There are countless criteria you could use to rate your options, but when you think about it all of these factors fall under the following three categories:

Design

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; so just because you love a Wordpress theme or vBulletin skin, it doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice.  In a nutshell, you will want to select a design that would be generally considered both functional and aesthetically pleasing. 

Although some may disagree with me, I have found lighter color schemes work better than dark colors.  If you need proof, just take a look at the top sites out there like Twitter, CNN, and Facebook.  They may use dark colors for accent borders, but their backgrounds are white and they make use of upbeat colors.

You also want to make sure the design can accommodate the features and content you plan to use.  For example, if you want to use banner ads, make sure it has built in placeholders to put them.

Platform

What platform will you be building your site on?  You will need to know this in order to pick out a compatible design.  Today, WordPress is one of the most popular choices and for good reasons!  It is a very versatile format which allows advanced configurations.  In addition, it is user-friendly and open source (free).  For many people, this is probably the best platform. 

If you are looking to create a discussion forum or message board, then vBulletin is probably the way to go.  My friend created a cosmetic surgery forum for people to discuss rhinoplasty, botox, skin care, etc.  He built it on vBulletin and used a premade vBulletin skin for its design.  It’s a great platform but the biggest drawback is that it costs a couple hundred dollars, so it’s not affordable to use on multiple sites.  This is why he used WordPress for Anti-Wrinkle; his blog about anti-aging skincare.

SEO

Most of the time people don’t think about this when picking out a design, but the truth of the matter is that this is just as important.  You want a theme which is coded in an efficient manner.  That way your site will load quickly; search engines favor faster load times.  You also want it to offer the option of human-readable permalinks, meta tags, and pinging (notifying search engines when you add or modify posts and articles).  Optimal usage of title and H1, H2, etc. are also properties which can help with SEO.  Having a template which utilizes these practices is the first step to good search engine optimization.

The bottom line is that when choosing a design, it’s important to take into account SEO just as much as the aesthetic elements.  Fortunately, there are a number of themes and templates which offer the best of both worlds.

Post from: WordPress Theme Reports

Site Design: Which Is Right For You?

 Relevant Domain:  You want a domain that is both easy to remember and relevant to the subject of your site.  For example, let’s say you want to run a personal finance site for credit card ratings.  Your goal is to provide credit card reviews and monetize it using affiliate marketing.  When selecting a domain, it would be best to choose one that contains your main keyword; credit card.  For example, a domain like CreditCardForum.com would be a far better choice than PlasticPaymentAdvice.com.  Although they’re both relevant, it’s better to have that main keyword in there.

Good Content: Some people spend a great deal of time building a fancy site with flash and multimedia and then they wonder why they aren’t getting traffic.  Although these things may look nice, it’s not content that Google can easily search and archive. It’s okay to use these things in moderation, but if you do, make sure to have original text-based content to go along with it.

Search Engine Optimization:  If doesn’t matter how good your site is if people can’t find it!  Also known as SEO, this subject matter encompasses a number of different things, such as having good content like we just discussed.  In addition, it also includes many other onsite and offsite factors.  For on-site optimization, it’s good to have a site that loads quickly and can be easily navigated.  For off-site optimization, it’s important for other sites to link to you.  By offering your visitors useful content and articles, odds are that related sites will be more likely to link to you as a resource.  If your website is a business and you can afford to do so, it may not be a bad idea to consult a SEO professional to get advice. 

Layout:  It’s true that there are a number of overlapping design elements which apply to both businesses and personal blogs.  However there are also a number of key differences.  For example, let’s say you operate a retail site which sells skin care products for treating spider veins.  You will want a welcoming layout which allows visitors to easily navigate your selection of spider vein cream, vitamin K cream, and other related products.  Compare this to a personal blog, in which the homepage would probably only be used to display your latest blogposts.

Features:  As discussed above, it’s a good idea to write original content and articles on your site no matter what.  However there are features which will be found on some sites but not others.  First and foremost would be the shopping card feature.  If you are an online retail store you will need this, but obviously others would have no need.  If it’s a personal site, you may feature a blogroll which lists you friends’ sites.  However if you are a business, you probably won’t link to others since you will want to keep visitors (potential customers) on your page.

Post from: WordPress Theme Reports

Maximizing Your Online Presence

Blogger: Beyond the Basics: Customize and promote your blog with original templates, analytics, advertising, and SEO (From Technologies to Solutions)

WordPress for Business Bloggers: Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced plug-ins, analytics, advertising, and SEO

Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read

How to Theme WordPress: From Blank To Beautiful in 2 Hours (from webcmssquad.com)

WordPress Theme Design: A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes

Ease of Use - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Design - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Validation - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Customer Support - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Visit NewsTheme Pro

Product Name: NewsTheme Pro

Developer: Media Design Services, Inc.

Domain: newsthemepro.com

Company Name: Media Design Services, Inc.

