WordPress Theme Sources You Can Trust

Beware Malicious WordPress Themes!

As soon as I teach a small business owner about WordPress, I get two questions. WordPress is really free? Once I explain about the altruistic and collaborative model of doing business, I get the next question…

Where can I get a good WordPress theme?

And naturally, everyone asks me about free WordPress themes. There are a number of good, free WordPress themes — but beware of the source!

What a lot of people don’t know is that malicious code can be embedded in a WordPress theme to do things like steal your site traffic, your pay per clicks, your affiliate sales commissions, your subscribers and much more. This is especially true if you don’t know how to read the code and don’t tend to take your themes apart and play around with them like some people do. (You wouldn’t be talking about yourself, would you, Carolyn?)

Now I’m not going to go into how these dirty, rotten slime buckets; these festering, maggot-ridden canker sores on the heels of humanity; these cretinous pieces of feces… uhm, where was I? Oh, yes. I’m not going to go into detail about the malicious code that can be embedded (because some of these bits of human garbage may read and apply these tricks), but I am going to warn you about being careful what you put on your server and site.

There’s only one place you should get your free WordPress Themes and that’s at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/.

You should be extra suspicious of people offering pirated commercial themes for free. Seriously. You already know these guys are pirates. And what’s the pirate motto? Take all you can, give nothing back.

But what if you can’t find a WordPress theme you like or want a theme that has incredibly professional features?

Well, now you either have to spend a lot of time customizing a theme (coding, coding, coding). Or you can hire someone to develop you a custom theme (money, money, money). (Although there are some wonderful people I can recommend who are very reasonable for the quality of work you are getting.) Or you can purchase a commercial theme with or without customization support.

Professional themes can improve your sites results as well.

There are a lot of professional, commercial WordPress themes available. There are many that target a specific niche like portfolios or real estate or even e-commerce.  Obviously, the snazzier the features, the greater the customization, the greater the price. It becomes a balance between cost versus getting exactly what you want. It’s important to look at your product (even if that product is a non-profit service) and your target audience.

If you are selling items that are cheap and bought in bulk by people looking for a discount, your audience doesn’t expect state-of-the-art. On the other hand, if you are asking someone to trust you with something of great value — their investment, their reputation, their health, for example — you need a highly professional looking site.

Here are commercial (also called Premium) WordPress Theme sources I have used successfully and recommend:

First, let me point out that I do have an affiliate relationship (I get a referral fee if someone makes a purchase by clicking on my links) with each of these commercial theme sources. Now let me point out that the reason I have an affiliate relationship with these commercial theme sources is because I have worked with them, like theme and feel they are the best resources I’ve found. I’ve used these folks before; I’m using one of them right now; and I’ll be using them in the future. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Pagelines offers beautifully designed themes with specialized page templates high-end features like feature boxes and slideshows, just enough options, accessible code and a terrific support team

I was facing a deadline and needed to a custom home page with a series of featured content which meant some serious hacking of hooks or code in most themes, when someone recommended Pagelines. I fell in love! As a matter of fact, I’m in the process of switching this site to using Pagelines EcoPro theme (with a few modifications of my own, of course). For folks who don’t want to do any code hacking, there are several custom templates along with the standard default template and a set of theme options that you can edit from inside your WordPress administration. The Pagelines options aren’t as comprehensive as say Thesis and a bit more than Elegant Themes, so it’s a good middle ground. And if you install the recommended plugins, there are a number of additional features like a image carousel gallery slideshow, banner ad manager for a 125 x 125 banner widget, in post image gallery and more. And if you do want to hack a little actual theme code, the code is similar enough to the standard WordPress theme,  you can quickly identify the necessary code or CSS to change. No steep learning curve for hooks or hidden frameworks.

I also like the fact that Pagelines has focused on optimizing 4 specific themes. Each theme has a specific feel — formal, casual, professional — with related sub-templates allowing you to work either with a page-oriented design or a blog-style design as needed. Each theme also offers a set of standard color choices appropriate to the overall look and feel.

I still love my other professional themes and will use them in other projects and with clients as needed, but for a high-speed website development with a lot of visual bang and just enough options, I lead with Pagelines.

