Now that 2008 is here, why not look back at 2007?  Some blogs have been looking back over 2007, and I’ve been closely tracking some of the WordPress reviews for 2007.    One post that caught my eye was published over at WP Themes Plugin, where they have picked there Top 20 WordPress Themes of 2007.

In looking over the post, it is a pretty good collection of themes, most of which (if not all) are completely free to WordPress users.  If you are looking for a WordPress theme for your new blog, I recommend you check it out.   If you don’t find what you are looking for there, you may also want to dig through my various WordPress Theme Galleries to find the right theme for your needs.   I haven’t counted, but I believe there is well over 100 free and premium themes included in the galleries, which are broken down into categories for easy browsing and include screen shots and links to each theme.

I hope everyone has a happy 2008!

I had a reader request for some help with their blogroll recently. The WordPress blogroll has gone through many changes over the past year, and a lot of the WordPress themes authors out there didn’t update their themes with the new code used to call the blogroll.

The old code still works, but it doesn’t let you take advantage of the new blogroll capabilities.  If you have set up your blogroll with different categories, but noticed that all of them display under a single category, it is probably because your blog’s theme is still using the original code that didn’t allow for much configuration. You’ll probably find something like this:

<?php get_links()' ?>

or

<?php get_links_list()' ?>

If you want a more configurable code, you will want to use something like the following:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks('categorize=1&before=<li>&title_before=<h2>&title_after=</h2>&category_before=</n>&category_before=</n>&after=</li>&orderby=url'); ?>

This code will display your blogroll, but will let you have separate lists for your different blogroll categories. I’ve customized it to display the category title as a Header 2 and use bullet points to display the content, but you can do a variety of things. For more customization options, you’ll want to check out the WordPress List Bookmarks page and adjust the code as needed.

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.

WordPress has been a hot topic around the blogosphere, with all sorts of people doing a lot of great work. I try to make at least one post a month that highlights some of the great stuff others have done, so feel free to check these out if they sound interesting to you:

• Daily Blog Tips has posted 11 Tips For Choosing a WordPress Theme. This list has some good stuff to consider when you are WordPresss theme shopping.
• Lunarpages is having a WordPress theme design contest over on their website with some pretty good prizes.  The catch?  You have to upload the theme to their 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?