If you’re using WordPress out of the box, you might want to use a more unique theme that will create interest and connection with your visitors. After all, even the most valuable content gets boring if it’s set against a forgettable backdrop.

Anyone who’s interested in finding a niche WordPress theme is looking to appeal to a select group of people. As such, which WordPress theme you choose to use will affect how successful your business is.

So what are some general things to look for in a theme?

First and foremost, it’s the Google AdSense color and its placement.

Your niche blog is a business venture, therefore, you want it come off looking as professional as possible. Look for themes that match your AdSense so that AdSense looks like an organic part of your website. Seamless integration is what you should be going for.

But that’s not all you have to watch out for.

What about the specifics?

Niche WordPress themes, though already somewhat customized, can be customized further for easier integration with your business.

So prepare to customize!

…and get a little technical (or hire someone talented to do that for you).

Find niche themes that allow you to modify:

The main keyword phrase

This option is great because it allows you to put the keyword phrase in the meta title tags and headers of each page. It’ll also help you tell search engines that you want to be on top of results. Some business owners prefer to leave this blank, but they lose out on a way to promote their business.

Header images and text

Images and text are something that you obviously want control over. Make sure that you can easily modify both so that they can work for your business and not against it.

Fonts

How your text is presented is just as important as the content that it contains. Some fonts leave un-businesslike impressions in prospects’ minds, but it’s all relative. You wouldn’t set up a hospital blog and then use the comic sans font all over it, would you? Similarly, using a cursive script font for a blog dedicated to a kindergarten class seems out-of-place, right? Decide what font best represents your business and then implement it.

CSS

Let’s face it- not every pre-designed niche theme is 100% perfect. But if you’re allowed to modify CSS, you can help make it as close to perfect as it can possibly get. You’ll need a little bit of training beforehand, but CSS is far from impossible to learn. When you’re dealing with CSS, there really aren’t any limits. You have control of even the most minor details. Modifying CSS is great for perfectionists and those who have an exact vision of how they want their blogs to look like.

Finding a WordPress theme that offers all of these options can set you on the right path towards a blog that looks, talks and walks like you. Getting your brand out there will be a snap once you find a niche WordPress theme you like and can turn it into something unique that sets it apart from your competition.



By: James T. Maxwell

When you are looking at Wordpress themes and trying to figure out which color would best suit your website, consider the psychological effects of color. In Western psychology, color produce a psychological effect on viewers. Viewers may associate qualities with a color and color may be symbolic as well.

When choosing colors, you can choose one color as the main color or you can chose a main color with other accent colors. One main color with two accent colors is a good combination if you want a livelier palette for your website than just a single color.

The warm colors of the color wheel can affect viewers because of the strength of these colors. These warm colors can overwhelm your website’s content unless they are used with moderation. Unlike the mellow blues and greens, the warm colors beg for attention. Yellow will grab the eye and may be distracting if it is overused. In color psychology, yellow can be motivating and sometimes over-stimulating. In studies, tempers were lost easier and babies cried more in yellow rooms.

Orange can spark the appetite in viewers. If you wish to whet the appetite of your visitors, use orange in your Wordpress theme. It will look fresh and natural while it rings the lunch bell in reader’s minds. Red is another exciting warm color. Red can cause the heart rate and breathing to quicken and can over-stimulate too if it overwhelms a website. You should use the warm colors as accent colors because of the strength of their visual effect.

The cool colors of the color wheel has a more soothing effect. Green is symbolic color for many people. Symbolically, green has a few meanings. Green can symbolize money, prosperity, growth, youth, nature and freshness. As a color choice for a website, green is a lively color that does not cause eye strain. The color green has a relaxing effect on its viewers. Dark green is often seen as a masculine or woodsy color.

The color blue is associated with masculinity and it is often associated with authority. Websites that present information and want to be seen as an authority on the subject can do well to use blue as a main color. Blue is a favorite color with many people because of its tranquil appearance.

Neutral colors such as gray, brown, black and white have meanings for viewers too. Gray projects authority and stability. Brown presents an earthy and honest quality that could be considered homespun or earthy. Black means power, authority and knowledge for many viewers. Black sometimes have negative connotations for some viewers. On the other hand, white represents purity and neutrality.

