Having a launching soon page for any under development business is very important to get interested subscriber upfront. Use a launching/coming soon page with options to subscribe to RSS and social media.

Here we tried to list 20 best launching soon pages for WordPress. Hope you’ll enjoy.

1. Ultra Sleek 3D Look Under Construction Page

2. Ready 2 Launch

3. Beback Coming Soon Theme

4. Simple Coming Soon Theme

5. Simple Coming Soon And Under Construction Theme

6. UnderFlo Constructionz

7. Speedo Under Construction

8. COSoo COming Soon Page Template

9. Paper Launch Under Construction Theme

10. Road Cone Under Construction Theme

11. 6-In-1 Coming Soon Page

12. A Stylish Under Construction Word Press Theme

13. Influction

14. Coming Soon Landing Page

15. Coming Soon Cool Vector Template

16. Under Construction Template-2 Styles-4 Colors

17. Super Charged Under Construction Themes

18. Chronos Under Construction Template

19. Cool Under Construction Theme

20. We Are On Holiday Under Construction Theme

This guest post was written by Nancy, a lead writer over at NTHEMES. Adding one new WP Theme daily, they keep their visitors informed on the latest and greatest in WordPress Themes broken down by category including Responsive, Photography, and Business just to name a few

Yet, there are some who love to change their themes with the seasons and holidays. So to get the month started, I decided to share a few Christmas WordPress themes that will help put your readers in the holiday spirit.

Mistletoe

The free Mistletoe theme is a beautiful theme featuring a winter backdrop, snowman header, and a little mistletoe in the sidebar headers. It also includes Christmas tree icons and 5 custom widgets. This theme is even optimized for mobile devices and tablets. There is also a Hello Snowman theme that is quite similar.

Red & Gold

The free Red & Gold Christmas template is extremely festive with a gift wrapped background and bold red header. The sidebar features red headers while the main area of the blog is a nice gold color. If you like the style of this theme, you’ll also love the other Christmas WordPress themes featured on Holiday Nook.

Blue Christmas

The free Blue Christmas theme is absolutely stunning with a dark blue background. The headers comes complete with snowmen and actually falling snow, while the sidebar showcases Christmas trees and candy canes. It may be a little too much for some, but it definitely gives you that “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” feel. You may also like the similar Christmas Days theme.

Santa Details 1.0

The free Santa Details 1.0 theme is not very stylish, but it is pretty unique as far as the artwork. It features a wood background with what almost looks to be a hand-drawn Santa header. The sidebar is pretty basic, but a couple Christmas trees and snowflakes extend on the side of the main content area. If you’re looking for a Santa theme that is a bit more stylish, check out the Xmas Bag 1.0 theme. The Xmas Desktop 1.0 theme is also similar to the Santa Details 1.0 theme, but features a more stylish header.

While there are very many Christmas themes to choose from, these are the ones that really stood out to me and are nicely designed (for the most part).

Do you change or decorate your WordPress theme for Christmas?

Thesis Theme is totally open to customization, but you might not have the time or expertise to do exactly what you want to do. For that, you can turn your attention to ThesisAwesome, a subscription service that provides you with a continuous supply of Thesis Theme skins and styles.

We Decided to Make Thesis Awesome

When I first saw the name for the site, I read it as “this is awesome.” I guess that’s not terribly inaccurate as a description, but it’s really about making “Thesis awesome.”

In short, you gain access to a collection of skins and styles for Thesis Theme for WordPress. Thanks to the Thesis Theme Options Manager, it is very easy for these guys to transfer the whole new designs to you. In this way, you can be rocking a totally new style for your blog in a matter of minutes.

They are constantly developing new WordPress skins for Thesis Theme, adding at least one new theme every month. That’s why it pays to get the subscription, especially if you run multiple sites and you can want to shake up their designs periodically.

A Look At Thesis Blog Skin

At the time of this review, Thesis Awesome is offering six different skins. We’ll take a closer look at the Thesis Blog Skin here, but feel free to explore the other five at your leisure.

As you can see, this skin comes loaded with a bunch of cool features. The featured image toward the center automatically switches between highlighted posts, for example, and you’ll notice the pre-set space for a 300×250 ad banner. Social media integration features prominently in the header, as does the area for signing up new subscribers to your e-mail newsletter.

