For those who are unfamiliar, WordPress is a stable and flexible content management system for building powerful and easy to edit websites. It’s open source and has an enormous developer community, some of which are right here at EasyOutsource. I’m a huge WordPress fan and I plan on writing more about this topic in the future. Today’s post is about helping all of the business owners, online marketers, and web designers and developers here at EasyOutsource find the best WordPress theme layouts for the sites they need built.

My Favorite themes

One of my goals with using WordPress themes is to automate website construction, so Filipino developers can easily learn the themes and quickly build high-end websites. When I look at a site selling themes, my primary criteria for deciding if I’ll use their themes is how easily they can fit into the workflow of myself and my contracted workers. The most practical theme base I know of for this purpose is StudioPress.com, and I’ll explain why:

The themes at StudioPress are mostly business-oriented, which makes them great for most general-purpose websites. They are well-designed and all share the same basic theme structure (the Genesis Framework), so if you learn one you know them all, and they have great documentation to help with any problems you have configuring or customizing them. I also appreciate that they take a lean approach to design, so it’s relatively easy to make large changes to any theme. For $250 you can get access to all of their current themes and all future themes, and in the last year I’ve seen them more than double their theme base. Compared to other high-end theme bases this is a superb deal.

Just a heads up: I find it hard to figure out where to actually download themes here once purchased. You have to go to their Support section and read the documentation about the theme, and in there you will find the link to download it. I wish they would improve this.

Some other options

If you just want to find nice looking WordPress themes, I recommend checking out ThemeForest.net for an incredible variety. Just make sure to search within the WordPress category. For more creative, portfolio-oriented themes you might prefer WooThemes.com or Press75.com. If you’re not able to pay for themes, I recommend checking out WordPressThemesBase.com.

More Information

Beyond EasyOutsource, my primary job is managing the design and development of WordPress-powered websites over at Cluster Interactive Group. If you have any questions about WordPress or web design, or if you’d like to be considered as a WordPress developer for us in the future, feel free to ask me!