My friend, HongKiat, is having a contest to giveaway 3 premium wordpress themes from FlashMint.

How to win the free premium themes?

All you have to do is head to the FlashMint’s wordpress themes list, pick a theme you like and tell them in the comment box of the blog post.

The contest will be closed at Monday, 27th April 2008.

FlashMint wordpress themes

There are only 10 wordpress themes on FlashMint. Each cost USD$55. 7, all of them have very similar layout, with differences in theme colors and graphics used.

Though they are suitable for CMS, cooperate and personal blogs, none of them is my pick. Ah.. I am picky one!

If you would like to get any of the premium theme for free, drop your comment at the contest page. Good luck!

Related books:

• "WordPress Theme Design: A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes" listing at Amazon.com
• "How to Theme WordPress: From Blank to Beautiful in 2 Hours" listing at Amazon.com

Google Chrome blog theme is blog theme that mimics the design of Google Chrome web browser. The theme is available for WordPress and Blogspot users.

screenshot of Google Chrome blog theme

Theme features:

• 2 columns fixed width
• widgets ready
• gravatar ready
• support WordPress 2.5 and above
• Tested on IE 6/7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome
• XHTML & CSS validated

Theme download

• Google Chrome theme for WordPress
• Google Chrome theme for Blogspot

[via Blogging for Novice]

“Add Adsense To Your WordPress Blog Without Changing The Theme”

If you ever wanted to have similar blog theme like CopyBlogger, Chris Pearson created a Copyblogger theme for WordPress (demo).

Image: WordPress Theme: CopyBlogger

Copyblogger theme is a single sidebar theme with simple and clean design: black header, white background, and red link. The theme is highly customizable with custom stylesheet solution.

For example, you can download the add-on style package “Organic” (demo) to change the theme design without applying a new theme.

My 2 cent: It is a nice theme. However, due to the popularity of Copyblogger, you should customize the theme for your blog for better identification.

copyblogger, theme, wordpress

Unmatched Themes is a WordPress theme gallery with a lot of high quality free WordPress themes.

What I love about Unmatched Themes is that it lists WordPress themes using thumbnails preview. It is very easy to choose the one you like in the first glance.

Unmatched Themes also categorized WordPress themes to their layouts: one-column, two-column, three-column, and magazine-style.

Try Unmatched Themes if you are looking for nice WordPress themes.

wordpress, theme, design, template, blog

Want to create your own WordPress theme but do not know how? Try Wordpress Theme Generator.

Image: example of theme generated by wordpress theme generator

It is an online WordPress theme generator that allows you to customized the theme you want and generate the theme file immediately. The generated theme is based on WordPress 2.1 with Yahoo! UI and supports widgets.

wordpress, theme, design, blog

GlossyBlue is a beautiful 2 columns WordPress theme by n.design studio. The theme has a blue header, green sidebar.

The author also generously provided the Photoshop PSD file of the design, so that you can customize the theme. The theme is licensed under Creative commons Attribution 2.5 license, meaning you cannot remove the author’s link in the theme footer.

Download: GlossyBlue

wordpress, theme, glossyblue

My three column Kubrick theme(as well as the four column version) has been highlighted by Blog Herald.

Image: Three Column Kubrick Theme highlighted by Blog Herald

It is amazing how an two year old WordPress 1.5 theme still being discussed.

theme, template, kubrick, wordpress

Since I created the three column kubrick theme, it has been downloaded many times and over 600 blogs are using it. Also, a few theme variants have been created based on it. The four column kubrick theme by my friend Mossie`Ol Chin is one of them.

Image: Four Column Kubrick Theme

My first impression was “Wow! So many columns!”

It has one content column, and three sidebars on the right. The sidebars have been widgetted. Good job!

Instead of aligning all three sidebars on the right, I suggest him to put one of the sidebar to left hand side. It will be more balance and… “normal”.

Oh, no download link for the theme. He does not release it (yet?).

kubrick, theme, wordpress, templates, theme

WordPress Theme: SEO AdSense

IF you wish to blog for money but do not know how to insert ads code into your WordPress template files, you might want to consider using the SEO AdSense WordPress Theme, an aggressive WordPress theme build for AdSense ads.

Not the best AdSense placements?

Adsense is located in the following files; header.php (728×15 linkunit), footer.php (728×90 adunit), sidebar.php (336×280 adunit, 160×600 adunit).

Since the theme structure is similar to my early released 3 columns kubrick theme, based on my experience, I think the SEO AdSense theme’s ads placement could be better.

My suggestions:

• Move 336×280 ad unit under Google search bar to under post title. This change might give you 200% more clicks!
• Remove the leaderboard ad unit in footer. It has very low CTR in my past experiences.
• Add another rectangle ad unit at the end of the post. This position gives 200% more clicks than the leaderboard in footer!
• How about a Google AdSense Search Results within WordPress Pages?

