Indie template designers
January 14, 2010 4:45 AM Subscribe
I need a good premium template for a self-built website with a blog.
I can find many template-membership sites that offer hundreds of templates for $50/year, but there are lots of crappy templates to wade through, they sometimes sell spam templates ("just plug in an rss feed and you'll have an instantly profitable website with adsense"), and I'm unsure about the quality of the template/code/support. I'd rather buy from an individual designer or small company. I find many premium Wordpress themes that look great to me (like this and this) and I suppose I could "de-wordpress" them, but I figure there must be some general premium web templates out there.
I want a modern design, not some basic 3 column with header footer template. It should be accessible, so no reliance on Flash etc and should be easy to modify with a text editor.
I can find many template-membership sites that offer hundreds of templates for $50/year, but there are lots of crappy templates to wade through, they sometimes sell spam templates ("just plug in an rss feed and you'll have an instantly profitable website with adsense"), and I'm unsure about the quality of the template/code/support. I'd rather buy from an individual designer or small company. I find many premium Wordpress themes that look great to me (like this and this) and I suppose I could "de-wordpress" them, but I figure there must be some general premium web templates out there.
I want a modern design, not some basic 3 column with header footer template. It should be accessible, so no reliance on Flash etc and should be easy to modify with a text editor.
Best answer: Lots and lots of bloggers use thesis (can download here) - I'm not a developer, but all my technical friends swear by it as a blogging theme.
I've used Theme Forest and found them good - they have loads of themes to choose from too.
Another options is to use a service like PSD to Wordpress to get a totally custom theme that looks exactly how you want it to. For example if you want your blog to look the same as your website (and have the PSD file) this is worth a look.
posted by cardamine at 5:09 AM on January 14, 2010 [1 favorite]
I've used Theme Forest and found them good - they have loads of themes to choose from too.
Another options is to use a service like PSD to Wordpress to get a totally custom theme that looks exactly how you want it to. For example if you want your blog to look the same as your website (and have the PSD file) this is worth a look.
posted by cardamine at 5:09 AM on January 14, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks, I will check out those links! Please note that I am NOT specifically looking for Wordpress themes, but for general html templates. My site is not built with Wordpress.
posted by davar at 5:28 AM on January 14, 2010
posted by davar at 5:28 AM on January 14, 2010
Any WordPress template can be pretty easily pared down to just the HTML/CSS structure and migrated to whatever platform you are working on.
posted by camworld at 5:33 AM on January 14, 2010
posted by camworld at 5:33 AM on January 14, 2010
Response by poster:
Any WordPress template can be pretty easily pared down to just the HTML/CSS structure and migrated to whatever platform you are working on.
Yeah, it seems like that's the way to go. I am quite surprised that all the smaller template sites seem to be Wordpress oriented, I had expected that there would be similar sites for general templates.
Themeforest does seem a little nicer than the "big" template sites, there are some really nice templates there.
posted by davar at 2:15 PM on January 14, 2010
Any WordPress template can be pretty easily pared down to just the HTML/CSS structure and migrated to whatever platform you are working on.
Yeah, it seems like that's the way to go. I am quite surprised that all the smaller template sites seem to be Wordpress oriented, I had expected that there would be similar sites for general templates.
Themeforest does seem a little nicer than the "big" template sites, there are some really nice templates there.
posted by davar at 2:15 PM on January 14, 2010
Seconding themeforest - that's where I go for html templates these days.
posted by primer_dimer at 1:56 AM on January 15, 2010
posted by primer_dimer at 1:56 AM on January 15, 2010
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http://themasterplan.in/tma
http://basicmaths.subtraction.com/
http://powazek.com/depo-skinny
Also take a look at:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/18/100-amazing-free-wordpress-themes-for-2009/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
posted by camworld at 5:03 AM on January 14, 2010 [1 favorite]