sites to display, you can throw light exclusively on the content without pushing readers away from your site.

Before we switched to creating a Photoshop Tutorials blog, Lorelei Web Design was used as my portfolio website, where I frequently updated our readers with free wordpress themes and recently I got a few emails with people asking, what happened to these themes? Well, I guess it’s time to pamper the old readers a little and release a free wordpress design.

Our premium quality dark and mysterious design will be ideal for almost any kind of blog, from personal to business. Magic Tree wordpress theme contains no spammy links at the footer, moreover the footer is not encrypted so you can add and modify the layout as you like, though keeping the links to our website will be highly appreciated.  Fully SEO friendly code, nested comments, ready for Gravatars and widgets, custom inbuilt Admin panel for easy management of certain content on your blog. All this lays against a magical, dreamy and glow-rich design… Absolutely free to our blog readers!

• Live Preview | Free Download

License:  PHP, HTML  and CSS are distributed under the General Public License. Images are a copyright property of their respective creators. Enjoy the theme and please leave a comment if you have any questions or want to share the url you are using it at.

Share: If you would like to share this theme on your blog, please link to this post and don’t link directly to our download URL. Web hosting provided for this theme is a courtesy of WebHostingStar.us

Wordpress was first released back in 2003, whole 7 years ago and after tremendous changes and tweaks, one may assume that all the WordPress themes has already been released by now… You are wrong. To my joy, I discover dozens of new wordpress themes every day and it even though I think I had seen it all by now, maybe you haven’t? If you are starting a new blog, you might get overwhelmed by the idea that in order to make a good competition in the design blog sphere — you need a premium wordpress theme (aka “paid”). While is is of course correct and many respected blogs do use a custom made, customly tweaked, customly customized wordpress theme — a lot of beginners and even more advanced users are happy with the FREE WordPress themes they simply adjusted for their needs.

If you need an inbuilt gallery, featured posts section, admin panel, magazine style for tutorials and easy ads management, these WordPress themes could be the right ones for you. My point is — you can make your blog layout look premium, without premium damage to your wallet.

A while ago I made a post with outstanding free wordpress themes which were all designed in Photoshop and now, since a lot of people don’t like the idea of “free” wordpress themes for different reasons, here is a top 10 of premium themes which you can purchase from $12 to $30 and won’t need to keep a trail of spammy links, or make do with poor coding that will destroy your blog..

1. “Our Community” WordPress Theme

2. “Showcase WordPress” Theme

3. “Blazen” WordPress Theme (new)

4. “Wood World” WordPress Theme

5. “Eat Fish Cat” WordPress Theme

6. “Code Breaker” WordPress theme (only $12)

7. “Aurora Borealis” WordPress Theme

8. “Quick Tab” WordPress Theme

9. “The Other Blog” WordPress theme

10. “BMag” WordPress theme ($12 Only)

So, this was my top 10 picks from the rapidly growing new network of wordpress themes – Theme Forest. Hope you will find something for your liking in this list.

A lot of designers are going out of their way to create something special in the CSS of the wordpress theme that will make an impact.

But the fact remains, no CSS trick will ever compete with what Photoshop (or Illustrator) can provide in web layout, especially in such a competitive area like wordpress themes. Here is a selection of truly, incredibly breathtaking WordPress Themes that you can not only worship and admire, but also download 100% free and use for your blog. Enjoy!

1.  Puteulanus WordPress Theme [demo]

2.  Deskspace WordPress Theme [demo]

3.  Blogging Cream WordPress Theme [demo]