You can get more AdSense tips from The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense

adsense, seo, template, theme, wordpress

WordPress Theme: Web 2 Wannabe

I seldom recommend two column WordPress theme, but the Web 2 Wannabe is a nice one. It is a two column WordPress theme with round corners. Very clean and sleek design. The main theme color is green.

Please note that Web 2 Wannabe wordpress theme is not released under the GPL license. A link-back to the designer’s website is required.

Download Web 2 Wannabe WordPress Theme or try the theme demo.

design, template, theme, web, wordpress

JohnTP released another WordPress theme named TripleK2. It is a three columns theme based on 3K2 with sidebars on both sides.

Along with TripleK2, JohnTP also release a K2 style, TechnoBlue Style, for the theme.

Download TripleK2 and TechnoBlue style

wordpress, themes, k2, triplek2, technoblue, template, design

Chameleon is a three columns WordPress theme with widgetised sidebars. It comes with six colors theme which is changeable through the WordPress admin panel. I like the clean and simplicity of this theme.

Download Chameleion WordPress theme

chameleon, design, templates, themes, web, wordpress

Omer Cakarca released a series of three column WordPress theme in various colors: PurpleCrunch, BlueCrunch, GreenCrunch and BlackCrunch.

All the themes come with a header PSD file so that you can easily change the blog header. Nice!

blog, crunch, templates, themes, wordpress

I stumbled upon a very nice WordPress theme named “Dalarnas“. It is a two/three columns theme with sidebar on the right. I love the clean and sleek design, and the colors! The theme spaces give a feel of relaxation and freedom.

Screenshot: Sample of Dalarnas wordpress theme

However, the theme is not in english (I guess it is spanish). I have made a request with the theme author for a English version. If I use the theme, I might increase the sidebar width to 300 pixels.

Download Dalarnas WordPress theme

Updated: Dalarnas is also mentioned in Weblog Tools Collection.

blog, dalarnas, templates, themes, wordpress

A Malaysian blogger, Aman Firdaus, released a nice WordPress theme named Industry. It is a two column theme with a translucent top menu bar.

Download WordPress theme

malaysia, template, theme, wordpress, design, web

Thilak released a new three columns K2 theme — TriK2. It is a three columns K2 based theme with a sidebar-content-sidebar layout.

My two cents

While K2 is still a beta release, we already have many K2 based themes. As far as I know,TriK2 is the first K2 based theme with left sidebar. Good job!

However, the TriK2 loads the left sidebar before the content column. SEO wise, the main content should come first before the sidebars.

design, k2, template, theme, trik2, web, wordpress, wordpress theme

The WordPress Theme Viewer has been updated. WordPress ThemeViewer is a WordPress theme browser with thumbnail previews. It is now easier to find your ideal themes with extra sorting options.

What’s great about ThemeViewer?

• 484 (and counting) wordpress themes
• Thumbnail preview for every theme
• Test run every theme before download
• Easy theme search with sorting options

My two cents

ThemeViewer is a good staring place to find a WordPress theme. I love the “test run” feature so much!

If you are a WordPress theme publisher, you may submit your theme here.

blog, design, template, theme, themeviewer, web, wordpress

If you like the K2 wordpress theme but wish to have three columns? The 3 columns K2 theme is now available.

My two cents

The 3 columns K2 theme looks great! I almost switched to it if it supports WordPress 1.5.x and has wider content column. Of course, you can always tweak the theme to the look you like it to be.

Alternatively, you can get the 3 columns kubrick theme which works on both WordPress 1.5.x and 2.x.

design, k2, template, theme, wordpress, wordpress theme

Alex had just released his beautiful three columns wordpress theme, named “Alexified“.

Bugs?

Somehow, I can’t find trackback link in the theme, though the post has trackback opened. I need to look in the page source to find the trackback URI.

The text in bottom box is too small to be displayed and therefore looks jagged. I am using Firefox 1.5.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.4.5.

My two cents

Alexified is a sidebar-content-sidebar 3 columns WordPress theme. In SEO wise, Alexified may not be an ideal theme.

The theme loads its left sidebar first before the content (check page source). An ideal SEO theme should load page content first to feed the search engine bots.

Anyway, Alexified is a clean and simple WordPress theme. I love the theme’s glassy look tabs very much!

alexified, templates, themes, wordpress

Recently, I discovered that two Malaysian bloggers, MENJ and Szehao changed their blog theme to Squible, a single column wordpress template.

It is very nice and clean, especially the front page. Squible purposely uses large fonts for content, which is easy to read.

Download Squible wordpress theme

My two cents

I feel that it is an ideal template for personal site. I have thought of a two/three columns Squible theme. But, on second thought, single column is still the best for Squible. Adding more columns will mess up the whole design.

wordpress, template, theme