I recently tested a Premium WordPress theme, that I have had my eye on for awhile, the theme is named WPRemix. Besides I had heard so much about Remix that my curiosity had finally gotten the better of me. The purchase price $75.00 for a single use license was in line with most other themes also claiming to be “Premium”.
 
At the home site for WPRemix the marketing hype makes some pretty bold claims, that I was eager to put to the test. Here is the main tagline’s claim to potential customers:
 

Bundled with more than 50 strategically designed & coded custom static page templates, the theme enables everyone to publish small sites in minutes saving weeks of time and maintain top notch standards-compliant quality.”

50 Different templates

50 templates, that’s right 10 Home Pages, 20 Inner site Pages, 5 Gallery type pages, 5 product pages and 5 miscellaneous specialty pages. If you do the math, that comes to actually 45 pages. with some fudging of the numbers, I guess you could also include a Blog Page which WordPress creates and a Contact page which  a plug-in might also create bringing the template count up to 47 total, still shy 3+ templates of “more than 50″.
 
Though technically not pages, the theme also ships with 4 headers, 6 sidebars and an optional footer. If you counted these additional files the total template count rises to 57. This small caveat is only an observation that I made and not so critical a point considering that most other WordPress themes come with only a “Home” page and a “Blog” page. The shear number of templates that Remix includes is where it’s true strength lies. It’s not just the number of templates, but the careful selection and design that went into them.
 
As you study the templates closely, the subtle considerations that went into the layout and extensive CSS cross-browser compliant styling becomes apparent. With Remix it is difficult to create a new page style or design that has not already been included. This translates directly into a shorter site development time when creating new websites. The diversity and flexibility of the CSS styling is as if someone poured out a large box of “LEGO” parts on the floor in front of you from which anything imaginable could be created. Anyone that has designed more than a few websites will tell you to never re-invent the wheel. Cutting and pasting CSS snippets of code here and there is common practice when coming up with new site designs.
 
Because WordPress provides a WYSIWYG visual design tab under which to work, a false sense of simplicity can develop for those who know little of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). And this as it turns out is the biggest complaint regarding the Remix theme. However, it is all a matter of perspective as to how valid this complaint is. WordPress by default fosters an industry attitude that anyone who can read and type can design a website. This simply is not true, otherwise there wouldn’t be an HTML tab just to the right of the visual tab in the WordPress editor. Obviously as human beings we all tend to ask for more than we can digest once we gain enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Anyone who expects to be adding rich media such as audio and video to their sites in WordPress should also be prepared to get their feet wet with at least a basic understanding of CSS and HTML. I have seen discussions on the support forum mention that the theme is better suited for experienced developers. I don’t entirely agree with this statement. If you use the theme templates as they are, without imagining all sorts of things you would like to do but don’t possess the knowledge to accomplish, a perfectly presentable professional website can be created by most end users. Still, The theme is a great time saver for those who understand CSS and a bit more daunting for those who may need to brush up on their CSS and HTML.
 
Of course, all of the standard bells and whistles one would expect to find are present and accounted for in the functionality of the Remix theme. RSS Feeds, Subscribe by FeedBurner email forms, sharing and bookmarking, a site search field, Testimonials and much more. There are unique specialty pages that provide for tabbed and slider presentation of information. You will be hard pressed to imagine much more than has already been thought of in Remix.

One last important observation regarding this theme is, Remix is the only theme that currently offers a “Website” with a “Blog”. When you check out other themes you will notice that they will typically only have a “Landing/Home” page and a “Blog” page. I have designed sites using Remix that have actually been “De-Blogged”, as stand-alone websites. This capability alone, should give even the most discerning potential customer a reason to look at Remix a bit closer, before making any other theme purchase.
 

Support Forum

Finally, the Remix theme has a support forum which stands behind the product. I found the forum support a bit different than most other forums. It seems to be modeled more after a private technical support forum than an open discussion format where any and everything is discussed. This has never prevented me from getting answers to my questions regarding the theme. I actually observed response times of less than an hour in many instances when a question had been asked. I noticed that the moderator will tactfully redirect you to support links if you do not ask questions directly related to the theme, i.e., do not expect to get support for setting up Google Analytics at the Remix forum.
 
For anyone looking to shorten website design time and the most bang for the buck, you might want to check out the Remix theme. It is long on choices and options and maybe a bit longer on learning curve as well. But for those willing to learn a little CSS and HTML, the return on the investment is well worth the effort.

• Visit WPRemix WordPress Theme Business Solution

How much time and money do you spend designing and creating sites? Have you ever tried to build a membership site – then you know the extremely irksome problems with plugins that never seem to work or are simply incompatible with your theme. If you’re like most marketers, you’d spent ages and incurring expensive costs (and nervous system) to design and create your Internet marketing sites.

