There are quite a premium WordPress themes out there these days, but there are still quite a few niches out there where there really isn’t a premium theme to fill that need.

Brian has taken a step towards filling one of these niches with the release of his new Real Estate Revolution theme, which appears to be his most requested theme design.  Here are the features Brian lists for this new theme:

• Featured listing section, about me section and recent blog posts on the homepage
• Dropdown navigation menu
• Short contact form in the sidebar
• Page template for real estate listings

And here are the screenshots:

Real Estate Homepage

Real Estate Page Template

This theme follows the same pricing as his previous Revolution themes.   You can get the single-use package for $79.95 or the multiple-use package for $199.95.  Check out Revolution Real Estate.

With the surge in the popularity of poker around the globe, combined with the amount of advertising revenue that can be generated with poker sites, it was only a matter of time before the world of Poker turned to blogging. 

Now that there is some demand for poker blogs, there is also a demand for poker themes.  I’ve noticed a few popping up lately, ranging from the ultra popular premium theme Deep Stack, to the new free theme named iPoker. 

Here is a screenshot of iPoker:

The theme includes widget support and AJAX enhanced live search.  You can view the demo here.  

When I started this WordPress blog, one of my goals was to feature my favorite WordPress themes.   At the time premium WordPress themes did not exist, so I spent a lot of time featuring my favorite free WordPress themes.   Going forward, as free themes catch my eye, I’m hoping to spend more time featuring them on this blog.

I generally prefer 2-column themes, but there are situations where a 3-column WordPress theme can be a better fit for a blog.  If you’re looking for a free 3-column theme, look no further than the Silveray Theme by Blog Perfume.  This is not a term I use loosely, but I have to say that this theme is premium quality.   Here are some screenshots:

Silveray Top 

Silveray Footer

If you’d like to use this theme for a WordPress blog, you can download it here.

I have added this theme to the appropriate WordPress theme galleries.

I must admit, one of the first sites I read every day is WP-Premiums, which is a website that features highly customized premium themes using WordPress from around the blogosphere. I consider myself more of a “code guy”, so it is always fun to see some of the designs people come up with, or customizations to premium WordPress themes that designers make. I suppose you could call it inspiration.

As I mentioned briefly last week, Hack WordPress got a redesign. which is built upon the Revolution Pro Media theme. The theme was completely redone in the hopes of staying true to the original theme this site used, but definitely takes advantages of some of the features the Revolution theme offered.

Yesterday I noticed that Penny apparently liked the change because it has been featured over at WP-Premiums, which was a big thrill for me.

Thanks Penny! If you haven’t yet seen WP-Premiums, I recommend you check it out.

A couple of months ago I talked about some ways to adjust your WordPress plugin code to avoid having plugins break your blog. That post was designed to show people how to easily adjust the PHP setup for the calls for their plugins to not fail if the plugin is deactivated. I also think more theme authors should use that method to make their themes compatible with a variety of plugins out-of-the-box.

Along those same lines, there are some simple checks you can do to make sure that your theme has the best chance to be compatible with a plugin. The WordPress Expert recently posted some simple checks to verify that your WordPress theme is plugin-friendly. John recommends you verify your theme uses the following:

<?php wp_head(); ?>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
<?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?>
<?php wp_footer(); ?>

If your theme isn’t, some plugins may not operate properly. Great post John!

iThemes, which is one of the newcomers to the premium WordPress themes market, has released their third series of themes, this one called Deep Order Web 2.0.

There is no doubt that the premium WordPress theme market has gotten a little crowded lately, but iThemes has separated themselves from the competition with a true business look for small businesses.   Their Deep Order Web 2.0 theme series includes the following features:

• Change header images easily — upload a new header graphic straight from WordPress with our new Custom Image option! (PSD included)
• Integrated blog component
• Static home page
• Widget ready sidebars
• Dropdown navigation

Another thing they are known for is the variety of colors they make available with each theme.  This one is no exception, with four colors available (Blue, Brown, Green, and a Mixture).  Here is how the blue one looks:

If you are interested in purchasing this theme for yourself or your clients, you can now do so for $79.95 or pay $149.95 for all four colors and a multiple-use license.