Wordpress themes can be used because of the effects that the color will have on the website viewers. If you choose a Wordpress theme with the right color, your website will have the effect on viewers that you want instead of affecting viewers in such a way that they are over-stimulated or uninspired. Color is a powerful element when it comes to the design of your Wordpress website.



By: Daniel Millions

WordPress has become a hugely popular open source blogging and publishing platform. The abundance of free themes and plugins as well as its ease-of-use have contributed to the attraction and popularity for using WordPress. While there are some great free themes for WordPress, many only offer basic functionality and simplistic designs.

Since late 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250. Originally only a small number of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers created paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system. However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spread, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon trying to cash on the new trend filling up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes.

However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what specifically makes a premium WordPress theme premium? Some characteristics that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme are listed below:

Quality and Unique Design

Premium WordPress themes should be just that – Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free.

Features

While all themes are different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

Customization Options and Fexibility

People want options, so Premium WordPress themes should be customisable. Buying a premium theme will set you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium themes should be able to be easily customized further, whether it be for the layout, colours, images, or all of the above.

Live Preview or Demo

There should be a live demo or preview of the theme so you can test it and check it out before buying. If there is no live preview or demo that should be a warning sign. You should ask why don’t they want you to test the theme first? All reputable premium theme sellers will have a live demo full of content for you to test. Explore the live demo thoroughly, testing all pages to see that the theme works properly and there are no errors or mistakes.

Full Support

If you’re buying a premium WordPress theme it should also come with a certain degree of support from the designer. The level of support can vary however and will range from personalised individual support from the designer, to the provision of forums or blog comment sections for asking questions and obtaining support from the designer and other people who have purchased the theme.

Supporting Documentation

Premium WordPress themes should come with an instruction manual or document. This should explain how to upload and install the theme and how to manage any of the options that are built into the theme.

Free Updates

Wordpress is continually being updated and improved and a premium WordPress theme developer should be offering you free updates of the theme when required.

Well Coded and Error Free

There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium WordPress theme. The theme has cross browser compatible and been tested to work properly on all the major browsers, plus the theme should have clean and valid code and adhere to strict XHTML and CSS standards.



By: Marlon Burrows

Are you a dedicated blogger? Do you always browse the Internet in search of templates and premium Wordpress themes? If you have answered affirmative to either of these questions, then we have some pretty interesting information for you. It involved custom Wordpress themes and additional information on the subject. Enter the world of blogging with us!

Wordpress has generally been defined as a smart system for those who want to publish their very own blogs. Written in PHP, Wordpress is quite easy to use and highly functional. Millions of users have learned to rely on custom Wordpress themes for their blogs and are now spreading the word to their friends. Premium Wordpress themes represent some of the most popular searches on the web, especially as there are hundreds of websites presenting such templates as great prices. The important thing is that you are patient enough to find the very best.

You may be wondering what the difference between free and premium Wordpress themes is. While you may not have to pay for those that are free, these cannot be compared so easily. Custom Wordpress themes have a professional look and they are recognized for their top quality. The template is simply amazing and you can convince of the difference on your own, once you enter online and start searching. Two other very important features of a premium theme are represented by: the footer contains absolutely no links, plus the footer PHP file is not ciphered.

Premium Wordpress themes are generally used for personal online blogs but you can also expect to find them used for business blogs. If you are interested in purchasing custom Wordpress themes, then all you have to do is go to the website of your choice and click on a simple button. The most common method of payment is through PayPal. Online, you will encounter the greatest diversity of premium Wordpress themes, with various elements of designs and motives. Those who are planning to start an artist’s blog are invited to use custom Wordpress themes, especially those that are art-inspired. We are talking about a 3-column template, with bright shades of red and yellow.

You may have noticed that the number of party blogs has increased in the past few years. People and particularly youngsters are using the revolution in blogging to catch up with friends on partying. They use custom Wordpress themes suitable for their needs, with funky designs and awesome colors. You can expect party blogs templates to come in darker shades, such as black and blue. Premium Wordpress themes for party blogs can also come in simpler tones and designs, suitable for those who are beginners. It all depends on what you are looking for and what image you are trying to create.

