Tag Archives | Themes Free

Introduction to WordPress Themes

Introduction to WordPress Themes

Without a doubt, WordPress is one of the most popular blog and website creation tools. That is, WordPress.org which is the WordPress version that is hosted on the hosting company of your choice. WordPress.com is rather limited and is hosted on WordPress own servers. It is free, but you are limited to a small number of themes and the customizations options are limited. As long as you are willing to pay for your own hosting service, ie – Go Daddy, JustHost, MonsterGator, etc., WordPress.org is the way to go.

Most of the top blogs use the WordPress platform. By looking at these blogs, you can see a great variety in their design. In fact, many of them don’t look like blogs themselves, but look like traditional websites.

The reason for this is that WordPress allows users to create their own themes, and upload them to the WordPress website. Many people do this for fun or the good of the community. However, some create what is called a premium theme which is basically a paid version. Some of the themes offer a free starter theme, but a paid version gets you more features.

One of the strengths of WordPress is also a weakness. There are almost too many themes out there. It can get frustrating finding a theme that suits your purposes, especially after reviewing hundreds of similar themes.  To eliminate some of the frustration, consider the following:

What do you want in a theme. On one hand, there are people who are just interested in their blog writing, and they want it to look nice. Commercialization or ads do not interest them. On the other hand, there are other people who are interested in their blog, but would also like to make a little money.

This generally involves AdSense, banner ads, etc. However, the placing of these ads (or the HTML code that supports them) on a blog or website is of prime importance to the advertiser, and also to the website owner. You don’t want ads to distract from your website, but complement it.

WordPress accomplishes this by having areas of your blog where you can place widgets. Widgets are basically place holders where you can place a great variety of content. It could include a link page, a poll, a photo, text, or HTML code that generates an ad.  However, depending upon the theme, widgets will be in different places and different sizes.

The WordPress database allows you to search for specific elements of themes.

For example, when you search the WordPress database, you will find hundreds of themes that say “”ad sense ready.””  Many of these themes have only a few widget areas available for ads, and some have as many as 11 different widget areas.

Generally, the more widget areas the better in a theme, because no matter what your purpose, it gives you more flexibility. 

Another factor that comes into play is that many themes are highly customizable.  Don’t be deceived by the initial appearance, look at the option page before you move on.   Many themes have great features, you just need to choose the appropriate option.  Background image, color, placement of widget sidebars, etc. are all common things that can be customized.

Finding a theme you like is a trial and error process.  However, before you begin, have an idea on what you want to accomplish.  Do you want widget space for small rectangle ads?  Or do you want widget space that will accommodate skyscraper ads, leaderboard ads, and the other popular banner ad formats? Do you want a widget space that will accommodate a particular photo dimension format?

The process of looking for a theme you like is a daunting task, but if you have a general idea of what you want, it will make the process go faster.  With the thousands of WordPress themes out there, you are bound to find one you like.

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WordPress Themes Review

takethefirststepmarketing.com – Create a custom WordPress theme in minutes. WordPress is hot. Many are flocking to this blog platform and getting rid of their regular web sites for this option. This video explains about wordpress themes, free wordpress themes and paid wordpress themes. Where to get them and what you will need. Themes mentioned on the video www.elegantthemes.com www.wordpressthemeshock.com Godaddy hosting click here: x.co Godaddy domains click here: x.co

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How to Find Free WordPress Themes

How to Find Free WordPress Themes

One of the benefits of using WordPress for your blogs is that you can easily change the layout of your blog by changing the theme. There are many free WordPress themes, or free blog templates, that are available. You can also choose to have a unique theme designed for you. In addition, you can also purchase a pre-made theme.

A WordPress theme is a collection of files that will create graphics for your blog. This provides a type of skin for your blog, almost the way a book cover will change the look of a book. By choosing a theme that reflects the subject of your blog, you can make your blog more appealing to your visitors. It can also make your blog much more memorable.

