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January 20, 2006

My Comprehensive WordPress Theme List Crosses the 600 Mark!!

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Wow, I can’t believe it — I’ve just uploaded the latest update to my WP theme list and it now contains a mindblowing 615 free wordpress themes that wordpress users can download and use on their blogs for free.

Some of the themes have been tested on WordPress 2.0, and have been marked as such, and a few of the themes are actually specifically for WordPress 2.0 and won’t work with 1.5.x (also marked accordingly).

I’m super excited about the prospect of all the new themes to come down the pipeline now that WP 2.0 is out — and for all of the updates to current themes that theme authors might be lured into performing given the fabulous customization that wordpress 2 allows.

For those who don’t know, WordPress 2.0 has taken themes to the next level in a serious way, providing the ability for theme authors to actually allow theme users with options that can be easily customized through a panel in the adminstration area of WordPress.  If a theme is customizable, there will be a tab under Presentation for “Current Theme Options”.

The Default theme that is packaged with WordPress 2.0 allows you to make changes to the theme’s header, including the font color and colors used for the background of the header.

But themes like Regulus 2.0 really take it up a knotch by providing checkboxes allowing the blog owner to change the header image, the color scheme, whether to show full posts or excerpts on the homepage, whether to display the post’s author on the homepage, as well as sidebar options such as ‘show calendar’, ‘show recent posts’, ‘show all archive months’, etc. 

You can also see a running demo of a new WP 2.0 theme called BloxPress which actually allows the blog viewer to change the layout of the theme, dragging and dropping theme sections around to change their order in the sidebar at will and adding and removing content as it suits them (something which I wish was incorporated into the WordPress core for the blog owners, at least).  Seriously cool stuff.

It’s a beautiful thing, this level of customization.  I sincerely hope that more WordPress 2.0 theme authors create their themes with these sort of theme options (and more!) in mind!

WordPress 2.0 also allows theme designers to include a screenshot as part of their theme package which will then display on the Presentation|Themes tab so it’s much easier to select a theme that’s suited to your blogging style.

I’m going to need a better way of managing my theme list now that some themes are for v1.5.x and others just for 2.0, etc which isn’t something I can easily due from within the constrains of TypePad.  Which leads me to my next post….feeling like I’m stuck in limbo and with a conundrum on my hands.

January 20, 2006 in Templates, Themes, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post

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UPDATE: How to Blog has MOVED! Please update your bookmarks and feeds! The new address is :
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