Thesis Blog Skin also comes with the “Awesome Options Control Panel” for Thesis Theme. This gives you quick an easy access to 18 variations of the theme, social media options, multi-author options, advertising options, opt-in form options, and more. There’s no need to mess with the raw code, which is part of the reason why you got Thesis in the first place.

For more of a hands-on, check out the live demo of Thesis Blog Skin.

How Much Does It Cost?

There are three ways for you to pay for Thesis Awesome.

The $260 developer option is the biggest of them all. It gives you one year of unlimited access to the skins, including the ability to use them on an unlimited number of both your own sites and the sites of your clients. You also get full e-mail support, free upgrades, and footer attribution removal.

Stepping down a notch is the $120 personal option. It’s much like the developer option, but you can only use the Thesis Awesome skins on your own sites. You also give up e-mail support, getting community support instead. Alternatively, you can buy each of the skins individually. They currently range in price from $39 to $67, though that can change of course.

One such premium product is Socrates Theme. No, it’s not really meant to be philosophical in any particular way, but this WordPress theme has certainly been on the receiving end of a fair bit of thought. The developers really have loaded it up with a lot of features.

Socrates: A Smarter Way to Theme?

Socrates Theme was created through the combined efforts of Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson. You likely already know about Joel Comm and his online money-making success. The theme, not surprisingly, was built by marketers, for marketers.

Shown above is just one example of what you can do with this premium WordPress theme. Socrates comes pre-loaded with five main layouts, including left sidebar, right sidebar, and two sidebars.

Since the theme was developed with Internet marketing in mind, many of the features focus on this area. There is extensive AdSense and Clickbank integration, for example, as well as a wide range of options for ad banners, sales page templates, squeeze page templates, and so on.

One of the more fascinating features is the rotating 768×90 banner near the top of the page. You can enter several ad codes for this space and rather than rotating with each page load, the ad banner will rotate every four or five seconds.

Adjusting the Theme Without Coding

Here is another example of how Socrates Theme can look.

When you upload and activate the theme on your WordPress blog, you gain an extra set of options pages in the WordPress dashboard. These allow you to adjust a number of different theme options without having to dive into the hard code.

For example, there is a useful header generator that is built into the theme. You can choose from a number of header images or upload your own, define the site title and tagline, and adjust the font style, color, and size of the words. It’s all quite useful and easy to use.

To get a better sense of what you can do with Socrates Theme (without ever touching the hard code), check out the demo video available on the main page for the theme.

How Much Does It Cost?

There are three licenses for Socrates Theme.

The cheapest is $47 for a single site, but the $77 unlimited license is a much better value. This way, you can use the theme on as many of your own websites as you’d like. If you’re a web developer or consulting firm, you might want the $197 developer license instead.

All in all, Socrates looks like it could be very powerful (especially for Internet marketers) without being too daunting or complicated. All licenses come with a 60-day money back guarantee too, and a 7 day free trial.

Get Your Free 7 Day Trial for the Socrates Theme.

If you haven’t updated your installation yet, it’s best to get on top of it as soon as possible. Not only is the update only a minor security release, meaning it shouldn’t affect any plugins, themes, or other elements of your site, but it fixes a rare but potentially nasty security hole in WordPress as well as other bugs that have cropped up along the way.

The update also follows the release of the WordPress 3.1 beta, which includes new features such as post formats, easy in-site linking and an admin bar similar to WordPress.com among other features.

So for WordPress users, this is an exciting time, even if it is a bit of a headache to update all of your sites. Fortunately, the update process is easy and should only take a few moments for each domain.

Upgrading to WordPress 3.0.2

The main function of the 3.0.2 release is to fix a relatively minor security issue where someone with author access to a site could escalate their privileges to gain further access.

This issue doesn’t affect many blogs, just those that have multiple authors and restrict at least some of those authors to lower access levels. For example, group blogs are a common place to see this behavior.

If you are the only author of your blog, it shouldn’t be a major concern as it doesn’t seem to be an exploit a non-account holder can use. However, the update is still highly recommended as it also addresses other bugs and addresses features that might have been prone to abuse.

