WordPress themes: the eternal dilemma

When it comes to choosing stuff, I normally take not more than 5 minutes. My visit to a garment store to buy a shirt would entail a quick glance of the shelves, shortlisting two and picking one – all under 5 minutes. And I am usually satisfied with my choice. But there are exceptions. Like laptop bags and WordPress themes. I have shopped around for both and have not found that ideal piece as yet.

I signed up for a free WordPress account sometime last year and then switched to a hosted account by November 07. The choice of designs (both premium and free) was huge and it allowed greater freedom in customizing my site. I must have ‘tested’ over a 100 designs and have never stuck with one ‘for life’. There was something niggling about each one of them…something missing that made me search again. My all-time favourite shortlist would include:

Cutline: this must count as the most downloaded theme for websites. While I love the layout, the typography and overall slickness, I did not want to use something that was used by so many other people. Yes, that’s a bit vain. I have not found any reason to quibble about this theme and this by far is the best. The other reason is that I bought a premium theme from the same author and wanted to make ‘use’ of the payment.

Thesis: from the same author who gave us Cutline, this one is a paid-for theme. I was very happy with the layout but the irritants: the header images are not linked to the post; changing the header to a video does not allow you to ‘rotate’ the video and I don’t like the font too much. I have seen interesting variations on this theme and would like to tweak it. Not being proficient in coding that’s a handicap.

Dilectio: when I tested it, I almost had the same feeling as meeting that special someone when you are single (‘could she be the one?’). While I love the column layouts, I am not too sure if its business-like.

Simplicity: this is a paid-theme and I liked it because it was blue & white – my favourite combination. But I wasn’t too happy with the way block quotes and comments looked.

Clean (Bluehaze): everything about it was great – except that the post tags don’t show up. I liked the fact that information like tags and no. of comments are in a sidebar-like layout. I also liked the colour scheme (blue & white!)

Recycled Canvas: I found it different from the typical WordPress themes. The issue: sidebars are awkawardly placed and run way down towards the bottom. I also don’t like the way comments are handled visually.

WP_premium by Bhavesh: this one fitted the bill in all respects except that the colour scheme was not to my liking. Sigh.

That’s it. I have not found anything else that I can be in love with. There have been themes from BlogOhBlog that I have dabbled with (I like Adspress, Statement and Black & White) but nothing that I was completely thrilled with. So, quite like my laptop bags (8, on the last count) I am still searching for WordPress nirvana. Can anyone help?

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