So here’s a few of my favorite examples of custom WordPress sites that break the mold.

Twisted Sista

A slick showcase of hair products :: Visit Site

Moment Church

A beautiful design and unique layout defy all WordPress expectations :: Visit Site

Wolverine Worldwide

Wolverine represents some major, worldwide shoe brands such as Cat footwear, Merrell, Harley-Davidson Footwear and more. If WordPress is good enough for these guys…. :: Visit Site

Think Space Gallery

A brand new WordPress site for Culver City’s Thinkspace art gallery provides a fitting showcase for great art :: Visit Site

Trevor Hoehne

Awesome portfolio site :: Visit Site

GETideas

WordPress site featuring a BuddyPress communit of over 2700 members. Check out the AWESOME rolloevers on the navigation as a way of presenting a lot of information in an organized way. :: Visit Site

The Kitchen Community

Beautiful full screen site featuring sticking photography for a Colorado-based restaurant :: Visit Site

If you have come across any ground-breaking WordPress sites, please leave them in the comments!

Finding a good theme is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks in getting your WordPress site set up.

I decided to delve into my bookmarks to provide a list of resources I personally look at for themes. I plan on keeping this updated as I make new discoveries.

Premium WordPress Themes

WPBest – They aggregate premium themes from several key providers so it’s a convenient one-stop shop for theme purchasing.

StudioPress –Haven’t used them myself yet but people sho’ are ga-ga for the Genesis framework

DIYThemes.com – They are famous for their Thesis theme. Thesis provides a pretty good set of customization options in the admin panel, but beginners & non-developers that want to go beyond that will find it challenging. But they do have great support forums which offer a ton of information.

WooThemes – They are one of the real premium theme ‘heavyweights.’ They make great themes and it was their custom menu structure that inspired the new menu system launched in WordPress 3.0.

Headway – Another one I haven’t yet used, but have heard good things about. Gives you a visual editor with which to build your site the way you want it.

Press 75 – I generally like the design aesthetic behind these themes. They have some nice ones in particular for multimedia and image-heavy blogs.

Themify.me – Just came across these guys and they seem to have some fresh-looking themes. Particularly interesting is Wumblr which is a Tumblr-esque theme taking full advantage of WordPress’ custom post types.

ThemeForest.net -They have a vast variety of themes from a variety of providers although browsing can be overwhelming and you can’t get a sense of what a theme looks like until you mouse over the thumbnail which makes scanning a page impossible. There are some gems to be had if you are willing to dig through.

Quality Free Themes

SmashingMagazine – This top-notch web design ezine collaborates with awesome designers to bring us some wonderful free themes. Keep your eye on this link to discover the latest and greatest WordPress themes.

WpShower – They seem to be a newcomer but have a couple of really nice free themes with an emphasis on clean, elegant design

Site 5 – Site 5 is a hosting company but they have produced some of their own premium-quality themes available for free and they look pretty impressive.

Woo Themes – They’ve been kind enough to offer some solid themes for free. A good way to get a feel for the range of options they provide.

When choosing a theme you must consider design, layout and functionality.
When considering these, keep in mind the general type of theme you are looking for (see previous post). If you are looking for a free theme,  you need to find something as close to what you want as possible (or be savvy enough to tweak it yourself). If you are looking at Premium themes,  you may have some flexibility on colors and admin options. The closer your theme is to what you want to begin with, the less tinkering you will have to do. Determining what options the theme gives you will be important.

Remember as you are looking at themes that colors and fonts are easier to change (with a little CSS) than things like sidebar placement, and changing the layout/ structure, unless you’re comfortable with PHP.

BEFORE looking for a theme:
1) Look at other sites you like/dislike and try and identify those characteristics that turn you off or on.

2) Think about what you want your site to do and look like first. Sketch out a rough diagram of how you want it laid out – where’s the navigation? Where’s the sidebar (left or right)? Do you want a prominent footer (for archive and category links for example)? Think about which of these factors are important, if any and make sure to identify those in any theme you are considering.

3) For each section you outline on your site, figure out whether it will be static/evergreen content (a page) or updated, timely content (a blog post) – this will help you figure out how to create your site and also pick a theme that displays content the way you want.

4) What do you want your homepage to look like? If your site is a straight up blog this might be easier to determine. But if you are using Wordpress for a magazine, portfolio or business site, you might have specific content you need featured on the homepage.

5) Know which things you’re willing to compromise on, and which are crucial. For example, you may know you want a sidebar on the right, not the left, but you don’t really care about the footer.
The clearer your vision (or the more flexible you are) the more likely you are to find something you are happy with.

Some Design Considerations:

1) Do you like the color scheme?
2) Is there an obvious place for a logo image to go? Replacing a default image that the theme provides is easier than having to create your own place for it.
3) Do you want to put a customized banner-style header on your site? Look for a theme that already has that – you can just swap out the image.
4) Do you like the details, such as the color of links or the way images are displayed?
5) Does the them enhance your particular type of content? E.g for text-oriented sites such as  blog, does the them present the text in a clean, easy-to-read manner?
6) Does the overall look appeal to your target audience?
7) If you plan on having pages with sub-pages, how does the theme’s navigation handle that?
8) Is the theme designed with SEO in mind with good use of Heading tags? Ideally H1 tags should be used for the title of your blog post, not the title of your blog.
Generic links like categories, comments, tags etc should be h3 or less – this will leave h2 tags for you to use as subheaders in your blog.

