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[Debbie Mathieson Contribution Level: 1]

Hi Guys,

I want to bring my wordpress.org blog to a more professional level. Could anyone suggest a good theme to use and why? ... Also, generally what is the difference between a paid theme likeThesis (which I keep coming across) and a free one? I'd love to hear some feedback from you.

[Richard Bravo Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 9]

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Morning Debbie,
Kudos for making the leap to a self hosted blog.
The main difference between a paid theme and one that's free is really your own technical ability.

What I mean by that is, either way, you'll want to do some customization to the theme to "brand" it for you.
Paid themes are generally going to require a little more technical ability because they implement an additional level of functionality in Wordpress thus creating a more sophisticated interface on your blog, e.g. one more thing to learn.

Most people go with free themes because they are pretty generic and can be put to use right away.
The down side is, they're generic and everyone and their dog uses them, so your odds of being "unique" are pretty slim.

Paid themes typically offer more features on the back end to help you manage the theme itself as well as your blog. Many include special features for adding advertising positions in the blog, multiple page templates, etc. They also tend to utilize more of the advanced features available in Wordpress such as "custom fields" which allow you to finely tune content distribution, add images to posts excerpts, etc.


So my recommendation would be this...
If it's in your budget, you're already comfortable with how to use Wordpress and you have the time to invest in learning how to use a paid theme AND you have the resources to customize it, then go that route.

There are a couple of paid themes that I favor:
Studio Press which offers a series of magazine style blog layouts, that are very powerful and provide great content management.

Flexx Squeeze which is an awesome theme for internet marketing. It has multiple page layouts built in for creating squeeze/landing pages. Definitely one of my all time favorites.

I've played with Thesis and honestly I don't like it. For me it was too cumbersome. I'm sure I'll revisit it again but for now there are other paid themes, like those I mentioned, that are just as powerful if not more, and can be implemented much faster.

However, if you're still learning how to use Wordpress and you don't have the time to learn how to use all the advanced features of a paid theme, then I would highly recommend earning your stripes with a free theme. Throw it in, put it to use, learn how to customize it, learn Wordpress back and forth, then move to a paid solution. But that has to be a personal choice, only you can answer.

OK, enough of my rambling.... hope that answers your question.
~RB

[Chris Gustafson Contribution Level: 2]

Debbie,

I would recommend you get a custom theme for your blog made for you. The reason why? This will really make you look like a professional marketer who knows what they are doing. It will probably cost you around 500$ but will be worth the cost.

Thanks,

Chris

p.s. before people go to my link below and see my blog does not have a custom theme, I am currently waiting for my custom theme to be finished.

[George Fourie Contribution Level: 2]

Hi Debbie,

Seems like you have a long list of blog themes to consider already!

Depending on how much time you are prepared to invest into learning, in my opinion, nothing is more powerful than the thesis theme.

I've been using thesis for more than a year now and I cant see myself using anything else.

You can customize it to compliment your personal brand as well as setup different pages for capture and sales pages if you want.

So anything you want to do can be done with thesis.

Downside however would be getting use to the technicalities, but they have a very active forum with literally thousands of answers.

I can count on one hand the times that I needed to make a post for an answer as most of the answers are already there.

@Roger, have you tried the support forum? You can find it here - http://diythemes.com.

Hope that helps!

George