In WordPress, themes are a major part of the user experience. As with any Web site, the user interface can make or break a site’s capability to build traffic, expose content for discovery, and enhance user stickiness.
Finding the balance between these three areas is a somewhat fuzzy, experimental process. Many WordPress users change their themes often. Some do it to experiment to see what works best while others do it to showcase their
own design abilities and to try new things. Still others change themes regularly for no other reason than that they are bored.
WordPress themes are the other side of WordPress extensibility. As with plugins, WordPress has an entire theme infrastructure available for theme developers to use. The theme application programming interface (API) is comprised of an abundance of template tags and, as with plugins, themes can be installed with one click from inside the WordPress Admin.
Bloggers who want to install themes from within WordPress can do so by choosing Appearance Add New Themes. This interface provides a rich set of filters based on colors, columns, layout type (fixed or fluid), feature set, or subject (a gooey kind of filter based around “intent of the theme”). In addition, you can search for themes by keyword. The filter interface is simply an interface that inserts the commonly used keywords associated with the filter name, such as “two-columns.”
Theme designers in the WordPress community are split down the GPL line. From the Automattic side of the house (the main proprietor of WordPress), there is no endorsement of premium themes (whether by explicit blessing or by implicit inclusion in the Themes Directory). In fact, this side of the argument has been historically hostile to the use of premium themes.
This position is based largely on some historical abuses by premium theme developers that carry licenses requiring inclusion of links back to the developer or sponsor site, or even by inclusion of hidden keyword stuffing routines intended to generate traffic for some other source. Fortunately, this is not as common as it used to be when premium themes first arrived on the scene.
However, despite this abuse by some premium theme developers, many popular premium themes out there don’t carry the same burden. These themes, such as the very popular and extensible Genesis theme from studiopress, provide the blogger with a multitude of configuration options, theme hooks, and WordPress Admin configuration interfaces.
Premium themes are different than free themes in one key area — you pay for them. These premium themes can cost as little as $70 (U.S. dollars, or USD) or as much as several hundred dollars. Some premium themes, like the ones available from Clover Themes (http://cloverthemes.com)
have licenses that are compatible with WordPress’ license and give you as much freedom as you have with WordPress itself. Others, such as the Thesis theme, have proprietary licenses that restrict your use of the theme and may also require that you keep a link to the creator of the theme displayed on your site.