To update your site, all you need to do is either click the notice that appears at the top of your admin panel or go to the Dashboard -> Updates menu to run the installation. Remember, depending on your setup, you may need your FTP information.

Likewise, if you are an author to a blog and don’t have administration access, you may need to notify your admin, as per the screenshot above.

Looking Ahead to WordPress 3.1

WordPress 3.1, the next version of WordPress, which is currently in beta, is largely a shot at Tumblr and other microblogging platforms with the addition of post types. This will enable a Tumblr-like feature where the user can designate the type of post that they are working on and the theme can then create a custom style around it.

This is designed to be similar to how Tumblr breaks apart quotes, images, audio, video and other post types and will enable theme developers to create simple to use microblogs using a WordPress installation.

WordPress 3.1 will also introduce theme search, which will make it easier to locate new themes for your site and a new internal linking interface that will make it faster to find related content on your site to link to within your new posts. The version also includes several improvements to the admin interface, including the new admin bar, and improvements/updates to the visual post editor.

While Automattic and WordPress developers discourage installing beta software on an active blog, you are certainly free to download a copy and try it out on a test site. Just bear in mind that it may crash, erase data or do other horrible things to your site.

Bottom Line

All in all, it’s an exciting time to be a WordPress user. A security release is out and a new version is right on the horizon.

Though neither may be the major overhaul we saw with previous releases, it shows that, after a fairly long lull, development and releasing of WordPress is picking up again and we can expect new features and new releases sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, it is crucial that WordPress users upgrade to the latest version, even if they don’t have other authors on their site, not only so they can get the bug fixes and stay secure, but so that they can be as ready as possible for WordPress 3.1 when it is released.

That being said, one of the more common and embarrassing mistakes involves screwing up your theme. This can be especially frustrating if you aren’t somewhat experienced with HTML and CSS, but can still be a headache no matter how experienced you are.

Though there are literally an infinite number of ways you can mess up your theme, limited only by your “imagination” in this area, some errors are definitely more common than others and you can probably fix most of the common mistakes quickly.

With that in mind, here are 5 very common theme/template problems and how to fix them.

I’m Getting An Error that Says ___________

This can be the most frustrating problem as it can mean your site is effectively offline. If your site is throwing back an error, either in addition to or instead of your other content, you need to read the error carefully.

The error will, usually tell you everything you need to know to fix it, including what file the error is in, what line number it is at. If your error says that the problem is in your header.php at line 56, you can be pretty sure that the error is in that file and on, or at least near that line.

Go into that file and look for any obvious formatting errors such as forgetting a bracket, a quote or something else. Be sure to look at the line before it to make sure that it wasn’t a formatting error on that line causing the crash to happen on the one after it.

For help with line numbers, you may want to use a source code editor like Crimson Editor that displays line numbers clearly.

All of the Content After Point X is Formatted Wrong

This can happen either within a post or within a theme, but if after a certain point in the page the rest of the content is formatted wrong, you most likely forgot to close a tag. For example, if you open up an H2 tag bug don’t close it, all of the content below it will appear in that format.

To fix it, simply go to where the error started and see if you failed to close a tag. When you find it, add the closing tag at the correct place.

My Sidebar is Below My Content

This is a common problem where the sidebar or navigation of a site appears below the content portion when it should be beside it. This can be especially annoying as it will happen in certain browsers but not others, sometimes making it a tough problem to track down.

The cause of the problem, usually, is a simple math problem. If your HTML you likely have a DIV for your entire body, including both your content and navbar as well as DIVs for those two areas. If the content area plus the sidebar area plus any padding around them is wider than the main DIV, the sidebar will appear below the content, just like text running over to the next line.

The easiest way to temporarily fix this problem is to simply add a few pixels to the main DIV in your site’s CSS file. However, you’ll likely want to keep working at this one to make sure it lines up perfectly in all browsers.

A Function Isn’t Found

This is a specific type of error that is common after disabling a plugin where your site doesn’t load and generates an error saying that a function can not be found. Though WordPress makes it easy to code around this by using the function_exists check, many plugins don’t ask for that when telling users to copy and paste code into their theme.

You can fix this by either removing the line of code that calls the plugin, which should be identified in the error, or reactivating the plugin.

