For one small annual fee, the Elegant Themes club membership gives you access to their entire growing portfolio of premium themes, which as of the writing of this post currently stands at an amazing 76 premium themes. This gives you access to a large number of premium themes to choose from and is especially great for someone with limited coding skills or someone with a large number of websites/blogs. And the best part of being a member? The Elegant Themes club continues to grow each month as new premium themes are released for FREE to all of their 100,000+ members.

Each theme from Elegant Themes includes the following core list of features:

• Intuitive ePanel theme options page to give your site flexibility
• Strong focus on support and community
• Advertisement Management
• Search Engine Optimization
• Cross-browser compatibility guaranteed
• Frequent theme additions and upgrades

So why would a site dedicated to providing WordPress hacks write about Elegant Themes?  Well this week I am proud to announce that we’ve managed to partner with Elegant Themes to host a giveaway of three memberships to their exclusive theme club. If you’d like to win, all you need to do is leave a comment below explaining why you deserve to win one of these three Elegant Themes club memberships! We’ll announce the winners next Saturday, May 26th, 2012.

The premium themes market has had an overwhelming focus on CMS Themes since its inception back in late 2007, but I’ve always felt that there should also be a variety of blog designs available for all of the WordPress users which actually *gasp* want a nice blog design to use with their blogging software.  After all, despite being an extremely flexible piece of software, the core function of WordPress is blogging, right?

That leads me to believe that there is a large market of buyers looking for a nice blog design which includes a flexible feature set and is also available at a lower price point than the more advanced CMS themes currently available.  The new WellBlog theme by ColorLabs Project is one of those blogging templates which does a pretty good job of achieving the goals I have for a solid premium blog theme.

To start, here is an example of the design and control panel which is included with the WellBlog theme.

WellBlog Theme Homepage

WellBlog Theme Internal Pages

WellBlog Theme Control Panel

If you’d like to test it out, you can check out the live demo of the black version of the WellBlog theme here.

The WellBlog theme also includes a number of features in addition to the 3 built-in skins to choose from.  Probably my favorite unique feature is the scrolling “Most Commented” section at the top of the sidebar.  Here are a few of the other more notable features:

• Supports WordPress Threaded Comments
• Built-in Gravatar Support
• After-Sales Support and Upgrade
• Cross-Browser Compatible
• Advertisement Banner Management
• Theme Administration Control Panel

If you are interested in learning more about the WellBlog theme, or are interested in purchasing a license for your WordPress blog, it is currently available for $50.00 (single-website license), or $200.00 (developer’s license for unlimited websites).  WPHacks.com readers can use coupon code 94F4D as well to get an additional 30% off your purchase!

If WellBlog isn’t for you, you can also view all of the themes available from ColorLabs Project here.

One of those up and coming designers who is trying to get noticed is Roy Guan.  A few months ago Roy entered into the crowded premium themes community with the launching of his website, Theme Junkie.  In order to grab a foothold within this very busy space, Roy has managed to find a niche within a niche, offering all of his premium designs for under $30.00.  In only about six months time Theme Junkie has already made available a large selection of premium themes as well as two free themes.

Below I wanted to take a moment and feature a few of my favorite designs already available from Theme Junkie:

FreshLife Theme

NewsTube Theme

Portal Theme

Each theme includes a demo so you can view an example of a website using the theme.  You’ll also get full theme support, a custom control panel, and a variety of standard features across all available themes:

• Advanced Theme Control Panel
• Auto-sized Thumbnail Management
• Fully Widgeted Sidebars
• Advertisement Management
• Analytics/Stat Management
• Built-in FeedBurner Support
• Threaded Comments
• Gravatar Ready
• Custom Page Templates
• Drop-down Menu Navigation
• WordPress 2.9+ Compatible
• Cross-Browsers Compatibility
• Email & Forum Support
• Lifetime Upgrade

Lastly, I wanted to share a sample of a typical control panel which is included with the themes:

FreshLife Control Panel

In summary, not only am I a fan of Theme Junkie themes, but I’m also an all-inclusive member!  Having quality templates handy when launching a new website or blog always comes in handy, so I should be covered next time I launch a new website or blog.

If you decide you are also interested in joining the Theme Junkie community, prices on designs start at only $39.95.  Developer’s can also get access to EVERY Theme Junkie theme (including future releases) for as little as $59.95.  You can find more information here.

One design that recently caught my eye is the new TypeMagz theme by ColorLabs Project.   This website has been around for years now thanks to the extremely popular Arthemia theme, but rather than going with a magazine format, this new design instead places a focus on gathering and presenting news on the homepage.   Here is a sample of how one configuration of the homepage may look:

TypeMagz Homepage Design

For internal pages the website converts to a blog format which includes many of the standard blogging features you’ve come to expect from WordPress:

TypeMagz Blog Design

Although this theme isn’t for every type of website/blog, if you run a website which manages a ton of content, the TypeMagz theme may be just what you are looking for.  Like any good news-styled template, this theme really excels by taking a bunch of information and displaying it in one easy and convenient page where you can point readers to.