Here’s what’s probably happening:

1. You either try to design and create sites yourself
2. Or you outsource them to a designer and/or programmer

And the results are:

1. Typically results in poor quality, since you’re not a designer to begin with.
2. Usually costs you quite a bit of money.

Both first and second solution take quite some time to finish. You might say that the second solution is fast since you outsource the work to professionals who know what they’re doing. But the problem is – you are not their only customer; they have a dozen other customers to serve, plus the back and forth communication between you and them means it’s going to take some time for your site to be completed to your liking.

So what’s a marketer to do?

There is a faster solution – Profits WP Theme

In the video presentation below you can see how simple and fast you can build a membership site with this theme. And it is cheaper too, compared with the two time consuming and expensive solutions above (do it yourself, or outsource to a designer).

Click here to view the embedded video.

With this WordPress theme you can create a protected, multi-level membership site (it can also drip-feed content), product launch pages, one-time-offer pages, sales pages, squeeze pages, legal pages, thank you pages, and more in mere minutes – and why make it more complicated than it is?

• Demo Profits WP Theme
• Download Profits WP Theme

PressWork is the name of a free, open source theme framework built for WordPress 3.2 using HTML5 and CSS3 – Created by two dedicated WordPress enthusiasts, c.bavota and Brendan Sera-Shriar. This is a very flexible WordPress HTML5 Theme Framework suitable for designers, developers & publishers.

One of the main features is the front end editor. The theme has a simple drag & drop to set up your layout. Define any layout you want in the header, main content and footer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is one of the best WordPress tools released for a long while – and gives even beginner theme developers a possibility to easily test and preview different design solutions. That is one of the characteristics that makes this framework to a useful and time saving tool.

PressWork Theme Download And Preview

PressWork theme is released under GPL license. It can be used for all your projects for free and without any restrictions and you may modify the theme as you wish – you can read more about the license at A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

• Preview PressWork Free WordPress Theme
• Download PressWork Free WordPress Theme

Magz is yet another beautiful and free WordPress magazine theme created by the San Diego (USA) based AJ Clarke from WPExplorer. It is something so very unusual as a dark cleanly designed WP theme – completely without those design excesses you for some strange reason often find on dark blogging themes.

The Magz WP themes appearance is effective and modern – and presents your content in an appealingly beneficial way. According to the theme designer, the Magz WP theme is intended for all sorts of blogging and news sites.

Magz Theme Features

This is a summary of features of The Magz magazine theme, for more detailed information and updates you can visit the Magz theme download page.

• WordPress 3.0+ Compatible
• Full Width Style Design
• Popular Posts With Thumbs
• Extended Footer Section (optional)
• Theme Panel
• Tracking Code Integration
• Gravatar Supported

Magz Theme Download And Preview

Magz theme is released under GPL license. It can be used for all your projects for free and without any restrictions and you may modify the theme as you wish – you can read more about the license at A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

• Preview Magz Free WordPress Theme
• Download Magz Free WordPress Theme

We usually don’t deal (at least not very often) with templates to the Blogger platform – the lack of flexibility compared with something like WordPress makes it, honestly, a bit boring. But we do understand, that it is just the simplicity that is Blogger’s strength – millions of people that normally wouldn’t write online, have been able to blog because of the Blogger platforms user friendly simplicity and accessibility.

Blogger is a good choice if you enjoy the “writing” part of blogging, and don’t have the knowledge or will to style a blog from scratch – but that is not an excuse to not have a well structured and a bit personal blog appearance: In this article we present five Blogger templates that you can download for free and easily enhance your blog appearance.

Five Free Blogger Templates

Clean Blogger Template

Video Blog Blogger Template

Inove Blogger Template

Freshness Blogger Template

Pacifika Blogger Template

As we wrote before, all these templates can be downloaded free. If you wonder how to change template, then you can find some tips here: How To Change Blogger Template.

For even more easy to follow tips and information on how to customize Blogger, visit this link: Blogger tips on Cashrevelations.com (our little collection of Blogger articles).

As the HTML5 standard slowly but surely approaches, the demand for HTML5 compatible WordPress themes increase – already now you can find a somewhat impressing collection of HTML5 coded WordPress themes if you do a Google search. In this short article we would like present three HTML5 WordPress themes we think deserve some attention.

On 14 February 2011 W3C extended the charter of its HTML Working Group with clear milestones. The Group is expected to advance HTML5 to “Last Call” in May 2011.

3 HTML5 Coded WordPress Themes

Temple Gate by Lotus Seeds Design
Temple Gate is a two column and fixed width, beautifully styled WP theme. According to the developer, the light design is inspired by the spirituality of Japanese Temple Gates.
Demo

Retro Stripes by ThemePals
Retro Stripes is a two column and fixed width, blog styled and light WordPress theme – intended for bloggers, designers and photographers. Earlier featured on Cashrevelations.
Demo

Photoly 2011 by Premium Like Themes
Photoly 2011 is an easy to use two column and fixed width (900px) WordPress gallery theme with a light and cleanly designed appearance. Earlier featured on Cashrevelations.
Demo

All three themes are free for download without any previous registration and released under GPL license. For more information about GPL license: A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

Shopkeeper is a free, two column and fixed width e-commerce WordPress theme designed by Madoido for DukaPress. The theme is based on the no longer maintained Journalist WP theme by Lucian E. Marin – and it offers a refreshing clean and minimalistic environment to showcase your arsenal of different e-commerce products.