Something Is Causing Loading to Hang

This one might not even be an obvious problem at first but you may notice that your site never really finishes loading or, in extreme circumstances, will hang up in mid-load for a lengthy period of time. This is an annoying problem and, usually, is not one you caused directly.

What is going on is some element, likely from a 3rd party, is loading slowly or not loading at all, holding up your site while your browser either grabs it or gives up.

The easiest way to figure this out is to load your site and watch the bottom of your browser to see what the problem is. If that fails, use Pingdom’s Load Test Tool to see what item is causing your site to come up so slowly. Remove the problem, at least temporarily and your site should fly just fine..

Bottom Line

Template and other coding errors are why it pays dividends for a blogger to know HTML and CSS. If you can’t fix small problems with your theme or make minor adjustments, you are at the mercy of your visual tools and those who are willing to help you.

Fortunately, you don’t need a lot of expertise, just enough to make these kinds of adjustments. This is not computer programming and it doesn’t require any truly special skills, virtually anyone who can use a word processor can learn HTML easily with a bit of work.

Once you have that, problems like these go from being major panics to simple problems that take only a few seconds to fix.

These days, our lives are quite a bit easier. If a search engine or Wikipedia doesn’t return the answer we need, we can just as easily turn to somewhere like Answers.com or Yahoo! Answers and pose the question ourselves. What if you could capitalize on this traffic with a website of your own?

Letting your “turn WordPress into a cash-generating question and answer website” is WP-Answers. It’s a premium WordPress plugin and theme that helps you “earn cash on auto-pilot.”

They Ask Questions, They Post Answers

One of the best ways to generate passive income with a site is to utilize user-generated content and that’s exactly how a Q&A site works.

When you use WP-Answers, all you have to do is set it up, attract some traffic, and let the online community do the rest. Each question takes on the same properties as a blog post and each answer is like a blog comment.

If you get enough people coming to your site and participating, it really can run on auto-pilot while you make money from the advertisements you place on the site. WP-Answers is pre-built with places for contextual advertising, as well as ad blocks in the sidebar.

Earning Points and Getting Rewards

It’s up to you how you want to best utilize a site powered by WP-Answers, but it does provide the opportunity to reward your community members with points.

These points are tracked automatically and you can define the various values for posing questions, providing answers, and being chosen for providing the best answers. This added incentive can help you attract return visitors, but they all have to register with the site before they can do anything.

You’ll also notice that they can have profile pages and profile pictures, though the integrated utility for the latter is either missing or not obvious enough for the average user. Social networking being what it is, a strong profile page utility would be great for WP-Answers.

What You See Is What You Get

Using WordPress as its core content management system, WP-Answers is actually very easy to use, implement, and customize. After upload and activation, you can change several settings from within the WordPress admin panel.

This includes the ability to import both questions and answers using the Yahoo! Answers API. You can pull this content based on search term, geographic location, frequency, category, and post status. Yes, it’s scraping, but it’ll give your site the appearance of bustling activity (even if it’s not that busy).

WP-Answers is available now with prices starting at $89. After this introductory price expires, it’ll return to the regular price of $149.

Link: WP-Answers

Rather than use any number of freely available templates that will make your site look like everyone else’s, it may be worth considering a custom design from the fine folks at Capsis Media. They offer completely unique site designs to suit just about any purpose.

Totally Original Look for a Totally Original Site

Whether you run a blog, an online store, or any number of other kinds of websites, you want to stick out from the crowd. With the website design services of Capsis Media, you can achieve just the look you need.

Capsis Media promises “to create custom websites that present a visual and interactive experience that makes a particular website a true original.” They don’t sell templates or set themes that everyone can have. Every creation is a one-off design, so you’ll know that you are getting something completely unique.

If you need more than just a new design (which can offered as a Joomla template or WordPress theme, should you so desire), you can also opt to make use of the website development and programming services offered by Capsis Media. Need a certain web app created? They can do that.

Pictures Are Worth Thousands of Words

Just as you would likely ask for writing samples before hiring a freelance writer, you would likely want to see some design samples before hiring someone to create a custom web design for you as well.

For that, you can turn to the portfolio page on the Capsis Media website. Here, you can see a range of different custom websites that they have designed for their clients. Among them are Twitter background images too, which are increasingly important in today’s branding efforts.

