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WordPress Themes

Jack of All Blogs WordPress Theme

Jack of All Blogs theme

The Jack of All Blogs Theme is a three-column brown and green theme based on the old design of Jack of All Blogs. Widgetized sidebars are located on either side of the main content. There’s an options page that lets you enter a Twitter username to display the latest status at the top right of the page, and a Google AdSense publisher ID for ads at the top of the posts (468×60) and the left sidebar (120×600). The blog title uses a custom web font and CSS3 transforms, best viewed in the latest browser versions. View Demo »

[download id=”4″]

Erati WordPress Theme

Erati WordPress Theme

The Erati Theme is a white, gray, and pink three-column theme based on the old design of the Erati entertainment website. It contains an options panel that lets you enter banner code for a 125 x 125 ad zone at the left of the header. You can enter related network links at the top right using the Network menu name.

There are two widget areas at the right, and supports threaded comments and custom menus. View Demo »

[download id=”2″]

ForeverGeek WordPress Theme

ForeverGeek WordPress Theme screenshot

The ForeverGeek Theme is a gray and white two-column theme with blue and orange accents and lots of rounded corners. It has an options page that lets you enter a banner ad code below the header as well as RSS feed and social media account links.

There’s a custom menu zone at the top right of the page, plus 4 widget areas in the sidebar and 3 more in the footer. The theme also supports WP-PageNavi, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP), and has Facebook Like buttons built-in. View Demo »

[download id=”3″]

Come check out how ForeverGeek looks now!

AppleGazette WordPress Theme

AppleGazette Theme screenshot

In the following weeks we’re releasing WordPress themes based on old designs of our Splashpress Media network sites. Today, it’s AppleGazette, which recently got a facelift.

The AppleGazette Theme is a black, white, and blue two-column theme and has an options page that lets you enter ad codes, RSS subscription links, and social media URLs in the banner and sidebar areas. There’s a custom menu area at the at the top and bottom of the page, and of course a widget area at the right. It’s compatible up to WordPress 3.1. View Demo »

[download id=”1″]

Five Ways to Tweak a WordPress Theme


Ah, free WordPress themes. I’m convinced they’re one of the biggest reasons WordPress is the most popular blogging platform today. From one-column minimalism to grid-based magazine layouts, photoblogging styles to made-for-Adsense themes, there are free WordPress themes for every taste- just download, install and activate!

But to set your blog apart, you’ll want to tweak that theme- and when I say tweak, I mean make small changes here and there. To make these tweaks to your theme of choice, a tool like the Firebug extension for Firefox can be very handy- but, really, any text editor will do.

  1. Tweak your header
    Usually the first place new visitors will look, and a good place to start. Some themes include “theme options” pages that show up when you’ve activated the theme, and others include banner photos or graphics that can easily be replaced with your own. If you’re using the default WordPress theme Kubrick, the aptly named Kubrickr will automatically find photos on Flickr for you to customize your header with. To get more in-depth, I recommend reading through WordPress’ official codex page on Designing Headers.
  2. Play with your widgets
    Most WordPress theme designers “widgetize” their themes, and for good reason: widgets are probably the quickest way to personalize a WordPress theme. Built-in widgets, available in every fresh installation of WordPress, include widgets for displaying your Archives, Calendar, Recent Comments and so forth- and And if the theme you love isn’t widgetized, you can do it yourself.
  3. Experiment with color
    Even slight changes to the colors on your site can have a big impact. Online tools such as the Color Scheme Designer can keep you busy for hours, or you can check out pre-made color schemes at sites like colr.org and GenoPal.
  4. Change your fonts
    We used to have just two choices when it came to web fonts: serif or sans-serif. Today, we have methods like sIFR and FLIR, which replace your fonts using Flash, the newish Cufon, which doesn’t require Flash, and CSS3’s @font-face, which works by downloading the specified fonts.
  5. Personalize your About page
    This one, which requires no CSS tweaking at all, just might be the most important way of all. Tweaking your About page, the only page that comes pre-built with WordPress, is where you can truly let your personality shine through. A photo of yourself is always good, but you should feel free to add anything here that shows the world- or your readers, at least- who you are. You can read more about tweaking your About page in a previous post of mine.

Of course, we’ve only barely scratched the surface of the ways you can tweak your WordPress theme. For more ways, the WordPress Codex is an excellent place to start.