Premium-Themes

What do you want your website to look like?

Premium Themes

Last Updated: April 1st, 2011

Designing a website from scratch can take forever and the costs can be astronomical. Lucky for you, WordPress has a constantly expanding community of designers working for you! Instead of building 1 site for $1,000, they build it to work with WordPress and sell it to the masses for $0-$99, with hopes of making a lot more money (…and they do!).

It’s a double edged sword! There are a lot of WordPress themes available, however they come in varying levels of quality, price and customization access. Things to bear in mind include Pricing Structure, Footer Link Requirements, Included .PSD, Code Access, etc.(You may want to read this Premium WordPress Theme Guide by iThemes before going forward). To make it easier to find the best free and premium themes, we have done the dirty work and created a one-stop resource for you to access all the themes without getting lost. If you have any questions about a particular theme and want to make sure you’re making the right investment, feel free to contact us. This list is constantly growing so feel free to bookmark this page and use it as a resource. Enjoy!

Dedicated Premium Theme Ranking Sites

  • WP Hell – While I’m not sure of the relevance to Hell, this is a great Premium Themes search
  • WordPressThemes – The best Premium WordPress Themes
  • PremiumWP – Another Premium Themes Ranking Site
  • ThemeFinder – Find WordPress Themes Visually by WPCandy.com
  • ThemeSorter – In depth Search Functionality. Launched earlier this month, owner Steve and his wife are working non-stop to get every premium/commercial theme from the major sellers indexed in detail.
  • QualiThemes – Finding themes by searching for keywords
  • Yellow Themes – A theme search engine worth trying out.

Independant Design Shop

The list below is made up of the Premium Theme designers sites. The source for the above lists were made from searching the following theme sites for the best of the best. They are in alphabetical order and what separates one theme designer from another will become apparent as you search through them. (NOTE: Prices below reflect most, if not all, pricing options for each theme shop. Some prices may be left off list if too particular or not relevant.)

SU = Single User License For 1 Website

UD = Unlimited Domains Installs

ATP = All Themes For One Time Fee

PM = All Access Per Month

PQ = All Access Per Quarter

PY = All Access Per Year

* = Membership Site Only

Premium Theme MarketPlaces

As opposed to a specific Design Shop, Marketplaces aggregate templates from individuals as opposed to in-house developers. Code quality and price can vary. In 2010, WPCandy published an article about a premium themes marketplace, referring to them as giving users the ability to start a ”web development business without the overhead of hiring a staff or spending dozens of hours creating custom themes for my clients.” This should hold true for any premium theme, except MarketPlaces are known for unbeatable prices. (Just beware of bad code):

Theme FrameWorks:

WordPress theme frameworks are all the rage. There is no question that developing themes using a framework is the most efficient way to develop with WordPress. Options-based frameworks seek to provide an ideal number of customization options that allow the developer (and end user) to change the look and operation of the framework without touching code. This type of framework will allow for modifications to the code, either through custom files or child themes, but the emphasis is placed on theme and page options. In 2010, Ryan Imel compared 23 Theme Frameworks. “There are a number of options, both free and paid, with varying levels of complexity and support. How do you even begin to choose?” This list includes those mentioned and more…

*All “Starter” frameworks are marked with a “*”. Starter theme frameworks are themes with optimized and documented template files that are designed to be used as the foundation of new themes. It’s unlikely that these frameworks will offer many, if any, theme options.  (For further WPCandy WordPress Framework Comparison, read-more here.)

The Future of WordPress Themes In 2011

The Future of WordPress Themes in 2011: It’s inevitable, really. At the beginning of each year thoughts turn to the coming months and what they will bring. For many of us, that means WordPress: specifically WordPress themes. To assist with your own prognostications, we’ve brought together the thoughts from some of the biggest and most influential minds in WordPress and asked them a couple of simple questions

Where do you think WordPress themes are headed in 2011? What will be the new innovations and techniques that everyone will be talking about in 2011? – Read the full article by WPCandy.