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Customizing Your WP Site | Saturday 13 October 2007

Depending on where you’ve installed your WordPress site, it can come with quite a selection of interesting themes (that’s the “look and feel” templates found in your WordPress control panel at Admin>Presentation>Themes section) or a couple very boring ones. Many times if you’re installing your WordPress site from your web host account, they will bundle a bunch of themes which you can browse and select in your Admin>Presentation>Themes section. However, if you’re downloading the WordPress software from the WordPress website, it comes with the two (or so) boring themes I just talked about.

So what to do if you’re left with a couple boring themes or the ones your host bundled just don’t set you on fire? You’re in luck because hundreds (maybe thousands?) of developers and designers have created hundreds (maybe thousands?) of WordPress templates, and, you guessed it, they’re free! I’m sure there’s one that’s going to grab you…

Below are a list of some of my favorite collections. And if you have a favorite source that you don’t see here, please let me know, and I’ll add it.

ThemeViewer from WordPress - this is a collection of hundreds of themes that the folks from WordPress have put their stamp of approval on.
100 Favorite WordPress Themes - from the folks at Desperate Curiosity, this is a list of 100 WP themes that are out of the ordinary, and some, quite extraordinary.
83 Beautiful WP Themes - from Smashing Magazine, this is a collection of 83 free Wordpress themes you probably haven’t seen yet. All themes offer quality, elegance and are very user-friendly.

Note: Some advice for those of you who are just starting out, I’d stick with the themes you find with the ThemeViewer from WordPress. They do a pretty good job on working out bugs associated with upgrades to WordPress. I’m not saying the others don’t, but you may have to add/edit some code to get the benefits from a WP upgrade. For example, in the 2.3 upgrade of WordPress the template I’ve modified does not show my tags associated with a post. I’m going to have to add that code into the template. If you’re just starting out, you’re probably not comfortable doing that.