If you are a girl creating a blog, then perhaps you might prefer custom Wordpress themes with floral elements. What does red garden suggest to you? Well, you can expect a premium theme that comes with bright red colors and beautiful flowers. This is perfect for your personal blog. There are plenty of other choices out there, such as a pink evening or a windmill sunset in elegant shades of pink and grey. Discover premium Wordpress themes today and prepare yourself to amaze all of your friends with your blogging!



By: Jhoana Cooper

If you want to change the looks of your blog, the best way to do so is by using a wordpress theme. Wordpress give your blog the looks that you wanted to give it. But all of this happens in a fast manner. There are millions of wordpress themes available on the internet and all you have to do is to find the right wordpress theme for your blog. But finding the right wordpress theme can be a problem because there are a lot of themes and a lot of websites on which you can find the wordpress themes. Therefore, finding the right theme for your blog can be a problem for you if you don’t know how to search for the right wordpress theme for your blog. Therefore, in this article, I will tell you how to search for the right wordpress theme for your blog on the internet.

Before you start the search for the right wordpress theme, you must first know that what do you want for your blog. This is important because without this, you will just keep searching through different themes and waste a lot of your time. Therefore you must know that what do you want with your blog. For this, you must first know that what do you want to post on your blog or what are your posting on your blog. Themes are according to different categories. Randomly searching all the categories will not help you to find the right theme for your blog. So, you have to know this before you search for the theme.

After you know that what do you want to post on your blog, you are now able to narrow down the search a little by categorizing the themes. In order to narrow down the search results even more, you have to pre-decide some other things as well. These things must include the color of the theme. The color of the theme will also help you to narrow down your search. This way, you will be able to search for the right wordpress theme for your blog.



By: Hayley Chambers

Blog or website, creating both of them takes a lot of time. But what if I tell you that you can do so in a short period of time? Sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? So, you are creating a website or a blog space for some reason and for that you are reading a lot about HTML coding and other coding. But when you put it to the test, your blog or website still doesn’t looks that way you want it to look. So this is one of those situations when you want to pull your hair out. But you don’t want to do that, because you want to run a website or blog, and you don’t want to do so without any hair on your head. So in this case, the most easiest way and when I say easy, I really mean it.

So, the most easiest way to create a website or a blog is with the help of wordpress themes. In this article I will tell you how to choose a wordpress theme because it also seems to be one of those tasks which takes a lot of toll on the person. So following are some tips that will help you to find the best wordpress theme for your website or blog.

The first thing that you must keep in mind is that, instead of searching through thousands of themes for the right color and design. The best thing to do is to decide on the color first. If you know about the color scheme that will suit your blog or website the best then you can search for only those, which suits the color scheme of your blog or website. Keep in mind that, some websites where you can find the wordpress themes allow you to search on the website in which you can specify the color, which you want. This way, you will only see the designs in the color, which you have already chosen for your website or blog. If you haven’t don’t this, then this means that you will spend a lot of time searching for the right theme with the right color and design for your website or blog.



By: Hayley Chambers

 

WordPress is an open-source blog engine released under the GNU general public license. It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.

This book walks through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom theme for the WordPress open-source blog engine. The author provides design tips and suggestions and covers setting up the WordPress sandbox, and reviews the best practices from setting up the theme’s template structure, through coding markup, testing, and debugging, to taking it live. The last three chapters cover additional tips, tricks, and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to WordPress theme designs using 3rd-party plugins as well as creating API hooks to add custom plugins.

Whether users are working with a pre-existing theme or creating a new one from the ground up, WordPress Theme Design will give them the know-how to effectively understand how themes work within the WordPress blog system enabling them to have full control over their site’s design and branding. Users only need to be comfortable with the basics of web development and this book will take care of the rest.

What you will learn from this book



Set up a basic workflow and development environment for WordPress theme design

Create detailed designs and code them up

Enhance your sites by choosing the right color schemes and graphics

Debug and validate your theme using W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation tools

Customize and tweak your theme’s layout

Set up dynamic drop-down menus, AJAX/dynamic and interactive forms

Download and install useful plug-ins and widgetize your theme

Improve post and page content using jQuery and ThickBox

Add interactivity to your themes using Flash

Includes a reference guide to WordPress 2.0’s template hierarchy, markup, styles and template tags, as well as include and loop functions



Chapter 1 introduces you to the WordPress blog system and lets you know what you need to be aware of regarding the WordPress theme project you’re ready to embark on. The chapter also covers the development tools that are recommended and web skills that you’ll need to begin developing a WordPress theme.