WordPress has two themes that come with the basic installation of your blog. These themes are very simple and are a very generic design.

WordPress has their own theme directory which contains over 500 themes and the number is growing. When you look at the directory, you will be able to see a list of the most popular themes. You will also be able to see a list of the newest themes that have been added. Still another section will show you themes that have been recently updated.

To easily find a theme that goes along with your blog, use the Search feature at the top of the page. Type in a word or phrase and you will be shown the themes that go along with those search criteria.

WordPress encourages each theme designer to come up with their own installation instructions for their theme. When you select a theme, be sure to read the directions for installation so that you would be able to use the theme correctly.

Another option that you will see in the same section where you will see the different themes is an option for headers. This is slightly different than choosing a theme because it does not affect the entire blog page, but it is simply a different graphic at the top of the blog. You can use something like this if you want to keep a clean, crisp area for your text without any clutter.

One thing to keep in mind is that you do not only want to choose a theme that will be aligned with your subject matter, but you also want to consider the purpose for your blog. If you have a blog that is for business purposes, it is best to keep a theme that is either business oriented or is somewhat plain. You want to avoid whimsical designs (unless whimsical designs would be a perfect complement to the subject matter of your blog and your business).

Remember that you can always change your theme later. There are plenty of free WordPress themes to choose from, and it is very easy to switch from one theme to another. Be adventurous and try something different with your WordPress blog.

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How To Build A WordPress Theme – 5 of the Most Popular WordPress Blogging Themes1

How To Build A WordPress Theme – 5 of the Most Popular WordPress Blogging Themes

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the internet today. Over 25 million site owners have chosen WordPress as their blog software of choice.  WordPress is easy to install, maintain and modify. It has a huge list of powerful features that can make your website very functional. Best of all, WordPress is free. Site owners can easily change the visual look and layout of their WordPress site simply by changing the themes.  There are a lot of themes available for free online. One of the best sites to get your WordPress blogging themes is the official WordPress site of WordPress.org. WordPress.org maintains a theme database where people can download WordPress themes for free. Themes are ranked based on popularity, date of first upload, as well as the date of the latest update. Currently WordPress.org ranks Twenty Ten, Mystique, Atahualpa, Constructor and LightWord as the five most popular themes based on the amount of downloads.

LightWord is the fifth most poplar theme in WordPress.org. It is a basic, intelligent black text on white theme that can have two or three columns. The theme is set to display at fixed width regardless of the browser size and screen resolution of a site visitor. It supports widgets as well as Google AdSense and covers all the basic WordPress functionalities.

Contsructor is the fourth most popular theme. A lot of people like this theme because it can have multiple layout settings. The theme can display six different sidebar positions and three layouts right out of the box and creating a new layout on this theme is fairly easy. This is a great theme to work with if you want to easily come up with a distinct original theme.

The third most popular WordPress theme is Atahualpa. They are highly customizable WordPress blogging themes. It boasts of 268 options for site owners to use to come up with their own original themes with the resulting design compatible with most web browsers. Designs can be up to 4 sidebars, fixed or flexible width as well as other customizable functionalities. The theme also has an active support forum where users can find help in fixing any theme related issues.

Mystique is the second-most popular them in WordPress.org. It currently has over 340,000 downloads since October 2009. It is a feature rich theme built over solid and stable design. There are a lot of useful widgets built-in to the theme as well. The best part with Mystique is that the theme settings interface is intuitively designed so users can easily make changes to the theme even while having only a little knowledge in PHP and CSS.

Currently, the most popular WordPress blogging theme is Twenty Ten. Designed to be stylish, simple and readable while still highly customizable, site owners can easily make a distinctive theme by just changing the header image, the background and designing a custom menu. This them is great to use when you need to come up with a theme that you can easily set up, modify to be distinctive and efficiently present your information without making any modifications to the actual theme files. This theme is great for website owners with minimal knowledge in PHP, HTML and CSS and just wants to have a theme that they can easily modify to look different and original.

