At this point we need to wait for your domain name to propagate round the internet so that you see your blog when you type it in. Typically this takes a couple of hours, so we'll be focussing on things we can do away from your site while we wait. Step 3 will take you about 45 minutes or less depending on how long we take to find you a blog theme.
What is a Wordpress Theme?
Wordpress Themes are complete design solutions for your blog, incorporating all of the required blog functionality and page layouts for your site. Built to be SEO optimized and ready to use out of the box, they work as a plug and play solution that is uploaded into Wordpress. Wordpress comes with a simplistic default theme that is good enough to confirm that everything works, but provides no individuality or class to your site, and this is where custom themes come in.
Standing Out From the Crowd
There are a growing number of professional "premium" theme design companies around now that produce very well designed solutions that can take your blog to a new level. It's important to differentiate yourself if you want to appear trustworthy and professional and themes are a great shortcut that is very economical.
Saving Money
Prices for a theme range from $0 to around $100. The best ones I've seen tend to be from $20-$80. Compare this to using the services of a designer and a developer to build you a blog, which could cost you anything from $1000-$5000 and you can see how cost effective it is.
What it also does is it allows you to get your product/site to market much more quickly. And you can always have a designer work on a completely tailored solution down the road when your venture starts to make money.
What is Your Site About?
In order to decide which theme to use for your blog, you need to define what type of blog it is. The categories listed below are some that your site could fall into, all of which have an array of choices when it comes to premium Wordpress themes.
Theme Categories
This list is an example of some of the Wordpress theme types you will find to power your new blog tonight:
- Personal Blog
- News
- Celebrity Gossip
- Real Estate
- Entertainment
- Photography
- Video/TV
- Restaurant
- Travel
- Fashion
- Product Reviews
- Web Hosting
- Design
Where to Find the Best Wordpress Themes
There are a lot of premium Wordpress theme providers around, but these ones are by far the best when it comes to design, layout, choice and originality.
How to Test Drive Wordpress Themes - Live Demos
All Wordpress theme designers provide a way for you to view the theme in action. There are two ways to view a theme; Screenshots and Live Demos. The Live Demo lets you actually view an example blog that uses the theme, so you can navigate around it and see how it really works. In our recommended themes below, we provide direct links to these Live Demos so you can easily give them a spin.
The Best Wordpress Themes
There are hundreds of Wordpress themes available at the sites listed above. For now we'll show what we think are the best of the best to give you an idea of how great your site can look.
This is the time to realize how amazing your blog can look simply by buying a theme. It's quite mind blowing really and wasn't possible even a few years ago.
So go ahead and Choose A Theme Now.
Your blog can look like this by the end of the night:
Best News Themes
*****
A classic New York newspaper design provides a complete news solution complete with featured stories with smooth rotating photography.
news, magazine
****
Named for it's liquid scaling ability, this theme grows to fit the size of your screen giving it a "massive" broadsheet feel on a big monitor.
news, magazine
*****
A clean layout with a focus on photography, Newsport comes in 10 different color schemes to suit your taste. Its simplicity provides good usability.
news, magazine
****
Elegant and simplistic. The airy and relaxed design encourages patient reading and a bright positive experience. Good theme for a health or religious concept.
news, magazine, health
*****
Heavily influenced by the CNN website, this is a great news site theme where bold colors against a simple clean white design really make the photography pop.
news, magazine
*****
A bright and boldly colored design with a grungy edge to it. Heavy focus on photography for the featured stories.
news, magazine, photography
Best Celebrity, Gossip & Fashion Themes
*****
A beautiful theme designed for celebrity gossip blogs or fashion news. Includes a video player to give it a modern TV feel.
celebrity, gossip, fashion
*****
The Vanity theme is styled for fashion and celebrity news or to be targeted at a female audience. Includes a slick scrolling featured post area and large photography.
celebrity, gossip, fashion
Best Real Estate Themes
*****
A professional real estate theme with featured properties, property details and photos. Very well constructed templates for the subject matter. Single or multi-agent available.
real estate
*****
A slick and clean Real Estate theme for Wordpress. Like all Gorilla Real Estate Themes it comes in single agent or multi-agent which is useful if you are managing a team of realtors.
real estate
Best Photo / Art Themes
****
Simplistic theme designed for photography or music albums reviews. Bold graphical styling and large photography.
photography, music, art
****
Another simple but effective photo portfolio theme focused on large photography with descriptions and photo navigation. Has a nice dark feeling suitable for an alternative teen audience.
photography, art
*****
A beautifully colorful theme focused entirely on photography. Includes a rating mechanism for community participation.
photography, art, community
Best Video Themes
*****
Big, bold and simple. This video-centric theme gets right to the point. Each video has its own page with descriptions, comments and a great fullscreen mode. Nice modern brushed metal background.
video
*****
Very sharp and clean design with a social networking video concept. Sharing and community are a focus in this video-centric theme.
video
****
A simple dark video theme with social networking features and a cool navigation console beside the video player.
video, tv
Best Gaming Themes
*****
100% pure gaming gold. This game review theme is perfectly designed for the genre and has an architecture in keeping with the needs of the content.
gamer, review, magazine
*****
Beautifully designed game review theme. And best of all it's FREE. Not sure on the code quality as it's free, but you should download it to try it out.
gamer, review, magazine, free
More Great Themes
Beautiful travel theme for a tourism based site. Recently released latest version is packed with great features. Great background design makes it enticing - 5 color variations.
travel, tourism
Perfect for a small restaurant or coffee shop. This design oozes comfort and intimacy. Nice page layouts with space for enticing photography.
small business, restaurant, coffee shop
Nice and simple. This theme can be used for multiple categories of site due to its contemporary design and neutral color scheme.
clean, news, music, books
A grungy news theme that has a sports and scrapbooking feel to it. The design is truly original with nice torn edges.
news, sports, scrapbook
A very original urban music theme with a kick-ass graffiti background design. Supports music and videos.
urban, news, music
A modern/grunge style theme with space for beautiful photography and a cool background.
urban, news, photography
Found a Theme?
Perfect. Once you've found one that works for you, buy it (or not if it's a free one) and download it to your onenightsite.com folder. In a few steps we'll be uploading it to Wordpress and you'll get to see your blog/site come to life.
Step 4 - Download Wordpress Plugins »
STEP 3 COMPLETE
