Our WordPress themes have received an analysis which appeared in a review, “Template Monster Themes” of July 6th, 2006 in WordPress Station. Michael B. (the owner of WordPress Station) made a post on his blog about our free WordPress themes after trying out some of them back in February of 2006.

When we started producing WordPress themes on regular basis we got word to Michael that we would like for him to review the new designs. So he chose one and did the analysis. Michael went on record, he essentially found our WordPress Templates to be limited in its use of CSS and XHTML. He had some nice things to say about our graphics and pricing.

In the WordPress Station article Michael goes on to say that he believes Template Monster will continue to develop WordPress Templates for the changing needs of the WordPress community. Yes, Template Monster has many, many choices for a well designed, good looking WordPress Template, and they provide a great start for blogs that have a specific theme in mind.

And now some answering statements from our Production Team:

One thing I’d suggest to Template Monster is to incorporate the use of the widgets plugin…

1. There are many different plug-ins for WordPress which improve the experience for both bloggers and readers alike. Template Monster does not (and nobody should) guarantee that all users will want even the most popular of them. When starting this product line our aim was to provide a basic product as soon as possible. Which is what we provided. Now with some experience with WordPress templates sales and technical support statistics we will add more features to our themes. We are actively moving to production of three-column themes (as you may know we already provide two-column themes) which will give our clients more options to play with the blocks and structure. The next step will be widgets. As with any product line we must develop, release and incorporate changes into our products that have been tested in both spheres: technical and market demand. This takes time, but getting it right is not just a matter of creativity, it is also a matter of supplying what the market needs. We will accelerate our production in WordPress Templates because the blogosphere is a fastest evolving field in Web.

Now, onto the the move from tables to CSS/XHTML.

2. About CSS: The aim here is to make sure these themes render the same under the major browsers. Using the display property of div tags in CSS is very good for the Mozilla family browsers. As for IE we use float property in CSS instead. Of course there are many different coding methods. We chose this one for its stability, and because our coder team is very familiar with this particular method - so we used what works and tests. The only bad thing about this method is that you will need to edit HTML along with CSS to customize the layout. We believe most of our WordPress customers use the theme as it is, without making changes to it. But we are currently conducting a special survey among our WordPress customers to find what changes are needed, if any.

Not to mention, there’s no h1 tag for the title…

3. As for h1 and h2 tags: In our understanding design is of greater value than SEO. We assume that those who do SEO for their blogs know how to add h1 and h2 tags. Those who don’t do SEO – wouldn’t care about it at all. You will need to add two more CSS styles (line-height and font-size) to add these tags. It’s not a big deal actually, but we are considering adding them to our new themes.

Template Monster Team

We have finally launched the WordPress product line. From now on, we will release one new WordPress Theme every single day (with the exception of Saturday and Sunday - we need some rest too).

A couple of months ago we released 5 free WordPress themes as we promised we would when we started our blog. We now have about 3,000 downloads and ton of requests for new WordPress themes coming in every day. That’s why we decided to produce them on a regular basis.

We started with ten themes yesterday and added one more today. Please feel free to check them out here.

We are interested in knowing what you think about our WordPress themes. Feel free to comment on them here or just drop a line to marketing@templatemonster.com.

In the press release - ‘Template Monster Introduces New Designs for Blogosphere‘ you can find even more details.

Enjoy!

Important Update! On April 13, 2006 we started producing WordPress themes on regular basis. We add 5 new themes every week. Check out our collection!

Important Update! September 25, 2006 all these free wordpress themes now support widgets. The coding was improved too - no tables!

We are glad to release free Word Press themes. For those who doesn’t know what Word Press is we recommend to visit their official site. In short, Word Press is blogging software. By the way, we use it on our blog.

Now we present five themes, which are available for free. Yes, you read that right. All five themes are absolutely free! So enjoy!

NOTE: after clicking ‘download this theme’ you will be redirected to a special page on Template Monster where you can download any of these themes.

Cameron Moll Grunge Mix

Authentic Boredom – a web home of Cameron Moll, a great new media designer, inspired this theme.
Back to the formal side of the description this theme is centered on page. The sidebar is on left on all views. There is a certain header image, and light grey background.

Download Cameron Moll Grunge Mix - Free WordPress Theme
View Cameron Moll Grunge Mix theme

Corporate Play

This theme is centered on page, has the sidebar on right on all views, and green and orange background. Why ‘corporate play’?

“when designing the theme I wanted to create a design that may suite the spirit of new corporations, which are not last-century companies but do feel the spirit of the Web and want themselves be blogged on it.”

Download Corporate Play - Free WordPress Theme
View Corporate Play theme

Fighting the Darkness

Extremely dark background and light writing area gave a name to this theme. We all fight the darkness in some way: destroying departmental mood that kills personality, brining true values to life, trying to be supportive to our family and friends. This theme suite those who writes about their controversial live experience no matter what the background is.

It is centered on page, has a sidebar on right on all views, round corners, and dark background.
Download Fighting the Darkness - Free WordPress Theme
View Fighting the Darkness theme

Lonely Lemon

Lemon is fresh just like loneliness may be some time. It is a nice addition to lots of cocktails so a blog can be to your life. Maybe it is worthless to wear depressed mood whenever you feel lonely. Maybe it is better to use this moments of your life as a short slow down to revise your previous experience and find some answers to your life questions. Blog gives you a nice opportunity to do it.

It is centered on page, the sidebar is on left on all views, and it has a header image.

Download Lonely Lemon - Free WordPress Theme
View Lonely Lemon theme

Tropical Grunge

The theme combines the tropics mood with a grunge spirit. Something alternative, something not so sweet looking…

The theme is centered on page, the sidebar is on right on all views, it has round corners, header image, and dark green background.

Download Tropical Grunge - Free WordPress Theme
View Tropical Grunge theme

OTHER NOTES:
1. Each ZIP archive contains a special readme.txt file. Please, read it before using the theme.
2. We do not provide support for these themes but we appreciate your help in improving them. If you found a bug with them please let us know in the comments to this post.