After HOURS and I do mean HOURS of searching through free WordPress themes for my two blogs, I have found a number of great sites. Like I mentioned in my week three blog (When did I become a programmer?), free themes come with limitations. These limitations can be partially overcome by changing code, but that is not so easy for us non –technical types.
To avoid having to do a lot of modifications, I recommend doing the following before you start your search for a free theme:
1) Review lots of other peoples’ blogs and how they are setup. This will help you get an idea of what you need and want out of a theme (how many columns, functionality, etc.) Pay close attention to those you were immediately attracted to and found easy to navigate.
2) Decide what functionality you want in your blog. If the theme is “widget enabled” you can often add the functionality you want (e.g. RSS links, Twitter link). Some themes have built in functionality. For example it might have a built in RSS link in the header. You may prefer to have a subscribe icon that offers lots of different options (Facebook, Twitter, RSS, email, etc.). If you aren’t familiar with code and programming, these things can be very difficult to change.
3) Give some thought to the image/brand you want to portray. I looked at my blog theme as my packaging. For this blog, I decided I liked the idea of the sky is the limit and also the play on the metaphor regarding the grass being greener. I new when I was searching for a theme I wanted to incorporate those two elements.
Now that you have a good idea of what kind of theme and what functionality you are looking for it is time to start reviewing themes. WordPress offers an impressive array of themes, but there are many other sites that have quite a variety. My advice is to download any themes you find interesting. I made the mistake of not downloading a few I liked, and I wasted lots of time trying to find them again.
Here are a few of the free theme sites I found. There are many others, but I found these sites to have a good variety of themes and they were easy to navigate. One last piece of advice, if you plan on using widgets, make sure the theme you choose is widget enabled.
1. www.wordpressthemesbase.com
2. www.topwpthemes.com
3. www.wordpressthemespark.com
4. www.wpthemesfree.com
5. www.wpthemescreator.com
6. www.themespreview.com
7. www.amazingwordpressthemes.com
8. www.themes-wp.com
9. www.wptown.com – This is the site I found this blogs theme on.
10. www.ezwpthemes.com – This site has some unusual themes. I found my onthegochicago.com blog theme here.
Tags: free themes, WordPress
October 16th, 2009 at 12:07 am
I don‘t know If I said it already but …I’m so glad I found this site…Keep up the good work I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say GREAT blog. Thanks, :)
…..Frank Scurley
October 16th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
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October 17th, 2009 at 12:37 am
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I thought about starting my own blog too but I’m just too lazy so, I guess I‘ll just have to keep checking yours out.
LOL,
October 19th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
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Thanks for reading my blog.
Cindy
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