One of my favorite things about premium WordPress themes is that they give theme authors the opportunity to truly show off their talents. Because the theme will be purchased rather than given free, they don’t hold anything back and truly create some incredible work.

Michael at Solostream is no exception. He has created a number of free themes in the past, but has since been concentrating on creating and selling a variety of premium WordPress themes for bloggers and businesses looking for a magazine-style theme.

His most recent premium theme WP-Magazine 1.0 is his best work to date (in my opinion). Here are some screen shots of a few pages:

Once purchased, you have access to five different home page layouts and four different category/archive page layouts. You can find more information about the layouts available here.

Other features include:

• Widget-Ready, User-Friendly, and Optimized for WordPress Versions 2.2 and Above
• Home Page Featured Article Glider Box
• Built-In Banner Ad Blocks
• Built-In Site Guide in Right Sidebar
• Customized Recent Comments in Sidebar With Gravatar Support
• Author Biography Information and Gravatar Included on Single Post Pages
• Alternating Color Comments With Gravatar Support
• XHTML Valid

In addition to these great features, this theme also supports several plugins “out of the box” including the following:

• Popularity Contest
• Most Commented
• WordPress 2.3 Related Posts

If you’d like to view this theme in action, check out the WP-Magazine Demo Site. You can also purchase the theme from that site.

One of my favorite things about WordPress are the themes that users have access to. Overall, themes are generally broken down into one of three categories: free themes, premium themes, and custom themes. You’ll find free themes littering the blogosphere (especially the good ones), so this can often leave a bad impression when people first visit your blog. This leaves bloggers the option of paying a lot of money for a custom built theme, or purchasing a premium theme for their website that won’t be found very many places.

If you are looking for a content management system (CMS) for your website, the first place I recommend you look is the Premium News WordPress theme. Here is a quick look at the homepage:

And here is a same of a post page:

There are a lot of wonderful things about this theme, but here are a few of my favorites:

• Uses jQuery technology to allow readers to display/hide the posts.
• Built-in Video Player to publish your YouTube easily and seamlessly.
• Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice.
• Widget-ready

This theme also features an Options panel that allows anyone to set the following from their control panel:

• Color Scheme (7 different color schemes are included with the standard package)
• The layout of your homepage
• The amount of posts being displayed on your homepage
• Which categories to display in the highlighted areas of your homepage
• Integrate your Flickr & Feedburner accounts
• Banner Ad Management

If you want to use plugins, the theme supports the following WordPress plugins “out of the box”:

• flickrRSS
• Most Commented
• Popularity Contest

I’ve looked through many of these themes and this is by far the most advanced one I’ve run across yet for WordPress. I recommend you check out Premium News Theme if you are interested in purchasing a professional content management system for your website.

One of my favorite parts about the WordPress blogging software is the WordPress themes that are contributed by the WordPress community.  There are literally thousands of themes available for anyone to download, and most are free and contributed by individuals who believe in WordPress and want to make the product better. 

Unfortunately, when theme users are trying to find a theme that provides the right look and uses the correct colors, I’ve found that users often forget to look for good functionality.  In my experience, good functionality goes a lot further than a good appearance.  It is also easier for someone without coding knowledge to take a theme and adjust the colors than it is to manually add better functionality. 

Here are 5 things I look for when shopping for a new WordPress theme:

1. Plugin Compatibility - Many themes come already setup for certain plugins by using the same method I’ve previously discussed. If you have your mind set on using certain plugins with your blog, you’ll want to look for what plugins are already compatible with the theme before selecting it.   It still amazes me more theme authors don’t take the time to add out-of-the-box functionality with many popular plugins. 
2. AJAX Comments - Maybe Web 2.0 has just spoiled us, but it is extremely discouraging to comment on a site that requires the full page to completely reload. Many WordPress themes now come with AJAX comments, which allows a comment to be left without the entire page reloading.
3. Page Menu - Some WordPress themes come with the page menu in the sidebar.  Not only does this look tacky, but it also uses up a lot of valuable sidebar room that could be used for other information information, such as sponsors, advertisements, or displaying your most popular posts. A good theme will have the pages displayed in a menu somewhere above the blog’s content (usually either immediately above or below the logo).
4. Widget Ready - Does the theme come widget ready? If you aren’t comfortable manually adding code to your sidebar, this is extremely important feature.
5. Logo Space - What is a blog without a logo?  It doesn’t have to be something fancy, but it does need to be something that readers have affiliate with your blog.   For whatever reason, many WordPress themes don’t seem to leave room for a custom logo to be added, but instead will provide a text title.

If I was going to release a theme, I would make sure the above 5 things were included.  What do you look for when picking out a WordPress theme?

In case it has been awhile since you’ve visited my WordPress Themes page, I just wanted to write a quick post and let you know that they have received a very significant update in the past two weeks. I’ve been scouring the blogosphere looking for the best free WordPress themes and found a lot of incredible ones that I didn’t know existed!  As always, I have managed to get a screen shot of them added, along with the the download and demo links whenever possible.

The posts that have seen the most significant upgrades are the following:

• Best 2-Column WordPress Themes
• Best 3-Column WordPress Themes
• Best Google AdSense Optimized WordPress Themes

If you think you may be in need of a WordPress theme in the next few months, you may want to bookmark these pages for future reference.  They will continue to be updated as I run across themes that I feel are worthy of a spot on the list.

If you have any questions or want to recommend something, please leave a comment below or let me know!

If you’ve downloaded a bunch of WordPress themes to try them out, you have probably noticed that some themes come with an Options menu, while a majority of themes do not. The function of the Options panel allows users to control certain theme functions from their dashboard without actually altering any of the code.

Having an Options panel is definitely not crucial to the success of a WordPress theme, but it will help your theme to appeal to a lot of additional users. If you are a theme designer, you may have wondered whether it is difficult or not and how exactly to set this up. It actually involves the creation/altering of four files: functions.php, header.php, style.php, style.css. If you’d like to set this up for one of your themes, The Undersigned has made a great post detailed how to add options to your WordPress theme, where you are walked through the steps it takes to add an options panel. I recommend giving it a shot if you offer a WordPress theme. It could help double the number of users.

The internet is a dynamic place where things are always changing and adapting. And just like the internet, the blogosphere is also changing rapidly and seems to be particularly susceptible to trends. One prominent blogger will create a theme and the whole blogosphere will rush to follow.

One of the most recent trends in the blogosphere is the rise in popularity of many magazine-style WordPress themes. Many of them are paid themes, but there are also several free magazine style WordPress themes as well for people to download.

Here are a few of my favorites:

OpenBook Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Options Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Hamasaki Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Structure Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Rebel Magazine Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Massive News Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Arthemia Free Theme (Premium Version Also Available)

Source | Download | Demo

Guzel Magazine Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Newsweek Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Studio WordPress Theme (Available in Blue, Green, & Red)

Source | Download | Demo

Jello Wala Mello Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Visionary Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Mimbo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP Gold Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Morning After Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Zeke 1.0 Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Forte Theme

Source | Download | Demo

The Studio Theme

Source | Download | Demo

If you know of a good one that you’d like to see added to the list, please let me know in the comments below!