Webpage Templates are increasingly popular in several types of websites. The hottest area of the web, weblogging, gets thousands of new writers, visitors, and designers everyday. Many of these bloggers have joined with one of the dominant forces in weblogging – WordPress. Why WordPress? It’s simple to use, yet has a good range of features, and it’s fully supported not only by wordpress.org but by a large segment of the blogging community as well.

Blogging is concerned with many points-of-view; some bloggers make very personal expressions, other bloggers are commercially motivated, while others have a technical or philosophical viewpoint to share. As blogging has increased, it is natural to see that the demand for more unique blog appearances has grown. And, because most bloggers have little if any experience in website design, the demand for variety in an affordable theme has skyrocketed. Many bloggers are content to add text to a standard skin that is shared by the majority of new bloggers and the less esthetically bent bloggers. But after a time even these bloggers usually look to make their blog a more attractive experience for visitors.

I have studied what has been made available in WordPress Templates – both free and for sale. After a lot of looking I decided to present the highlights of my findings – Free vs Sold WordPress Themes.

In the category of Free WordPress Themes my favorite list has 960 WordPress Templates and is found at Emily Robbins’ Blog. Emily has done a great job here. Her website has been around for a while so all of the 960 available themes are still being downloaded.

While I was searching for Free WordPress themes I found two other websites that offer some variety. WordPress itself offers 444 different blog templates at no charge at themes.wordpress.net. Good designs with an array of colors and features are available. “Green Earth� is my favorite, but they’ve had 352,130 downloads of their 638 various themes to date.

Another excellent website is AlexKing.org. This site published 135 free, new WordPress themes some time ago in a competition and they have proven to be very popular with numerous downloads for the blogging crowd. Prize winners are named in several categories, and all 135 blog templates may be downloaded there. My favorite in the competition is titled “Chocolate Candy”.

As for finding a unique, or more exclusive, WP theme you will have to hire a designer or buy a template for a one time download (or at least for a limited number of downloads). For commercial blogging, or for anyone who wants a distinctive look, an exclusive skin may be the best solution. New designers or experienced designers with budget or schedule constraints can get one of these templates and be operational in a hurry. Three WordPress template sellers that have validated templates at a good price are www.TemplateMonster.com, www.HyperTemplates.com and www.Perfectory.com

Weblogging will continue to grow, and many of today’s bloggers will eventually move up to websites for ecommerce, or marketing of their own local, small business.

Arachnophobic,
Arthur Browning