InteractiveWoo

One of the biggest struggles for new bloggers, or for anyone that is looking to freshen up a blog with a new theme, is the challenge of finding the right theme. Free or Premium? Magazine style or traditional blog style?

Especially for Wordpress users, there are so many choices with multiple types and variances in quality and design. In this post I will provide a comparison of the different types of themes to help you choose the right type for your blog. Before I do that, let me answer the question what are Wordpress themes? Wordpress themes are pre-made designs templates that are made in compliance with the Wordpress Platform. These themes can be installed seamlessly and effortlessly to any site that is utilizing the latest Wordpress script. There are thousands of themes to choose from and the best (premium) themes are download-able for a fee.

Free Themes vs. Premium Themes (varies from $20 to $90)

So how much better are premium themes than free themes? Is it enough to justify paying the price tag? Here’s a list of reasons why you would pay for a premium theme:

• Quality - premium themes are built by design professionals and ideally are of higher quality in design and function than free themes. Notwithstanding a few high quality themes, most free themes are of very poor quality. This is because anyone can develop and distribute a free theme.
• Uniqueness - because of the price tag, premium themes are for serious bloggers who want a professional blog that stands out from the crowd of bloggers using free themes. Most premium themes include code-free design customization whereas to customize free themes, you will have to tweak it in the code of the theme.
• Functionality - most premium themes offer much more in terms of features and functionality such as integrated advertising and analytics, more robust widgets, or customizable front page (magazine themes).
• Flexibility - premium themes also offer the ability to select various color schemes or the ability to choose between 2 or 3 column for your blog without touching the code of the theme.
• Scalability - hopefully your blog will grow over time and you may want to include new features to your blog. Most free themes will only allow you to showcase typical blog posts, while premium themes will have better options for adding pages, sub-pages, categories, archives, advertising.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - a poorly designed theme can cost you valuable exposure in the search engines. Most free themes are very poorly optimized, and in most cases the theme designers give very little consideration to SEO.

Although I always recommend premium themes for the serious blogger, I do also recommend trying out some free themes so you can experience the difference in quality, function and flexibility. For some bloggers, a free theme may offer enough to serve their purpose as they may not hope to make money from blogging or support a business.

If you’re a blogger who wants to increase or produce income through blogging, I highly recommend going with a premium theme. It will help you save hundreds of dollars and hours of your time in the long run. Choose a Premium Theme now!

Magazine Style vs. Blog Style

You all know that in a traditional blog style layout, the most recent post sits at the top of the page with previous posts below it. As blogs grew, there was a need for a better way to organize content so posts didn’t get lost. The magazine style layout was the solution and quickly became popular among premium themes. This layout typically includes a front page that features excerpts or headlines of posts in a grid format, acting as a portal to content. However, the magazine style layout is not a good fit for all blogs. Here’s when you would choose a magazine style:

• Multiple Topics - if you have or plan on having a blog with many different topics and you would like to feature one or more posts from each on the front page to improve navigation and accessibility.
• More Professional Look - if you want to go away from the typical blog look.
• Large Site - if you have or plan on posting content daily or have multiple authors, the magazine style layout can be a great way to organize content.

To the last bullet above, the opposite is true. If you post only a couple of times a week or less, you would go with a traditional blog style. If you’re still not sure what’s best for your blog, don’t worry. Another reason why I love premium themes (to the flexibility point above) is that the best ones (ones that are included in our services) offer the flexibility to choose between both magazine and traditional styles.

Interactivewoo has hand-picked the best free and premium Wordpress themes on the web with consideration to overall look, SEO, readability, flexibility, and more. As part of our blogging package, we’ll work together to find the best theme for you and offer our premium themes with savings of up to 50% of the retail value.
Please send an email to Interactivewoo@gmail.com and if you have any questions.

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The ability to install plugins is one of the major benefits of having a wordpress blog hosted on your own server

Wordpress plugins are free and download-able and can extend your Wordpress blog to do almost anything you can imagine - from useful plugins that back up your database to “cool” plugins that customizing your message to new vs. returning visitors. To be faced with the thousands of plugins available to you and choose the right ones that work with your blog can be a daunting task. There are many plugins that do the same thing but with very different results.

Here is my list of Top 10 Best Wordpress Plugins that I have come across and also use on my blogs (in no particular order).

• FireStats (includes Most Popular Posts) - one of the best statistics plugin for Wordpress. Also includes a “Most Popular Posts” widget for your sidebar.
• AddThis - help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services. You may also consider ShareThis as an alternative look.
• WP Post Ratings - adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.
• Simple Tags (includes Related Posts) - Tagging made easy. This plugin has flexible configuration and suggests tags from the net and Yahoo which is great for SEO. This plugin also allows you to include “Related Posts” to your content based on your tags.
• CFormsII - cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. It may be a little hard to configure but you can really do so much customization with it. If you’re looking for something simpler, try Contact Form 7
• WP Database Backup - don’t risk losing all your work! WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core Wordpress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database. Save to database, email or desktop.
• All in One SEO Pack - this plugin automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (SEO: Search Engine Optimization)
• WP Super Cache - this robust plugin will increase the responsiveness of your website and reduce the server load. It works by caching your pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests without querying the database. It is also built to handle sudden bursts in traffic.
• Google XML Sitemap Generator - the biggest advantage of using Wordpress is the manual work you save because the software already knows where all of your content is. This plugin is a huge boost to your SEO as it will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your blog to Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN Search every time you update your site.
• Akismet - spam is a huge problem for wordpress blogs. As soon as the search engines recognize your blog, you will start to receive spam in your comments. Akismet makes this a non-issue by checking your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. It was created by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress.

A few more plugins deserving mention:

• Seth Godin’s First-time vs Returning Visitor - displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors.
• Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - wordpress automatic upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one.
• Subscribe to Comments - this robust plugin enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent comment entries so you can keep track of the discussion.
• Lighter Admin Drop Menus - creates drop down menus for Wordpress admin panels so you can navigate to the page you want with one click. Fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, comes with silk icons and an options page.

Want more? Browse and search through the entire Wordpress plugins directory.