Just finished a site using Theme Trust’s Reveal Premium WordPress theme. Great customer service. Theme took a little bit of love. Here’s why.
Theme Junkie
Opened since September 2009, the guys at Theme Junkie have some nice themes available – just under 30 of them at the time of this writing.
They offer their themes via single purchases or club memberships, and are worth checking out (check their site for pricing).
As a side note, Theme Junkie’s Daily theme was used as the base for a medical blog I helped complete in 2011.
Elegant Themes
Though not a “marketplace”, such as ThemeForest, with multiple theme authors, Elegant Themes is well established and worth checking out.
With access to over 75 themes for $39/yr, a growing feature list and eye for design, they are worth checking out.
For the all-inclusive price of $39, you are only paying $.50 per theme!
You are also free to use their themes to build websites for your clients.
Lots to learn as you get started – $39 is hard to beat. Check out their Gallery and see if anything strikes your fancy.
Headway Themes
Sometimes working with a blank slate can be the way to go. Especially if it’s Drag and Drop.
Themezilla
It’s hard to limit what can be said about Orman Clark and the team behind Themezilla. Why? Because he is also the guy behind PremiumPixels.com (free stuff for aspiring designers) and overall good design.
I’ve personally used or worked with a number of Orman’s themes (now “Themezilla’s Themes”) and can vouch for their ease of use and customer support.
It’s a good place to start if you want to start somewhere other than ThemeForest.
They also have some plugins worth checking out.
ThemeForest.net
ThemeForest, and the entire Envato Marketplace family, has changed the way many build, access, and approach web construction, design, and extension. It’s a win-win, for users and designers, developers and owners.
In their words, you can begin your search for:
Site templates and themes to skin popular CMS products like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, starting at $5.
It’s a great place to start for WordPress Themes, and I recommend it.
Gravity Forms
Web-based Forms can be semi-cumbersome, if not daunting and detailed to make, especially for a new designer.
The WordPress community, of which I am most familiar with – as opposed to Drupal or Joomla – is active with making things like building forms easier.
Contact Form 7 was the first contact form plugin/builder I was introduced to for WordPress. It had a great following and wide use. Previously I had used (and loved) JotForm, the “first web based WYSIWYG form builder” which, like WuFoo, lets developers visually build forms while storing the collected information in the user’s account (don’t forget Google Forms). This “offsite” setup and collection was (and for many still is) great. It was easy to build and embed, but I wanted to store collected responses in our own site’s database visible in the WordPress backend.
Well, as is often the case with me, options sparked my exploration. I eventually settled on/with Gravity Forms and have been happy ever since.
ManageWP.com
For those working with and/or supporting multiple WordPress sites, I have found ManageWP to be a helpful service.
From their site:
All your sites under one dashboard! ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one dashboard, keeping them updated and secure.
I don’t get anything for telling you about them, I just like them and appreciate what they’ve permitted me to do and accomplish a little more easily as I support and manage multiple WordPress websites.
DISQUS Comment System
It’s not that the WordPress comment system has anything entirely lacking for a basic site, but that the DISQUS comment system adds much more.
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