Dustin’s Design

Mark Hodder

50 Best Premium WordPress Themes of 2008

2008 has been a productive year for WordPress theme development and the premium/paid/proprietory theme industry. I have chosen fifty of my favourite premium themes released this year, which I feel are all attractive and innovative in their design and features.

I found it really difficult to limit myself to just 50 themes, as there are so many great themes available. Do you agree with my selections, or have I omitted your favourites? Let me know in the comments.

1. Ambience | WooThemes

Demo | Purchase | Single User: $70 | Developer License: $150
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Flexx Theme Billboard Plugin and Style Variants

iThemes have added an impressive range of styles to their flagship Flexx Theme, in addition to the original Canvas and Bold Styles. The full range of styles is listed below, and I will update this post if any additional styles are added later.

Although you may only purchase a single style with the single license (the multiple-use package includes them all), it’s easy to alter the appearance of the theme via its integrated colour picker and background image uploader.

An advertising management plugin called Billboard has also been integrated into the theme, which allows the blogger to easily upload images from within the plugin management page and to place ads in any widgetized area.

Purchase FlexxTheme | Single License: $79.95 | Multiple License: $199.95

Flexx Bold

Demo

Flexx Canvas

Demo

Flexx Canvas Arial

Demo

Flexx Canvas Georgia

Demo

Flexx Camo

Demo
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CrossFit by Imperium

Seasonal Discounts

The recent 4 themes for the price of 1 offer from Woo Themes has been extended until midnight (GMT) on 31 December.

WP-Realtor has cut 25% from the price of the Bel Air Theme until 31 December.

ThemeGalaxy has cut theme prices over the festive period to $60 for single licenses and $120 for developers.

PremiumThemes.net is giving a 25% discount on all themes until 31 December. Use the coupon code “HappyNewYear” to claim the discount.

New theme site PremiumThemes.com is currently offering themes for $59 (normal price $99). Use coupon code ‘Christmas’ to claim the discount.

iThemes is offering 25% off theme combo packages until 31 December.

Planet Cazmo Blog

Funkee Munkees

MyHome Pro

MyHome Pro is a personal blog theme which also aggregates your online activity. Its unique theme options page facilitates the inclusion of your Twitter, Flickr, Stumbleupon, Digg, Furl, Technorati accounts and other feeds into the extended footer section.

Features:

• Threaded and paged comments in WordPress 2.7 and automatically adjusts to the legacy comments for earlier versions
• Widget-ready sidebar
• Custom footer for displaying your online activity (Twitter, Flickr, Stumble, Digg, Furl, Technorati and other accounts)
• Fluid or Fixed Width Appearance
• Standard Blog or Custom Homepage
• Clean, easy to customise code
• Compatible with WordPress 2.5 – 2.7
• Cross-Browser Compatible

Demo | Purchase | Single License: $49.99 | Developer License: $89.99

Chris Fable

Made in Mundo (Redesign)

SonarTech

SonarTech by StyleWP provides an easy CMS interface for a company site and blog. In fact, StyleWP are using this theme (with some tweaks) to run their newly designed site.

I was provided with a review copy of the theme to try out. The theme was provided with brief installation instructions, a psd of the logo, and the font used in the logo.

Once I’d installed and activated the theme, I was able to access the SonarTech control panel which provides 71 settings for controlling the site appearance and usage. These options include the site’s meta keywords and meta description, which are both important factors in search engine optimization. A field for Google Analytics code is also included.

The theme also provides options to show/hide the search field, and to list your pages and categories in the header menu, as well as the option of using gravatars in the comments and a footer link to the top of the page.

The homepage layout is divided into six blocks under the top banner section, consisting of a set of four blocks which each contain a small image and some text, and two larger blocks underneath. You may easily edit the content in blocks 1-5 by completing the fields for each block’s title, image url, main contents, link url and link text; so perhaps you could use a particular block to introduce an aspect of your business, then link to a static page for more information on that issue.

Block six provides a list of recent blog posts with excerpts, and though the link text may be edited from the control panel, I was surprised that you couldn’t also change the news image above those excerpts via the panel.

Beyond the homepage, two sidebars are shown on the left and right sides of the page, which are also controlled via the theme options page. You’re given the option of including a list of up to 20 recent blog posts and/or a drop-down of your monthly archives.

On the left hand sidebar two small blocks may be added, for just a small image and title, perhaps to promote a particular product or service explained elsewhere on the site. Three larger blocks are also available on the right side, which may be edited similarly to the homepage blocks.

Lastly, you’re able to provide the standard footer copyright and company information within the control panel, which is very handy.

I like the way that sample images are provided so the theme doesn’t look empty when you first start to use it, but I think that the required image sizes should be mentioned in the control panel for each block as each image needs to be cropped to the required size before use.

Overall though, I feel that SonarTech is a really easy-to-use, and professional theme to promote a business, product or service, especially for people who aren’t confident about editing theme files.

