What Are The Most Downloaded Themes?

By Kyle Eslick on October 16th, 2007 | Filed Under Themes | 0 comments

While searching the blogosphere for great themes to put on my best WordPress themes post , I happened to run across a a post that was published back in March which highlights the 49 most downloaded WordPress themes of all time. These 49 themes have been downloaded a large number of times, ranging from 47,000+ downloads to 6,500+ downloads.

While it is important to note that a lot of great themes have been released in the 6 months since the post was written, I mention the post because I think that by looking over the themes on the list you can gather a bunch of information and see a few trends emerge:

2-Column Themes - A majority of the themes use 2-columns. Without manually counting, I would guess at least 80% of the themes are 2-column themes.
White Backgrounds - It appears people want white backgrounds in the content area. This is probably because it makes it easier to add icons and stuff to the blog if you aren’t using transparent .gif images.
Split Sidebars on 3-Column Themes - Of the 3-column themes included, most of them have the content in the middle and a sidebar on both the left and right sides.

If you are a theme author that wants their themes to get used, I would recommend offering a 2-column theme with white backgrounds.

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WordPress Theme Tip: Use The Space Available To You

By Kyle Eslick on October 14th, 2007 | Filed Under Themes | 0 comments

Because this website focuses on WordPress, I tend to spend a lot of time highlighting various WordPress themes and plugins. One trend I’ve noticed is that a lot of theme developers will often waste a lot of valuable screen real estate by keeping their themes width under 800px. Is this really necessary anymore? Do people still use the 800 x 600 resolution?

Limiting yourself to a 800px or less wastes a lot of valuable real estate that in my opinion could be used to widen your sidebar, give you more room in your menu (which helps keep things above the fold), or allow you to better blend advertisements into your blog posts. When I set up a new site for someone and start theme shopping, I don’t even consider using these themes as it would take to long to adjust to a comfortable width.

So that is my pet peeve with theme authors. Its not the 80’s or 90’s anymore, so make your themes modern if you want people to use them.

What is something you watch out for when selecting a theme to use?

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K2 WordPress Theme Mods and Styles Gallery

By Kyle Eslick on October 2nd, 2007 | Filed Under K2 Themes | 14 comments

There are all sorts of WordPress themes available for anyone to download at no charge, but none are as popular or have spawned so many versions as the wildly popular K2 WordPress theme, which was created by Michael Heilemann, Chris J Davis and Zeo, based on the original Kubrick theme. As a result, I decided to dedicate an entire post to cover some of the best K2 theme styles and modifications available for download.

K2 Theme

Source | Download

K2 Styles

(Styles Require The Above K2 Theme Installed - Styles Are Placed in Styles Folder and Provide Only a CSS File and Relevant Images, then are activated from the K2 Control Panel)

Blue K2 Style