The DIY Thesis Theme for WordPress offers Options Galore and a Helpful Support Community

Thesis is the theme I’m currently using for this site. After spending two entire days hacking another base theme only to have it crash when activated, I realized that it was penny-wise but pound-foolish to waste time when the Thesis theme was available. There are oodles of options for everything from the overall site navigation and layout to actual posts. Included are the SEO optimization fields making another plugin unnecessary (one less potential conflict and upgrade to worry about).

The DIY Thesis theme community is huge and the support forum is active and friendly (a little geeky at times, but very friendly). Thesis theme has become so popular there are even professional “skins” available for purchase. (Imagine a professional theme for a professional theme framework!)

But mainly Thesis is about easy, do-it-yourself customization. Perfect for those of us who like “moving the furniture” from time to time without doing our own heavy lifting.

You can change everything with a custom css stylesheet (and there are instructions included and on the DIY Thesis site on how to do this) and the Thesis theme options that become part of your WordPress administration. I haven’t even begun to play with theme. Just you wait and see what’s coming!

Think of Thesis as having that 64-pack of Crayolas and a brand new pad of paper.

Thesis has two pricing structures: one for individuals wanting to use it on a single site and one for “developer’s” wanting to use it on more than one site (there is a limit to how many sites before you have buy extended licenses). The price includes upgrades and access to the support community.

WooThemes – Premium WordPress Themes With Personality

A Professional Theme SuperStore From Top Web Designers!

WooThemes offers pages and pages of themes to fit all kinds of business images from very conservative corporate to funky, hip creatives. These are created by various top web designers so you don’t have just one style of theme. Many include some advanced AJAX and javascript features like slideshows and photo galleries. I can’t begin to describe all of them. What’s interesting about WooThemes is that you have several options for purchasing based upon your needs.

With the Standard package you purchase one theme and get to pick 2 more for free. Now these offer limited customization, however, the Developer’s package (which is a little more expensive) includes the actual Photoshop image files so you can customize everything. And if having 3 themes for the price of one isn’t enough for you, you can subscribe to the Theme Club and get unlimited themes plus 2 new theme releases each month. All packages include access to the support community and some packages include theme upgrades (to match upgrades in WordPress).

ElegantThemes Offer Premium Themes At A Truly Affordable Price

Truly Beautiful Themes With Rich Options and State-of-the-Art Features!

ElegantThemes has a unique pricing policy. It’s an annual subscription that gives you access to all the themes and upgrades for that year. Right now the subscription is only US$19.95 per year! The themes are beautiful and new ones are added regularly. The most recent ElegantThemes designs include state-of-the-art AJAX features such as slideshows or feature highlights. And each theme  has several color palettes and highly professional graphics.

There are themes for various types of sites from resume themes, corporate page-based themes, portfolio themes, magazine themes, even video-oriented themes.

The themes usually come with the PSD (Photoshop) files so you can modify the graphics to your hearts content (although you will rarely want to since these themes are so beautiful). As is standard with premium (i.e., commercial) themes, your subscription includes access to the support community.

I’ve installed and worked with a half dozen of the themes from ElegantThemes and they have all been a treat. The options administration is very easy and the support (when I’ve had questions from clients who have wild whims) has been excellent.

StudioPress offers high-quality, AJAX-enhanced WordPress Themes

Top-quality WordPress Themes at less than an hour of a web developer's time!

These are WordPress Themes that will make you site look like you have Big-time Venture Capital investment! Studio Press have a few select themes, but all can be customized and all feature various high-end features such as AJAX slideshows, product-placement styling, built-in advertising placement and SEO optimization. Not for sites wanting to look like no-nothing hicks offering Walmart prices on overstock products.

A StudioPress theme can instantly upgrade your image.  A small  bed and breakfast reported a 300% increase in bookings within a month of switching to a Studio Press Lifestyle theme from their WordPress freebie. Anyone on a tight budget who wants to project quality and reach a higher value target audience should seriously look at the Studio Press themes. Put your money in getting high-quality photographs and your AdWords campaigns, while a StudioPress WordPress theme handles making your web site shine!