It might be just me, but it seems that a good number of the designs created by Capsis Media make use of the light blue color scheme. This might be a little more than a coincidence, but it could reflect some of the personal artistic style of some of the folks who work at Capsis.

How Much Does It Cost?

Instead of providing a set rate sheet for its custom web design and web programming services, Capsis Media requires you to fill out its rate quote question sheet.

This way, they can better understand your specific needs and preferences. It is notable that there is a banner at the top of the page saying that custom website designs start at $199, but the main homepage makes mention of a $129 starting price. Take that for what it’s worth.

One very good thing about Capsis is that they offer unlimited revisions on all their design work. If you are not happy with the initial draft, you can continue to request changes and tweaks until you are completely satisfied.

Link: Capsis Media

For instance, you could use ClassiPress by AppThemes to turn your WordPress blog “into a professional classified ads web site.” You don’t need to invest in expensive classifieds software; WordPress can handle it just fine.

How Does ClassiPress Work?

It is largely in your best interest to implement ClassiPress on a fresh WordPress installation on a fresh domain. This is because it will drastically alter the way that WordPress operates, away from being a “blogging platform” and into a full-fledged “classifieds site.”

You can put it on an existing domain with an existing WordPress blog, but you may run into some issues with formatting and the like. If you didn’t know any better, it can be really tough to tell that a ClassiPress-powered site is actually using WordPress as its backend software.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can allow people to post classified ads in your various defined categories. Should you choose to do so, you can also charge people to post these ads on your site. Check out the main theme page to read about the other features that this theme has to offer, including multiple pricing models and multi-language support.

Looking at an Individual Classified Ad

Each posting published on your ClassiPress-based classified ads website comes with a number of features that you may not find with many other classified ads software.

For instance, instead of just showing a text address, the ad can integrate with Google Maps to show a map of the seller’s location. This can be very handy for buyers. As the site owner, you can define other fields for the sellers to use too, like expiry date, images, description, and city.

Each ad (here is an example from the demo site) also includes the ability to add post tags, printer-friendly versions, quick email links and social networking sharing links.

One other feature that I find interesting is the two ways that potential buyers can contact sellers. There is a contact form integrated into the ad (click on the tab above the map), as well as a blog commenting area toward the bottom. The former is private, of course, while the latter is public.

Customization and Usability

On the back end, after you install ClassiPress on your blog, you will find an additional ClassiPress section in the WordPress dashboard.

This further breaks down into the ClassiPress dashboard, settings, pricing, ad packs, gateways, form layouts, custom fields, transactions, and system info sub-sections. This makes it relatively easy to customize ClassiPress to suit your needs and preferences.

If you are comfortable dealing with the various settings and preferences pages within other areas of the WordPress dashboard, you should no trouble navigating through the ClassiPress dashboard as well.

How Much Does It Cost?

ClassiPress is available in four different packages. Choose from the $69 Personal Edition, $99 Small Business Edition, $159 Professional Edition, and $199 Ultimate Edition. They all come with lifetime updates.

Link: ClassiPress

However, one feature, implemented in WordPress 2.9, has a lot of potential both for bloggers and for those wanting to use WordPress in a non-traditional way. That feature, Post Thumbnails, now listed as “Featured Image” in 3.0, is a powerful tool for adding a strong visual presence to your site.

Best of all, it takes a lot of the work of adding images to your site out of your hands and automates much of the process of adding images, including sizing and cropping them.

Unfortunately, it’s a feature that is not seeing a lot of widespread use, largely because it is new and many WordPress users don’t fully understand what it can do. However, it is a feature that has the potential to make sites better and eliminate a lot of the work with creating new posts, making it well worth exploring further.

What is a Featured Image?

The basic idea behind WordPress’ Featured Image function is that many bloggers, on their home page, want to display an image that is associated with a post. This is very common with magazine-style themes where images are frequently used with text snippets rather than the actual post.

However, implementing this has always been tricky. Previously, users had to take advantage of custom fields, which would allow users to specify additional information about a post, in this case the location of a thumbnail image.