Layout Considerations:
1) How many columns do you want?
2) Do you need built-in advertising banner spots? Or pre-loaded spaces for Adsense?
3) Do you want images with each post that are displayed on the homepage and in posts in a particular way?
4) Is the sidebar where you want it?
5) Does the layout suit the type of content you have e.g. does it showcase videos well, if that’s a focus for you?
6) Does it have the kind of footer you want?
7) Is the layout for a single post page different or the same as the homepage or the archive pages? Some themes hide the sidebar on single post pages for example. Make sure to check such details.
8) Is the navigation bar where you want it?

Functionality Considerations:
1) Does the theme have the types of features you’ll need for your specific content – eg. multimedia features if you are showcasing video or images? Or good social media integration if that’s important to you. Some theme come pre-built to display your latest tweets for example.
2) The homepage can be a source of frustration, especially if you don’t want your site to look ‘bloggy.’ Does the theme allow you to display your content the way you want to? If you need to showcase a video on the front page – choose a theme that has that feature so you don’t need to create it yourself. Does it feature posts from specific categories, for example, which would give you additional ways to highlight content,  or is it just chronologically arranged?
3) What admin options does the theme provide? How easy will it be for you to change things and how much flexibility does the theme give you out-of-the-box?
Does the theme provide ‘widgetized’ areas which easily allow you to change what content is displayed where on the page?

Once you’ve installed a theme, make sure to try it out with a few test posts, comments and images, to see how it all works and if there are details you may have missed, before making a final descision on whether you like it or not. It’s really difficult to get a good feel for how a theme will work for you if you have no content for it to display.

What other features or considerations should be included in these lists that you look for in a theme? Leave a comment!

Selecting a theme is about more than the way it looks. Functionality and the ability to control options from your WordPress dashboard can be just as important. Many people choose a theme on looks alone and then become frustrated because it doesn’t work the way they want it to.

Generally speaking, there’s 3 types of themes available – free, premium and custom-built. To help decide which category you might be in note down your answers to the following questions:

Which best describes your budget?
a. Non-existent, I want to do everything as cheaply as possible
b. Limited – $50 – $150 approx
c. I am willing to spend at least a few hundred dollars  to get what I want.

Do you have a clear visual brand identity including a logo and color scheme?
a. Nope.
b. I have a logo but that’s about it. I just want a nice-looking site.
c. I have a logo and full visual identity that I want my WordPress site to match

How important is uniqueness?
a. Not very. It won’t hurt my site if others use the same theme
b. I don’t mind paying a little to look different but it’s not mission-critical
c. It’s important that my site looks unique.

What is your level of technical savvy, especially regarding design, CSS & PHP?
a. I’m pretty savvy and/or willing to learn & experiment
b. I get how WordPress generally works but am not too familiar with code.
c. I’m not savvy at all and/or would like to be as hands-off as possible

Very generally speaking, if you know some CSS, you can easily change things like fonts and colors and other cosmetic features. If you know PHP you’ll be able to adapt layout & functionality easier.

Which is more important to you in this process– time or money?
a. Money – I have limited resources and would rather expend my own time and energy
b. Hard to say – I have some resources and would be willing to pay in order to make things easier.
c. Time -  I have a budget and no inclination to get my hands dirty with code. I’d rather someone else handle all that stuff and hand me the finished product.

If you answered mostly A’s you will probably want a free theme that either provides some admin options, or that you can tweak a little. If you’re willing to get your hands a little dirty with code, you can probably get it to do what you want, but if not you’ll have to take the theme pretty much as it comes. Some free themes are better-supported than others, so keep that in mind when selecting.

If you answered mostly B’s you will probably want to look at Premium themes that have a lot of dashboard admin options to make customizations easy. Premium themes usually cost around $30 – $90 and are typically well-coded with support of some kind so you can ask questions if you get stuck.

If you answered mostly C’s you may want a custom designed theme which will guarantee a unique theme that does exactly what you want, with minimal effort on your part. This could cost anywhere from a few hundred, to a few thousand dollars depending on the complexity of what you need.

A 4th option is what I call a ‘blank canvas’ theme such as Thesis or Headway which provide the core functions but little design.  They allow you to lay your design on top of their canvas without coding, using a visual interface and/or dashboard admin options to get the look you want. Only buy such a theme if you know how you want your site to look, or have a design to work from,  otherwise you’ll end up with a theme that blends in with everyone else’s. Poorly designed Thesis themes can be spotted a mile away. If you’re pretty savvy and know what you want your site to look like you could also try a free framework theme like Thematic or Hybrid. These are probably not recommended for absolute beginners as the sheer number of options might become overwhelming.

I realize my outline is quite a generalized way of breaking things down – there could be lots of combination of factors. But no matter what your circumstance, keep in mind that there are often trade-offs based on time, money and savvy. If money is no object, or if you are pretty savvy and can put time into working on your theme– you can usually get what you want, one way or another. However if you are restricted by money, and/or time you may have to make a couple of compromises in the way things look or work.

So now you know roughly what type of theme you’re looking for, what are some of the specifics you should look for in your theme? Read: How To Choose A WordPress Theme – Design & Functionality Considerations

What other considerations go into your decisions to choose a theme? I realize my list is not exhaustive, so let me know your experiences.