Pro Blog Design

About a year ago, premium WordPress themes started appearing on the market. At the time, that meant themes that were a cut above the rest. But now it just means a theme with a price tag latched onto it.

There are still great premium themes out there, and well worth paying the money for. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot that aren’t worth paying the money for now.

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Matt (Creator of WordPress) has just announced his plans to set up a directory of paid themes on WordPress.com. The initial reaction has been both good and bad.

Before I give my thoughts on the ups and downs of this, here’s a quick run-through of the facts.

• Matt removed all sponsored themes from the free WordPress.org directory a few months ago.
• The new theme directory is only for WordPress.com (The free blog host).
• Automattic (Matt’s company) will take a 50% cut from all sales.
• All themes must be “original, link-free, not published before, and GPL-licensed.”

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We are going to look at two, magazine-style, premium themes from Adii. The first is Block Magazine, and the second is Your Revolution. They’re both sold at Unique Blog Designs for $79.

And lastly, Adii paid me to review these themes, but that’s not going to influence my opinion (as you’ll see ;) ).

There has been a fair bit of hype about magazine style themes for blogs lately, but are these two worth the cash? I’ll start off by looking at my favorite of the pair, Block Magazine.

What Has Been Done Well?

• Structured layout. The layout just fits. Everything has its place, and it doesn’t feel cramped. The regular, grid-like, columns give the sense of structure that is crucial to the newsletter feel.

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We’ve talked a fair bit about personal blog design this week. Conveniently I came across a fantastic personal blog yesterday, by Yichi from Beijing. The design of his blog, Vikiworks, is one that all personal bloggers could pick up tips from.

What Has Been Done Well?

• Personal elements. The header and left hand side of the blog contain a wealth of information about Yichi, all wrapped up in the design. The PSP? Apple logo? Yankee’s hat? Even the date of his birthday! It all tells you a little more about who Yichi is, and what his interests are.

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Photo by dcJohn. There are a number of aspects of a theme that can get you banned from Google, and other search engines. Deciphering between safe and unsafe themes is not as easy as just looking for a “Sponsored by…” link.
Through using the methods listed below, you will be able to judge whether or not a theme is safe to use.

1 – Download From The Source

Wordpress themes are often free to download, and sometimes free to distribute. It is not difficult for a site to amass a collection of themes, and add their own spam codes to them. For this reason, if you know the site that the theme originally came from, download it from there.

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