But while that system was effective, it was kludgy and required a lot of work on the part of the user. The user not only had to specify the custom fields the theme was going to use, but had to crop the images to the exact right size and then upload them (possibly using WordPress’ media uploader) and then paste in the raw URL. Considering one post might need multiple image sizes, this can be a huge hassle resulting in a lot of time wasted cropping and uploading different images.

WordPress now offers a better way to do this through Featured Image. The user simply uploads a single image, designates it as a featured image and then WordPress resizes it as appropriate and places it into the theme where desires. So, where previously one might have to resize and upload multiple images, now a user can upload just one and not worry about resizing.

In short, it is a powerful feature that can simplify the use of images on your site and greatly help you beautify your presence on the Web.

Why So Underused?

To be fair, though the feature is underused, the featured images tool is getting more and more use. A big part of the problem is that use of the feature requires a compatible theme and most, as of the release, of 2.9, simply were not compatible. That is slowly changing and even the new default WordPress theme, Twenty Ten, supports it.

Still, most themes do not support the feature and though you can convert a theme to use it, the process is far from simple for someone easily intimidated by code.

But even on themes where it is available, there isn’t always much use for it. A site with a traditional blog layout can always make some creative uses for the feature, but most themes were not built with this feature in mind and don’t really have a use for it. It is the new themes, being developed now, that are making great use of it.

How to Use Featured Images

If your theme isn’t compatible with featured images, you need to first set it up. You can read how to do so here with some additional sizing suggestions here.

Once you do that, if you are using WordPress 3.0, you should see a Featured Image box on the right-hand side of the post page. Initially it will only include a link to “Set Featured Image”. If you are using WordPress 2.9 it will refer to it as a Post Thumbnail.

Clicking the link will open up the usual WordPress image uploader where you will upload the image as usual. Simply make sure that it is either the same size or larger than what the final thumbnail will be. Once you’re done uploading the image, simply click the link that says “Set Featured Image”, which is next to the button to insert it into the post.

Once you’re done, a preview of the image should appear in the right-hand box and you are free to insert the image into the post as with any other image.

WordPress should take care of the rest, including resizing, cropping and ensuring that the image is in all of the right places.

Bottom Line

Featured Images is probably one of the most powerful tools that has been introduced into WordPress over the past few years but it is one that we have only begun to see the fruit from.

What is going to be most interesting about this tool is how it will share WordPress development over the next few months and years and the new themes, ideas and uses for it that will come out during that time.

However, that also means that now is the time for bloggers to familiarize themselves with the feature as the next theme they use or site they build will likely take advantage of it and it’s best to hit the ground running on these new features.

Rather than use a generic theme that is widely available to anyone else on the Internet, it is usually in your best interest to invest in a custom theme that is unique to your site. For that, you may consider turning to Dizzain.com, a New York-based web design firm.

Who is Dizzain?

Dizzain was formed in 2001 when a programmer, a designer, and a system architect decided to get together to create their own company in New York. Dizzain is full service web design company that can offer turnkey website designs, logo and theme designs, and 24/7 site maintenance, as well as web application programming and implementation.

The core focus, however, is with the creation of a custom WordPress theme for websites of all sizes. The reason why Dizzain focuses on WordPress is that it is “the best blogging solution on the web today.”

Every WordPress theme that Dizzain creates is custom designed, widget-ready, SEO-ready, ads-ready, and W3CXHTML/CSS validated. To date, Dizzain has created over 200 unique themes.

Samples of the Work

The best way to see what Dizzain can do for you is to see what they have done for other people. For that, you can check out the expansive WordPress portfolio on their site.

The portfolio is designed in such a way to display several of the themes they have created over the years in thumbnail form. Clicking on any individual thumbnail will expand it into a larger preview in a higher resolution.

The screenshot above is from the Colorado Hunting Journal. They clearly wanted to recreate the look and feel of a cabin in the middle of the forest and the wood elements really speak to that niche.

How Much Does It Cost?

Ah yes, the issue of price. This can be a sticking point for most companies, both large and small. Dizzain does not offer a standard pricing chart, instead offering price quotes on an individual basis.

You will need to fill out the contact form to get more information. If you do not like forms, you can also call them via telephone or send a message via email.

While the exact prices are not explicitly mentioned on the site, you’ll notice that the “budget” portion of the contact form starts at $1,000. In this way, it’s unlikely that they are interested in projects smaller than this size. The form also provides space for the type of project, timeline, and a personal message.