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Artisteer – Create You Own Stunning WordPress Themes – And Much More1

Artisteer – Create You Own Stunning WordPress Themes – And Much More

If you’re online regularly you’ve undoubtedly heard of WordPress. If you’re into Internet Marketing or have a personal blog, chances are you’re using WordPress, and most likely more than a single installation if you’re an Affiliate Marketer.

I have no doubt that a new program called Artisteer will soon be synonymous with WordPress, even though you may not have heard of it …yet. Artisteer is one of the hottest new software programs to be released recently, and was the
Product of the Year by
The Red Ferret Journal. If you haven’t heard of Artisteer yet, I can promise you that it will soon be in every smart marketers WordPress toolbox. As much as you need those certain plugins every time that you install WordPress, you also need a beautiful, functional, fully W3C compliant theme. That’s where Artisteer comes in.

When you install WordPress one of the first decisions to be made is, which theme will I use ? Obviously there are tens of thousands of themes to choose from, but there’s drawbacks to free themes as well as premium themes.

Should you choose a free theme, there’s a chance that unless you really know the source of the theme, you could be getting more in the code that you want, read
malicious script. Although I like to believe that the overwhelming majority of people are honest and aren’t out to do anything underhanded, there are those individuals lurking around the Internet that have bad intentions. Also, when you install one of the popular free themes, there’s most likely hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of others using the same theme. You really don’t want to have your blog looking like everyone else, do you ?

You could of course opt for a nice premium theme. Here, even though there is most likely nothing embedded in the code that you should fear, the cost of some of the premium themes is fairly steep. It’s not uncommon to see prices in the $50-$100 for a very good WordPress theme.

Artisteer is the answer and it’s an amazing, long overdue application. Not only is this piece of software very reasonably priced at $49.95 for the
Home and Academic
Edition, and $129.95 for the
Standard Edition it is packed with features. For as little as fifty dollars, you can produce your own custom, high quality, totally original WordPress themes. When creating your own design there’s no more wishing that there was a free theme available that looked just right, or having to spend all that money to obtain a theme that you do like. Even then, there’s probably at least hundreds of other sites using the same premium theme. If you do purchase only premium themes, styles do change, what’s great-looking today will most likely look outdated in a few months.

Oh, Artisteer isn’t limited to WordPress themes either. If you’re using Joomla, Drupal, CodeCharge, or if you just need to export your stunning creation as an ASP.NET application, Artisteer is still your tool of choice. Please note that you will need the Standard Edition to support Joomla, Drupal, CodeCharge and ASP.NET. The Home and Academic Edition will allow exports to XHTML/CSS as well as supporting WordPress.

Artisteer is feature-packed, but one of the great features is, it’s a piece of cake to learn and use. With a cool feature that will suggest themes for you, there’s not even the need for you to come up with that perfect theme from scratch. When you find a look that you like, just take it from there and tweak it to your heart’s content. Artisteer allows you to easily change practically every thing in the theme to a custom setting. It’s just a selection of different pre-designed themes to choose from, selecting a suggested theme in Artisteer is just the beginning. Of course you can also use your own headers, graphics and other specific items.

There’s no longer a need to learn HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Dreamweaver or any of the other popular tools normally associated with Web design.

Artisteer creates perfectly validated W3C XHTML and CSS code. Now in version 2, the design group behind Artisteer is to be commended for keeping the software updated regularly, adding new features and never being satisfied with simply having the best program of it’s kind.

It also nice to know that you’re not forgotten after the initial purchase. You get free updates for a year after purchase, and a very moderate upgrade fee afterwards.

If you now have numerous WordPress sites, or plan to in the future, Artisteer will pay for itself nearly immediately. Even if you have just one WordPress Blog that you put all of your time and attention into, Artisteer would still be a wise decision, as you can create that perfect theme that only you will have. Of course we all know how long that new look will satisfy us, but when you have Artisteer available, just load it up and create your next masterpiece theme.

