July 14, 2010 | Comments | Wordpress Templates
Get Premium WordPress Themes & Improve your Site Instantly!
The default templates that come installed on your blog aren’t too flash to look at. They’re functional, fast and clean but they don’t really make you stand out as a little individual or if you’re a business, they don’t present your brand in the best light. So what can you do about it?
Free WordPress Themes
Not that word… themes, not templates. Makes a huge difference when you’re searching Google. There are some fantastic free themes, in fact this site uses one of them. Yes I had the choice of others but this suited my needs for now. A huge range of sites, including WordPress themselves, have a directory of free themes. Most of them have a link back to the designer in the footer and some have an encoded footer so that you can remove it without ‘breaking’ the theme. You need to find a Base64 decoder or if you’re smart, you can:
- load the theme
- view your homepage in a browser
- go to the View menu and choose Page Source
- find the source code in between <!- WordPress footer code starts here–> and <!-Wordpress footer code ends here–> is the source code for the footer.
- Copy this code
- login to the admin section and go to Appearance -> Editor
- Now open the footer.php and replace the encrypted code from earlier with the actual source code.
You can find even more accurate explanations elsewhere on the web.
Premium WordPress Themes
There are some amazing things happening at the moment when it comes to premium wordpress themes. I am constantly stunned by how far some programmers are pushing them. For example, one theme I saw was a complete real estate site that agents could even log into and upload their properties yet it was just wordpress running it. They are doing all the extras using custom fields (note, this is advanced wordpress).
You can also purchase these wordpress themes and many companies have packages where for a few dollars more you can get access to their whole collection for a year. Here are a few I have used on my sites:
No matter what wordpress theme you choose, there is always a degree of customisation to be done. You can learn to do that yourself, outsource it or give my designers Select Designs a call if you need help. I nutted my way through it and taught myself a lot using Google to answer any questions I had.
Please add your comments to the post or my Facebook Fan Page and I will do my best to respond. And why not try a flash new wordpress theme on your blog today?