Dizzain is quite clearly a premium service, but based on the portfolio, they also offer premium performance. The old adage may indeed ring true: you get what you pay for.

Link: Dizzain.com

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Having a professional looking theme branded with your own personal touches makes a big impact. The biggest rookie blogger mistake that pops out at me immediately is the use of a default generic theme. Blogging Tips offers a few themes. Some can be purchased and some can be downloaded for free. Also on the Blogging Tips Themes page there are links to other themes that you can purchase. Links out to Thesis, Woo Themes and a few others.

All of those themes are great but if you install any one of those and do nothing to brand that theme as your own to differentiate it from everyone else then it will end up just slightly better than using a generic theme and doing nothing to it. If you are a designer then that is fantastic but if you are not (but think you are) things could end up far worse for you. Consider the image below.

For years that was my blog theme on BenSpark.com. I made some very simple edits to an existing theme like change the header and colors. That was it. It wasn’t terrible but it really didn’t stand out.

Zac suggested to me early on when I started writing here to write on this topic. He asked me this because in 2009 I was given a huge gift by Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA. Ted redesigned my blog branding and Matthew Schultz of IZEA coded me a professional, custom theme.

Here is one of the most important things about the theme, it is unique. No one else has this theme, no one. This theme is branded from the logo and the logo mascot down to a ghosted logo mascot that appears only on my photo-a-day posts showing the # of that photo in the sequence. It is little touches like that make my blog theme stand out to be remembered.

Now, I am not Chris Brogan, John Chow or Copyblogger but having that new theme has made a huge difference. My traffic has certainly increased and I still write the same way, I still take my photos. The major difference is this new theme. So, are professional themes worth it, in my opinion they are. Had I understood the importance of a custom theme earlier I would have certainly invested the time, money and resources into going that route.

What about you, are you using a professional theme? Is it custom or customized? Did you build it yourself?

There are some great new features in WordPress 3 including WordPress Multi User integration, additional post types, a new custom menu system, custom taxonomies, background and header image control in the admin area, and a new default theme called Twenty Ten (bye bye Kubrick!).

It’s worth noting that most themes from WP 2.7+ onwards should work with WP 3.0+ with no problems. You may have to follow some integration steps to take advantage of the new features though. Which is why the speed of WordPress themes has not slowed down over the last few months.

In this post I will showing you 20 of the best free WordPress themes which have been released since the start of the year. They should tide you over til WordPress 3.0 is launched

20 Great Free WordPress Themes from 2010

1. Happy Go Try

Info & Download | Demo

2. Florance

Info & Download | Demo

3. GameZone

Info & Download | Demo

4. Red Steel

Info & Download | Demo

5. SimpleFolio

Info & Download | Demo

6. Möbius

Info & Download | Demo

7. Orion Gallery

Info & Download | Demo

8. Katana

Info & Download | Demo

9. Light Folio

Info & Download | Demo

10. Black Stone

Info & Download | Demo

11. The What’s Up

Info & Download | Demo

12. Elegant News

Info & Download | Demo

13. Altair

Info & Download | Demo

14. Traction

Info & Download | Demo

15. Paperpunch

Info & Download | Demo

16. Titan

Info & Download | Demo

17. Vigilance

Info & Download | Demo

18. The Standard

Info & Download | Demo

19. Recipy

Info & Download | Demo

20. Alkaline

Info & Download | Demo

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WordPress is a very powerful content management system and you have many options when it comes to its overall appearance. If you are looking for some different themes, you may want to point your attention over to PremiumThemes.com, a “luxury WordPRess theme marketplace” where you can find “every type of theme for every type of need.”

Many Premium Themes in One Place

If you’re expecting something completely different with Premium Themes, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. After all, it’s not that different from other theme marketplaces that you may find elsewhere on the web. That’s not to say that it should be ignored either.

The developers behind PremiumThemes promise that they will be releasing at least one new theme every month, giving you a good variety from which to choose. It doesn’t really matter what kind of WordPress site you want to run, since you’ll probably find a suitable theme in this marketplace.