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Artisteer – Create You Own Stunning WordPress Themes – And Much More

Artisteer – Create You Own Stunning WordPress Themes – And Much More If you’re online regularly you’ve undoubtedly heard of WordPress. If you’re into Internet Marketing or have a personal blog, chances are you’re using WordPress, and most likely more than a single installation if you’re an Affiliate Marketer. I have no doubt that a new program called Artisteer will soon be synonymous with WordPress, even though you may not have heard of it …yet. Artisteer is one of the hottest new software programs to be released recently, and was the Product of the Year by The Red Ferret Journal. If you haven’t heard of Artisteer yet, I can promise you that it will soon be in every smart marketers WordPress toolbox. As much as you need those certain plugins every time that you install WordPress, you also need a beautiful, functional, fully W3C compliant theme. That’s where Artisteer comes in. When you install WordPress one of the first decisions to be made is, which theme will I use ? Obviously there are tens of thousands of themes to choose from, but there’s drawbacks to free themes as well as premium themes. Should you choose a free theme, there’s a chance that unless you really know the source of the theme, you could be getting more in the code that you want, read malicious script. Although I like to believe that the overwhelming majority of people are honest and aren’t out to do anything underhanded, there are those individuals lurking around the Internet that have bad intentions. Also, when you install one of the popular free themes, there’s most likely hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of others using the same theme. You really don’t want to have your blog looking like everyone else, do you ? You could of course opt for a nice premium theme. Here, even though there is most likely nothing embedded in the code that you should fear, the cost of some of the premium themes is fairly steep. It’s not uncommon to see prices in the $50-$100 for a very good WordPress theme. Artisteer is the answer and it’s an amazing, long overdue application. Not only is this piece of software very reasonably priced at $49.95 for the Home and Academic Edition, and $129.95 for the Standard Edition it is packed with features. For as little as fifty dollars, you can produce your own custom, high quality, totally original WordPress themes. When creating your own design there’s no more wishing that there was a free theme available that looked just right, or having to spend all that money to obtain a theme that you do like. Even then, there’s probably at least hundreds of other sites using the same premium theme. If you do purchase only premium themes, styles do change, what’s great-looking today will most likely look outdated in a few months. Oh, Artisteer isn’t limited to WordPress themes either. If you’re using Joomla, Drupal, CodeCharge, or if you just need to export your stunning creation as an ASP.NET application, Artisteer is still your tool of choice. Please note that you will need the Standard Edition to support Joomla, Drupal, CodeCharge and ASP.NET. The Home and Academic Edition will allow exports to XHTML/CSS as well as supporting WordPress. Artisteer is feature-packed, but one of the great features is, it’s a piece of cake to learn and use. With a cool feature that will suggest themes for you, there’s not even the need for you to come up with that perfect theme from scratch. When you find a look that you like, just take it from there and tweak it to your heart’s content. Artisteer allows you to easily change practically every thing in the theme to a custom setting. It’s just a selection of different pre-designed themes to choose from, selecting a suggested theme in Artisteer is just the beginning. Of course you can also use your own headers, graphics and other specific items. There’s no longer a need to learn HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Dreamweaver or any of the other popular tools normally associated with Web design. Artisteer creates perfectly validated W3C XHTML and CSS code. Now in version 2, the design group behind Artisteer is to be commended for keeping the software updated regularly, adding new features and never being satisfied with simply having the best program of it’s kind. It also nice to know that you’re not forgotten after the initial purchase. You get free updates for a year after purchase, and a very moderate upgrade fee afterwards. If you now have numerous WordPress sites, or plan to in the future, Artisteer will pay for itself nearly immediately. Even if you have just one WordPress Blog that you put all of your time and attention into, Artisteer would still be a wise decision, as you can create that perfect theme that only you will have. Of course we all know how long that new look will satisfy us, but when you have Artisteer available, just load it up and create your next masterpiece theme.