Chapter 2 looks at the essential elements you need to consider when planning your WordPress theme design. It discusses the best tools and processes for making your theme design a reality. The author explains her own ‘Rapid Design Comping’ technique and gives some tips and tricks for developing color schemes and graphic styles for your WordPress theme. By the end of the chapter, you’ll have a working XHTML and CSS based ‘comp’ or mockup of your theme design, ready to be coded up and assembled into a fully functional WordPress theme.

Chapter 3 uses the final XHTML and CSS mockup from Chapter 2 and shows you how to add WordPress PHP template tag code to it and break it down into the template pages a theme requires. Along the way, this chapter covers the essentials of what makes a WordPress theme work. At the end of the chapter, you’ll have a basic, working WordPress theme.

Chapter 4 discusses the basic techniques of debugging and validation that you should employ throughout your theme’s development. It covers the W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation services and how to use the FireFox browser and some of its extensions as a development tool, not just another browser. This chapter also covers troubleshooting some of the most common reasons ‘good code goes bad’, especially in IE, and best practices for fixing those problems, giving you a great-looking theme across all browsers and platforms.

Chapter 5 discuss how to properly set up your WordPress theme’s CSS style sheet so that it loads into WordPress installations correctly. It also discuss compressing your theme files into the ZIP file format and running some test installations of your theme package in WordPress’s administration panel so you can share your WordPress theme with the world.

Chapter 6 covers key information under easy-to-look-up headers that will help you with your WordPress theme development, from the two CSS class styles that WordPress itself outputs, to WordPress’s PHP template tag code, to a breakdown of “The Loop” along with WordPress functions and features you can take advantage of in your theme development. Information in this chapter is listed along with key links to bookmark to make your theme development as easy as possible.

Chapter 7 dives into taking your working, debugged, validated, and properly packaged WordPress theme from the earlier chapters, and enhancing it with dynamic menus using the SuckerFish CSS-based method and Adobe Flash media.

Chapter 8 continues showing you how to enhance your WordPress theme by looking at the most popular methods for leveraging AJAX techniques in WordPress using plugins and widgets. It also gives you a complete background on AJAX and when it’s best to use those techniques or skip them. The chapter also reviews some cool JavaScript toolkits, libraries, and scripts you can use to simply make your WordPress theme appear ‘Ajaxy’.

Chapter 9 reviews the main tips from the previous chapters and covers some key tips for easily implementing today’s coolest CSS tricks into your theme as well as a few final SEO tips that you’ll probably run into once you really start putting content into your WordPress site.

For more details on the book please visit http://www.packtpub.com/wordpress-theme-design/book.



By: Shriharsha Bhat

If you’re blogging on the Wordpress platform, I’ll bet my entire life savings that the first thing you ever did was try to install a new Wordpress theme. I’ll bet my future earnings that even today you’re still occasionally changing themes and wasting a lot of time doing minor modifications that when summed up merely distracts you from blogging itself.

Yet, it’s easy to understand why themes beg for so much attention. With the correct theme, you can accommodate all the nifty little widgets and codes, and may also mean better search engine rankings and tons of fresh traffic every day.

So what factors do you need to consider to make this whole theme-hunting business easier? Here are five important ones:

1) Theme Width and Columns

Typically, Wordpress themes come in 2-column or 3-column formats, with widths ranging from 500 pixels to 960 pixels wide. If you’re blogging for non-profit purposes, a 2-column theme can look more compact and reader-friendly. Since you have less images of products or links to other sites to display, you can focus exclusively on the content without leading readers away from your site.

On the other hand, if you’re blogging for profit, you may want to consider a 3-column Wordpress theme that will be able to accommodate your Google Adsense, Chitika and Text Link Ads codes comfortably without squeezing everything in the content area. 3-column themes allow room for expansion, but in the event that you’ve filled up all available space with ads, then it’s time you removed the non-performers and use only the advertising services that work for that particular blog.