Features:

• Comprehensive theme control panel
• Drop-down navigational menu
• Multiple built-in promotional blocks
• Widgetized sidebar
• Valid XHTML & CSS
• Major browser compatible
• Logo PSD & font files supplied

Demo | Purchase | Multiple Use: $31

Gotryke

The Horror Brothers

The Tip’d Blog

Premium WordPress Themes and the GPL Discussions

In early 2008 I used to write regular premium news posts which included links to discussions within the WordPress community about the future of premium themes, and it seemed like every few days a new issue would be raised for debate.

The debate seemed to have quietened down recently until a few days ago when over 200 themes were culled from the theme directory at wordpress.org. It was revealed that some of these free GPL themes had been removed for linking (via the designer’s credit) to sites selling premium themes, a fact which has sparked a great deal of debate from a range of perspectives. The inclusion criteria for the theme directory has also been changed to include the following statement: “Themes for sites that support non-GPL (or compatible) themes or violate the WordPress community guidelines themes will not be approved.”

Here are some sites I’ve come across which have been discussing these decisions:

• Spectacula: WordPress.org Pull 200 GPL Themes
• Justin Tadlock: Automattic putting the boot to premium theme developers
• Alister Cameron: Matt Mullenweg, WordPress, GPL and why I think he really gets it.
• ProBlogging: WordPress Targets Premium Designers for Deletion
• The Blog Herald: 200 Themes Removed From WordPress.org – Matt Explains Why
• Jeffro2pt0:
  • Why Were 200 WordPress Themes Removed?
  • Why Am I So Passionate About A Piece Of Software
  • The Theme Saga Continues
  • More Thoughts On Premium Themes
• wordpress™ wank: here we go again
• The Inquistr: More Hypocrisy from Mullenweg and WordPress with new themes jihad
• Omninoggin: Are Premium WordPress Plugins/Themes Unethical?
• XFEP: WordPress’ “GPL” and Theme Mess
• Blogjer: WordPress.org say no to premium, non-GPL complient theme
• Fun with WordPress: What’s the point of community

Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, has submitted comments to some of the above posts, but I was intrigued to discover that he will be meeting with Jeff Chandler for a special WordPress Weekly later today (Thursday) at 1pm EST to discuss the whole saga.

And in other news, iThemes has just launched a Premium Movable Type Theme Store, with the full backing of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type…

UPDATE: The recording of the 2 hour interview with Matt Mullenweg has been posted at Weblog Tools Collection, and Flick of WPSnippets has transcribed the discussions here, here and here.

More discussions:

Fun with WordPress: Careful, I’m licensed to thrill

Justin Tadlock: Some thoughts on the WordPress community, themes, and the GPL

Dan Cameron: Premium WordPress Themes and Plugins Inherit the GPL license

Kristarella: WordPress and the GNU General Public License

ilovecolors: WordPress and Premium Themes. In support of Matt’s decision

WPMarketer: WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg is a Stand Up Guy

WhatIThink: WordPress and the GPL

Idealien Studios: Premium or Proprietary Themes? and WordPress: Commited to open source

Asep Onde

WooThemes 4 for 1 Special

The WooThemes guys are offering an early Christmas present to those purchasing a theme during the next week:

• Buy a Single License for $70 USD and get any 3 other themes (on Single Licenses) of your choice; or
• Buy a Developer License for $150 USD and get any 3 other themes (on Developer Licenses) of your choice.

It’s a tempting alternative to joining their theme club, especially if you have a definite preference for certain themes and aren’t concerned about having access to future theme releases.

Abstract Theme

WooThemes’ twentieth theme is the gorgeous Abstract theme, designed by über-designer Veerle Pieters.

The theme provides a grid-based design with a lovely wood-like vector background and cute swirling graphics, which displays specified page content above two columns of recent blog post excerpts and thumbnail images on the homepage. It would be perfect for a personal or subject-related blog, but could also be adapted for business use.

Features:

• 5 colour schemes
• A custom home page to include specific page content and recent blog posts
• Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap
• A completely widgetized sidebar & two widgets spots available in the footer.
• Custom widgets: Contact Details, Campaign Monitor, Popular Content
• Styling for the lifestream widget.
• Comprehensive Theme Options page
• Automatic Image Resizer for the blog post thumbnails on the home page;
• Gravatar Support for Comments
• Integrated Banner Management script

Demo | Purchase | Single License: $70 | Developer License: $150 or Join the WooThemes Club

Slidepress Theme

The Slidepress theme by Jai of Blog Oh Blog provides a coda-style slider for recent posts on the homepage. This feature provides visitors with a novel way of viewing content which might be ideal for a personal or business blog.

Features:

• Custom drop-down menu for pages & sub-pages
• Widgetized areas under post section
• Uniquely designed comments section
• Support for 125x125px and 468×60px ads
• Gallery for WP 2.5+
• Valid CSS/XHTML code
• Gravatar Ready
• Custom 404 Error page

Demo | Purchase | Single License: $49.99