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WordPress Themes – Should You Use Premium Or Free Themes

WordPress Themes – Should You Use Premium Or Free Themes?

You have probably heard the saying: Nothing good in life is free! WordPress offers many free themes, plugins, and widgets, but you will want to pay attention to the possible downfalls of using a free WordPress theme.

The first concern is what may be hidden or embedded in the code built within your theme. No matter how you are using your WordPress blog, the last thing you want to do is attach potential spam to your visitors. Unfortunately, some of the WordPress themes do have some sort of spam built into the theme. Also, the more elaborate theme creators may have embedded the spam so deep that if you try to remove it your entire site will fail.

You can expect that premium themes – or those you pay for – will usually be free of spam. After all, a designer likely would not embed spam because they have a reputation to uphold.

A second reason for using a premium theme is that you will have support from its creator. Since anyone can create and make available free themes, designers will not usually help with your problems regarding that free theme. WordPress has attempted to improve this issue by creating forums to seek help, but fixing or changing the site will be up to you.

Since designers of premium themes are paid for their design, they want to be sure it works and will usually be available through a dedicated forum or have another method that they can be contacted.

A third potential problem of using a free WordPress theme is that it often will not support the widgets or plugins you would like to use.

Designers of premium WordPress themes generally stay in contact with their users. They listen to the issues and make fixes available through upgrades. Since the designers know who has purchased their themes, they are able to send out notification of upgrades through e-mails.

Please understand that I am not stating that every free WordPress theme is full of spam. I am only suggesting that you should be aware of these possibilities and do some research before you jump on the first theme you come across. Also, using the themes offered from the WordPress Dashboard are generally safer than something you might find from surfing the internet.

If you are just beginning as a new business or blog writer, using a free theme available from WordPress may be your best solution to get your site up and tested. But as your blog or business grows, consider upgrading to a premium theme. This will give you a site that is more user and owner friendly without worrying about spam or support.

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Ways to Choose Best WordPress Theme For Creating Your Blog

Ways to Choose Best WordPress Theme For Creating Your Blog

A great thing about WordPress is that it is a storehouse of tens and thousands of free and highly customizable themes that you can download from the internet. Now the question that may come to your mind is that why would the designers offer the themes for free, particularly those known for their stunning and professional looks! Well, by doing so, they are in a way increasing their credibility amongst the common mass!

Now with so many themes available online you may find it a bit complicated when it comes to choose best WordPress theme for your blog…I guess I’m right! Well, this is where the contents of this article come into play. Here you will find innumerable considerations such as personal taste, monetization, niche and much that helps you to choose best WordPress theme without much hassle.

Choose your niche: Yes that’s the most important…I mean you need to decide what you blog is about…whether you’ll be creating a photography blog, a marketing blog and so one. None of us aren’t that insensible to choose pretty flowers or puppies as themes to create business blogs…isn’t it so! However, the same themes can work well when it comes to creating your personal blog. What I intend to say is that you choose your niche; you can choose the relevant themes accordingly!

After choosing your niche, your next job lies in flipping through the designs available in that category. Design does play a viable role when it comes to creating a blog. Make sure you choose best WordPress theme to give an attractive look to your blog. If you succeed in doing so then you are sure to attract more and more visitors to your blog.

If you are interested to make money from your blog then choosing the right design is of utmost importance. Layouts without any sidebars may be your personal taste but are you sure they will work wonders for your ads? Instead why not go for multiple and “”widgetized”” sidebars together with three column layout!

And there comes your personal taste…you are free to choose any WordPress themes for your personal blogs…all you need to do is use large fonts so that the text is readable.

A good thing that you can do when it need to choose best WordPress theme is downloading anything and everything that you find appealing. You can then sort the ones that look promising. Practicing this sorting procedure for a number of times will help you get your dream WordPress theme!

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