The theme is designed to work with the DukaPress e-Commerce Plugin for WordPress – and it is a good alternative if you want to build up an online shop, especially if you are familiar with CSS and HTML coding. The code did not pass as valid CSS or HTML during our validation test, but many of the errors are relatively easy to correct and the theme also works like it should even with these errors.

DukaPress e-Commerce WordPress Plugin

DukaPress plugin is an open source e-commerce solution built for the WordPress platform that can be used to easily build online shops. According to the developers (Nairobi based Nickel Pro), DukaPress is built to be both simple and elegant yet powerful and scalable.

The plugin has an impressive (especially considering that it is a free software) range of useful features like regular mode or catalog mode, related products, several payment or delivery options and more. DukaPress also has some premium addons in their assortment.

• Download DukaPress on WordPress

ShopKeeper WP Theme Features

This is a summary of features of The ShopKeeper WordPress e-Commerce theme, for more information and updates you can visit the ShopKeeper download page on DukaPress.

• WordPress 3.0 Compatible
• DukaPress Compatible
• 2 Column Layout
• Widget Ready Sidebar
• Custom Template To Show Products In Categories Automatically

ShopKeeper WP Theme Download And Preview

ShopKeeper e-Commerce theme is released under GPL license. It can be used for all your projects for free and without any restrictions and you may modify the theme as you wish – you can read more about the license at A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

• ShopKeeper WordPress e-Commerce Theme Demo
• ShopKeeper WordPress e-Commerce Theme Download

Retro Stripes by ThemePals is a new two column and fixed width, blog styled and light WordPress theme – intended for bloggers, designers and photographers. The theme consequently has portfolio options and a refreshing design that fits well for those categories of users, or others who enjoy modern and youthful appearances.

The Retro Stripes theme options page is very basic – according to the developers, new features will be added in a near future. But it does offer header and footer insert for custom shortcodes or HTML. You can see a preview of the theme options page below.

• Preview Retro Stripes Theme Options Page

One interesting thing with Retro Stripe theme is how it is coded – in pure and valid HTML5 and CSS3 (the next and very anticipated revision of the HTML and CSS standards).

Retro Stripes Theme Features

This is a summary of features of The Retro Stripes WordPress blogging and portfolio theme, for more information and updates you can visit the Retro Stripes download page.

• WordPress 3.0 Compatible
• jQuery Featured Post Slider
• Dynamic Image Sizing
• Gravatar Supported
• Twitter Integration
• Theme Options Page

Retro Stripes Theme Download And Preview

Retro Stripes theme is released under GPL license. It can be used for all your projects for free and without any restrictions and you may modify the theme as you wish – you can read more about the license at A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

• Retro Stripes WordPress Theme Demo
• Retro Stripes WordPress Theme Download

Photoly 2011 by Premium Like Themes is a new easy to use two column and fixed width (900px) WordPress gallery theme with a light and cleanly designed appearance. Photoly 2011 theme is suitable for photo blogs and for showcasing of images in a clean but yet stylish environment. It offers a bit unusual design compared with normal gallery themes.

This is a pure gallery theme and if you are a huge fanatic of widgets this is not a theme for you (unless you are an experienced WordPress coder) since there is no widget areas at all, but as an easy to handle and attractive showcase of images it works very well.

The Photoly theme options page is very basic – you can change logo image, Favicon, add your Twitter and Facebook profile URLs and change copyright text. In future versions of the theme options page, perhaps it would be a good idea to add a footer insert (custom shortcodes or HTML) where it is for example possible to place Google Analytics code. You can see a preview of the theme options page below.

• Preview Photoly 2011 Theme Options Page

The Photoly 2011 WordPress Gallery theme by Premium Like Themes is coded in HTML5.

Photoly 2011 Theme Features

This is a summary of features of The Photoly 2011 WordPress gallery theme, for even more information and updates you can visit the Photoly 2011 download page.

• WordPress 3.0 Compatible
• WordPress Featured Images
• Thumbnail & Standard Image Sizes
• Custom Logo & Favicon
• Basic Twitter & Facebook Integration
• Theme Options Page

Photoly 2011 Theme Download And Preview

Photoly 2011 theme is released under GPL license. It can be used for all your projects for free and without any restrictions and you may modify the theme as you wish – you can read more about the license at A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

• Photoly 2011 WordPress Theme Demo
• Photoly 2011 WordPress Theme Download