Navigating through the available options is quite easy, as they are all shown as large thumbnai images in the premium themes showcase. Also from that page, you can access previews, details, and purchase links.

Sample Theme: Wedding 1

The best way to take a look at what Premium Themes has to offer is to, well, look at what they have to offer. One of the themes in the marketplace is called Wedding Theme 1.

While it has since been succeeded by Wedding Theme 2 and Wedding Theme 3, I still find the first one to be the most aesthetically pleasing, especially for this niche. The simple white and pink color scheme is perfectly suitable for the nuptial occasion.

Simple text links are located near the top for navigation and the single right sidebar gives space for an about blurb, recent comments, blogroll, and so forth. The search bar integration is quite attractive too.

Sample Theme: Ocean

For something a little different, you may want to consider the Ocean Theme. Originally added way back in October 2008, this theme still holds up to contemporary design trends.

You get several shades of blue, offering a sense of depth. There appear to be two right sidebars, one of which for categories and archives, and the other for 125 x 125 ad blocks. The large footer provides more room for additional content.

Two Ways to Buy Premium Themes

How you pay for the WordPress themes on PremiumThemes.com is up to you. Going to the pricing page, you’ll find two main options, each of which is broken down into a personal license and a developer license.

Buying individual themes with a personal license will cost you $59. This allows you to use the theme on up to three websites. The $109 developer license allows for unlimited site usage and it also includes the source PhotoShop (PSD) files for modification purposes.

If you want to have more themes in the long term, the theme membership option may be more suitable. The $59 and $109 base cost is the same as above, but you pay an additional $20 per month to access any new themes released during the course of the membership.

These prices seem fair and are in line with other theme marketplaces. Does PremiumThemes.com stand out from the competition? Not really, but it’s no slouch either.

For some people, the standard WordPress installation is a relatively straightforward process, but that’s not true of everyone. Sometimes, it’s just easier to hire some elves, give them some cookies, and provide them with the task. That’s the exact concept behind Page.ly, a complete and simple service that’ll get you going in the right direction.

What Is the Page.ly Service?

Rather than going through the process of buying a domain, setting up your web hosting, and configuration a WordPress installation on your own, you can hand over the complete task to Page.ly. In short, it’s a one-stop shop for your WordPress hosting.

When you sign up with Page.ly, you can have a complete WordPress website up and running in just two minutes. Included in the all-inclusive monthly price is your web hosting, a free domain, email service, WordPress installation, automatic backups and upgrades, and compatibility with a range of themes and plugins.

The “elves” at Page.ly, as they like to be called, can take care of all the back end administration on your behalf. There are automatic nightly backups and you gain access to 44 free themes, 5GB of hosting, and 20 mailboxes.

In addition to the standard features described above, Page.ly is more than happy to sell you a series of “powerups” through the integrated service as well. These upgrades include FTP access ($5/month) and WooThemes access ($15/month), for instance. I do find it strange that FTP access is optional and not a standard feature, since it’s available with all standard web hosting services.

How Much Does It Cost?

There is no contract to sign if you want to get started with Page.ly, but you should recognize that the price is a little higher than if you were to handle all of this stuff separately on your own.

The core service rings in at $14.98 a month, which includes one free domain. If we assume that the annual price for a domain is about $10 and basic monthly web hosting can be had for $5 to $10, you’re paying about five bucks extra each month.

To some people, the premium cost is worth it. Your WordPress installation is automatic and it is maintained on your behalf. The process is certainly easier than managing these aspects on your own.

A Typical Page.ly Customer

Aside from the footer attribution, you can’t really tell a Page.ly WordPress blog apart from a standard WordPress blog. It’s still the same (free) content management system being used in the backend.

For instance, take a look at the site of Gregory Taylor. He’s a professional photographer from Arizona and he uses Page.ly to power his blog. The chosen theme is clean and effective, including social media integration and tabbed navigation.

The Verdict on Page.ly

Intermediate and power users will likely prefer the manual control (and FTP access) that a traditional WordPress installation can afford, but the simplified process offered by Page.ly will certainly be appealing to novices and people who simply do not have the time to keep up with updates and upgrades.

By automating the process, Page.ly makes having a WordPress website of your own a heck of a lot simpler and easier.

Take a look at the Page.ly web site and WordPress options.