Premium Wordpress Themes
Nov 2, 2008 Blogs, RSS and Podcasting
Summary of Wordpress Premium Themes
There seems to be a growing demand for higher quality themes for WordPress. Whether to choose a Premium theme or a Free theme is sometimes a difficult choice. Some free themes are really top notch so depending on what your needs are there may be no need for you to purchase a Premium theme. But, there are more and more high quality (and some unfortunately low quality) premium themes as well.
There are usually three types of Premium themes available - single site, multiple site and developer license, although some sites just have either single site or developer licenses. In most cases you would normally go for the multiple license unless you are certain you will only use the theme for one site. If you are a developer, obviously you would want to choose the developer’s license.
One thing that has changed recently is Revolution going Open Source, so you can now download some of their Premium themes for free. But, you have to pay for support. This is probably a smart move as more people will try their themes out and realise they then need support. Hopefully this move will get rid of some of those people trying to make a quick buck by selling cheap and nasty generic Premium themes.
My current favourite theme is the one I use on this site, which is WP-VYBE. It has a lot of flexibility in the admin menu, great support and a great design.
Below is a description of some of the best Premium Themes that I have found. I’m constantly adding to this list so hopefully will be putting a few more up here soon.
1) WP-VYBE
No. of themes: 12
Pricing: $99 (single), $199 (multiple), $299 (developer). But there are cheaper themes from $49 up.
Type of themes: Magazine
Customization services: Possible through other developers.
Notes:Theme settings page in your Wordpress control pane, 2-column or 3-column layouts, 10 different color options, Gravatar integration, Optional banner ad integration, Optional built-in post thumbnails, Optional logo/header image integration via control panel, Built-in drop-down navigation for sub-categories and sub-pages, widgetized sidebars and alot more….
2) ARTHEMIA
No. of themes: 1 (but customization through admin panel is possible)
Pricing: $70 (1 site), $140 (5-site), $240 (developer’s pack)
Type of themes: online magazine, corporate, personal blog
Customization service: Nothing mentioned
Notes: Flexible theme admin panel, category colour assignment, auto-thumbnail old posts, banner and adsense management, show or hide headline spoilers, adsense friendly.
3) PRESS 75
No. of themes: 3
Pricing: $75 (single), $150 (mulit-site), $250 (developer’s license)
Type of theme: Video/TV themed
Customization service: None listed
Notes: Ability to post using videos from several sources including Blip, TV, Flickr, MetaCafe, MySpace, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube. You can separate the blog from the video and there is an embed code allowing others to embed videos on their site.
4) WOO THEMES
No. of themes: 10
Pricing: $70 (single) , $150 (multiple) for each theme
Type of themes: Business, CMS, Magazine/News, Personal blog, Portfolio
Customization services: none advertised.
Notes: Theme options backend, custom write panels (to make the addition of custom fields easier), same base backend for all themes.
5) ZIDALGO
No. of themes: 2
Pricing: $75 (singl), $249 (developer’s license)
Type of themes: News/Magazine
Customization services: None advertised
Notes: Google adsense, Widget, plugin ready, custom category search, author pages, 100% Valid XHTML/CSS, cross-browser tested.
6) MIMBO PRO
No. of themes: 1
Pricing: $99 (single), $199 (developer’s license)
Type of theme: Magazine
Customization services: none advertis
Popularity: 59% [?]
Tags: Adsense-Ready theme, Free WordPress Theme, Premium WordPress Themes, WordPress, WP Themes
Ikarus, the King of All Premium WordPress Themes!
Sep 10, 2008 Layout/Design
The KING of all premium WordPress themes!
And it’s available for FREE!
In search of great themes to blog about and probably use it on one of my blogs, I stumbled upon wpthemespress.com which offer great WordPress themes, including the IKARUS Premium Theme. I thought it was a paid theme but apparently what the theme author means by premium is a great, elegant layout.
The theme author spent over three months of developing the theme to assure a well-developed theme for the WordPress community. It has over 2,000+ user selectable variations and options all managed from the admin area.
It has several great features:
- 4 homepage layouts to choose from, Blog, Magazine, List or Magazine List
- FlickRSS
- Theme options page and help page in admin
- Custom values integration for featured images and video
- Content Gallery (on or off) Slideshow or static header image with link
- Featured Sidebar post (on or off)
- Popular content rating
- Recent posts, comments and feedback
- TagCloud
- Clean Page Nagivation (wpNavi)
- Color coated “read more” buttons
- Author thumbnails for comments
- MyAvatars
- Valid CSS and XHTML coding
- Live theme preview in admin area
- Related posts on post pages
- Next and previous posts
- Comment Rss
- Cross browser support: IE, FF, Safari and Netscape
- 6 125×125, 1 header 468×60, 1 footer 468×60 banners all managed from theme admin area
- Feedburner integration
- Feedcount
- Logo as image or text (controlled from admin)
- 10 color variations to choose from for header bar, widgets, post titles, links and footer
- Set global image alignment
- Set your own global header and font styles
- Set global font size
- Switch layout between left and right
- 3 Columns
- Widgets 2 columns
- Tons of custom pages built in, search results, links, archives, pages, categories, comments, author pages and more.
- CSS multi-level drop down page menus across header
- MooTabs slider box
- Featured YouTube Video post
- Social bookmark tools on pages and post pages
- Comments on pages
- Admin area links in frontend when logged in for easy management
- Tons of custom typography styles like: highlight, different heading styles, code, span, download, numbers, pre, ordered and unordered checklists, speech bubbles, blockquotes and more.
This theme is perfect for magazine websites, community portals, and even ordinary blogs.
Popularity: 22% [?]
