Best Place to Find WordPress Themes

As a web designer (review services here), apart of my job is finding the right wordpress themes for my clients. For those who want to be more involved in your website / blog setup here is the site that I use the most when looking for themes: ThemeForest, the Amazon of website templates and themes… they offer a variety of styles from an extensive list of designers. You can find something to fit both your brand and your budget. Plus I’ve personally found relatively inexpensive high quality themes on this size ranging from $30 – $60.

Theme Style Categories
Click one of the links below to browse some of the best themes I’ve found this year.

Magazine Style Themes
eCommerce – Shop Themes
Business Style Themes
Banner Sliders / Image Rotator Addons

BUT Before You Go Searching For Your Perfect Theme Do This…
If you have ever searched for a wordpress theme you know that it can take hours if you get lost sifting through all the site designs or get the mannequin effect (it looked great on their site, but looks horrible on yours)! Here are a few essential “before your browse” recommendations. Narrow down your search by asking yourself the following questions:

Note: The answers to these questions will help you decide if that GREAT LOOKING theme REALLY meets all your needs and/or narrow down your search to better find what you are looking for.

• Do you have any color requirements?
  For example would you like a site with an all white background? Are you crazy for purple? Want to go for a professional blue design?
• Do you have any column requirements?Would you like a site that has one big main column and a sidebar or do you want three columns?
• Do you want a slider on your homepage to feature content? If so, do you want a large slider that spans the width of your site? Do you want a full page slider to showcase your photos? Do you want a medium to small size slider to spotlight posts and updates? Keep in mind the bigger the slider the bigger your images need to be. It sucks when you get a great theme but you only have really small images… when you try to stretch/enlarge them they often times get fuzzy, blurry, fragmented and distort the premium look and feel of your theme.
• Do you want to include certain types of media easily into your site sidebar, header or footer? Some themes have custom features for social media links, sign up forms, contact pages, flickr photos and tweets and even video. Are there any of these you really have to have? Keep in mind it’s ok if your theme does not have areas for these things pre-set up, you can always easily add them with wordpress BUT when they come preset into your theme it tends to look nicely embeded into the template and/or comes with convenient setup options via your wordpress theme dashboard.
• Do you want a theme that has eCommerce functionality built in? Maybe you want something to easily sell your t-shirt line on the web. Or are you looking for a theme that makes it easy for you to sell digital content directly from your site?
• Do you have header requirements? Some theme headers only offer a small about of space for your logo… do you think your logo can fit in that theme? Also note if your logo needs to be on an all white background, will that theme design work for your brand logo?
• Do you plan on adding advertisement to your sidebar? If yes, is the sidebar on that theme big enough to hold the kinds of banner ads you want to include?
• Do you plan on adding advertisements to your header? Does your theme come with a predefined header location for advertisements?
• BIG Question – Do you have the time to find a theme on your own? Are you getting overwhelmed? As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I often times end up looking for the right themes for my client projects. Click here to learn more about my web design services if you need help.