Version/Volume: 1.0

Price:
Single Use License: $125.00
Developers Use License: $250.00

Description/Review:

Five stars out of five. We don’t see that very often in our reviews of WordPress themes.
NewsTheme Pro is by far one of our favorite WordPress themes.
It is very user friendly and comes with complete and specific setup instructions.

This theme is ideal for affiliate maketers and is optimized for adsense. An advertising block is built in the upper left “golden triangle” area and additional advertising code can be placed in any of the three sidebars using a text widget. This theme works very well with the muiltitude of plugins available for AdSense ad placement, SEO, rss feeds, etc.

The video player container on the home page lends an extra media element that will grab the attention of visitors, not to mention the fact that the search engine spiders love video.

It’s sleek contemporary design style really does set it apart from most of the other theme styles on the market.

Customer support is prompt and, if necessary,  available by telephone during normal business hours Pacific Standard Time.

The features rival many of it’s competitors:

1. Featured Articles container on the Home Page utilizing jQuery coding to either display or hide the posts.

2. Dynamic tabs for displaying Recent Posts, Tag Cloud and more.

3. Optimized AdSense Placement.

4. Feedburner email subscription link.

5. Integrated YouTube Video Player to display YouTube video feeds on the Home Page.

6. Three Widget ready sidebars for adding advertising banners using the Text Widget.

7. Image resizer for Featured Articles thumbnails.

8. Theme options within the Presentation/Design area for defining Featured category, Video display on/off, Feedburner ID and more.

9. Photoshop PSD files for editing the logo and header background images.

All of the usual WordPress features, including, but not limited to:

- Integrated link management
- Search engine-friendly permalink structure
- Extensible plugin support
- Nested categories and multiple categories for articles
- TrackBack and Pingback
- Typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text
- Static Pages
- Multiple Authors
- Can store a list of users that visit your blog
- Can block a persons IP address
- Tag support

Tested in WordPress 2.5.1
Validates to XHTML 1.0 strict standards.
CSS validates to W3C standards.

Ratings:

Overall Rating: 5/5

Ease of Use - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Design - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Validation - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Customer Support - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Visit NewsTheme Pro

Post from: WordPress Theme Reports

NewsTheme Pro Review

Ease of Use - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Design - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Validation - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Customer Support - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Click Here for Instant Access to Revolution Theme

Product Name: Revolution Theme

Developer: Brian Gardner

Domain: revolutiontheme.com

Company Name: Brian Gardner Media

Version/Volume: 1.0

Price:
Single Use License: $79.95
Developers Use License: $199.95

Description/Review:

We have used a few different Revolution Themes on client sites. The designs are very clean and professional.

One drawback to the themes is that they are not really set up with features that will allow one to plug and play different site elements, aside from the standard widgets.
A lot of the design editing has to be done through the Theme Editor and will require a lot of hard coding.

It is also recommended that prior to using one of these themes, one should have or develop a fairly decent knowledge of WordPress and avaialble plugins.

Overall, the themes have some very nice layouts and we will work with them again in the future.

Ratings:

Overall Rating: 4.3/5

Ease of Use - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Design - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Validation - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Customer Support - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Click Here for Instant Access to Revolution Theme

Update October 31, 2008

Revolution Two Launches with Open Source Themes.
More to follow, meanwhile, memberships are currently available:

Pro Membership
Find out more details

Pro Plus Membership
Find out more details

Post from: WordPress Theme Reports

Revolution Theme Review

Ease of Use - Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Design - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Validation - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Customer Support - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Visit Premium News Theme

Product Name: Premium News Theme

Developer: Adriaan Pienaar

Domain: premiumnewstheme.com

Company Name: ADII

Version/Volume: Original

Price:
Single Use License: $99.95
Developers Use License: $249.95

Description/Review:

We have used Premium News Theme on a number of sites with use of the developers license. The magazine style makes for a nice clean layout and gets away from the look of the standard blog.

The theme is fairly easy to work with, once one gets a feel for the procedures for setting up the Featured posts, images, etc. Those who are new to setting up blog themes may have to struggle a bit in the beginning, but  if they follow the instructions properly, everything should fall into place.

Another plus is the customer support. The developer is located in South Africa, so the local time there may delay responses, but they always follow up in a positive and professional manner.

Adii, the developer of this theme and a wide selection of others, has done a very good job at developing WordPress themes in the magazine style that manage to allow a WordPress blog to appear as more than a blog.

Some of the features include:
-Integrated “Premium News Options” to change colour scheme, homepage layout etc.
-A slick featured articles panel using Mootools to fade new articles in and out to display news in a trendy and efficient way
-Automatic Image Resizer
-Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery
-Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
-Built-in Video Player to publish your YouTube easily and seamlessly on your homepage
-Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wid
-Ad Sizes Supported: 468×60, 300×250 and 125×125
-Pretty dropdown navigation everywhere
-Different homepage layouts and colour schemes to choose from
-Widget-ready sidebars
And all the other standard WordPress functions…

Ratings:

Overall Rating: 4.3/5

Ease of Use - Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Design - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Validation - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Customer Support - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Visit Premium News Theme

Post from: WordPress Theme Reports

Premium News Theme Review