2) Use of Images and Icons

A theme with images and icons can look good, but it rarely increases your web traffic or subscriber base. In fact, most “A-list” bloggers have plain vanilla themes with a simple logo on top. Reducing the amount of images also means faster loading time and less stress on your servers. This vital aspect of server load become apparent only if you have tens of thousands of visitors a day, but it’s worth designing for the future.

A image-laden theme also distracts readers from the content itself. This is the reason why blogs like Engadget and Tech Crunch use images intensively in the content areas to add value to a post, but the theme itself is simple and rather minimalist.

Ideally, a theme should allow you to use your own header image for stronger branding purposes, yet replace images and icons with links and text, or just not use them at all unless absolutely necessary.

3) Compatibility with Plugins

Another time-sucking activity is installing plugins that improve the functionality of your site. There’s a plugin out there for almost everything you want to do with your blog, but while most of them are free and easily obtainable, it’s not always easy to install the plugins and insert the codes into your Wordpress theme.

If your theme is too complicated, it may be a headache to even insert that one line of code you need to make a plugin work. This is often the case with advanced AJAX-based Wordpress themes that have too many files and heavy coding. I’ve always preferred a simpler themes that stick to the default Wordpress theme as much as possible, so I can cut back on the learning curve and just get on with my life.

Remember that the purpose of your blog is to deliver timely, relevant content to your readers, Any theme that preserves or improves the reader experience is good, any theme that subtracts from the experience is bad.

4) Search Engine Optimization

A lot can be said about search engine optimization, but at the end of the day if you have content worth reading eventually you’ll get the rankings you deserve. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need SEO; it merely means that as far as optimization is concerned all you really need to do is to make sure:

(a) Your tags are formatted properly, with the name of the post first followed by the name of the blog – some themes can do this automatically without modification to the code or use of a plugin

(b) All your blog content titles use the H1 tag, with the main keywords used instead of non-descriptive text for better SEO relevance

(b) Your theme has clean source codes, and if possible all formatting is linked to an external CSS file which you can edit independently

5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use

Can the theme be installed easily on an existing blog without having to move things around? Can the same theme be used and customized easily on your other blogs? These are some additional things you may want to consider when theme-shopping, especially if every minute of downtime on your blog may mean lost revenue.

While it’s hard to make comparisons due to the sheer amount of free and paid themes out there, it’s still a good idea to have a test blog site. Test any theme you plan on using, and make sure your test blog is also fitted with all the plugins and miscellaneous widgets used on your real blog. The last thing you want is for your readers start seeing weird error messages on your blog.

At the end of the day, a theme is just a theme. Instead of spending your time installing them, it may be wiser to outsource the task and focus more on your readers. Alternatively, you may also want to consider buying “plug-and-play” themes for a reasonable price. Dennis De’ Bernardy of ProWordpress.com has probably one of the best themes around, but if you’re short on cash there are certainly cheaper alternatives.



By: Gobala Krishnan

Tired of writing the codes for your blog? Well, most people who don’t have none or limited expertise in writing codes of their own blog in order to save money, can get into a lot of trouble. By trouble I mean is that, people never get what they actually want their blog to be by writing the codes on their own. I am not suggesting that you should hire an expensive webs developer to write the codes for your blog so that you can start blogging. There are also simple and less expensive methods of doing so! Wordpress themes are one of the best way to create a blog in a short time. All you have to do is to find the right theme for your blog and put it up, viola, your blog will be up and running and you can start to post now. So that other people can come visit your blog and read it. In this article, I will tell you how to find a wordpress theme for your blog.

First, decide that what do you want from your blog and what do you want to do with it. There are different blogs, all with different purpose. Some are for business, some for family. So make sure that you know what do you want you blog for. When you have decided that what do you want to do with your blog, now you can officially start to look for a wordpress theme for your blog.

In order to find a word press theme for your blog, the first thing that you should decide is the color and design of the wordpress theme. Both of these things are important in order to find the right wordpress theme for your blog. This is because when you have decided on the color and design, you can easily filter the search results according to your requirement and choose from those search results. Otherwise, you will keep searching through hundreds of pages of wordpress themes and you will never begin to like a single one of them and end up spending more money.



By: Hayley Chambers