As you’d expect in today’s market all these features aren’t free, but the template is definitely affordable when compared to the competition.  The TypeMagz theme is available for $50.00 for a single-use license, or a developer’s license is also available for $200.00.   If TypeMagz isn’t for you, you can view all of the themes available from ColorLabs Project here, including their other new design, the Wellblog theme.

Thanks to a generous offer from Nick Roach, the founder of Elegant Themes, I have been given three free memberships to give away to WordPress Hacks readers.  Before I give the details of the giveaway, here are the three most recent premium WordPress themes released by Elegant Themes:

Lumin Theme

Glow Theme

eNews Theme

If you don’t already have a membership and would like to join this excellent theme club, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post by Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009.  At that point we will randomly select and notify the three winners.   Good luck!

Update: Excellent participation!   Congratulations to our three winners:

• Narga (Comment #29)
• Mike Ramm (Comment #51)
• PT (Comment #71)

These settings pages have become very complex in many cases and can offer a variety of features, including selecting where you want your sidebars placed, how many sidebars, which color/design style sheet should be used, or it can also offer simple things like places to enter your custom RSS feed, twitter feed, and Google Analytics code.    As I’ve watched these control panels evolve over this past year, it has been truly amazing just how much can be changed without changing a single line of code!

Nick Roach, the founder of the popular Elegant Themes theme club, has been offering complex settings panels on his themes for as long as I can remember, but earlier this week I was given a peak at the new revamped settings panel named ePanel.  This new settings panel is extremely complex and will eventually be added to all of the themes included with an Elegant Themes club membership.   As of today’s date, ePanel is already integrated into the following themes and available for download: eBusiness, eNews, ePhoto, PureType, Bold, and CherryTruffle.  Nick promises that the remaining themes will receive the same treatment over the coming month(s) and all themes will include this new ePanel.

So, what exactly is ePanel?   Here is a screen shot of the updated design:

As you can see from the screen shot above, there are a few bonus tabs under the General Settings tab alone, and there are a total of 8 tabs down the left sidebar.   The General Settings has the following 3 tabs:  General, Homepage, and Featured Slider.

After loading up the theme to see how the settings panel works, I have to say I am very impressed!   It looks like the General tab (under General Settings) allows you to select the style sheet color you want to use, enable/disable blog formatting on the homepage, Feedburner integration including all your Feedburner settings, and selecting the date format (dates are displayed differently depending on what part of the world you live in).   In the Homepage tab you’ll get access to category display, as well as the ability to exclude certain categories of your choice.  Of course the Featured Slider tab allows you to control how the featured slider works.

That is just the beginning though, as on the left there is also a series of tabs which include a large number of other settings.   You’ll find Navigation options, Layout Settings, Ad Management settings, Colorization, and you’ll even be able to control certain SEO settings on the SEO tab (mostly meta information similar to how All-in-One SEO Pack works).

The best part is that all this new functionality is available for all Elegant Themes club members!   Currently a membership to Elegant Themes is only $19.99 for an entire year, and stays at that price in order to renew your yearly membership.  You can learn more about the Elegant Themes club here.

• A practical theme framework that offers a solid starting point for any WordPress theme.
• Plug and play – works out of the box, with an extensive options page.
• Awesome SEO. Everyone talks about their theme having ‘awesome SEO’, but Biblioteca doesn’t just let you believe it, it has options for setting the post title and description.
• Featured content gallery – Biblioteca uses Chris Coyier’s jQuery slider.
• Extensive options page – pictured below, the options page lets you change a ton of options, from the width of the sidebar to the contents of the footer to the ads in the sidebar to your Analytics tracking code.
• Magazine look – you want a fancy featured content gallery? Biblioteca has one. Enable/disable it from the opions page.
• Tech blog look – you want a couple of posts featured below the main featured content gallery? Biblioteca has got one of them; it’s widgetised too.
• Bloggy look – you just want a blog? Biblioteca can do that as well. Just set the options in the options panel.
• Drop down navigation – Biblioteca has some rather nice drop down navigation.
• A ton of widgets – Biblioteca has an ever expanding number of widget ready areas in all sorts of places that allow you to easily pop text just about anywhere.
• Fancy footer – the three column footer here on WPShout is often complimented and you too can have one – Biblioteca has one which you can enable/disable from the options page.
• Auto image resizing – set an image to display on the homepage and it’ll automatically resize itself.
• Multiple layouts – through the options panel you can change the layout, having a thin main content area, a slightly larger main content area or an even bigger main content area.
• The list goes on – just download it and see for yourself!

When creating Biblioteca I wanted to make something that would allow me to rapidly develop future themes, something I’ve done. Whether that makes it a ‘framework’ or not I don’t know. What I do know is that if you’re a designer looking to create an awesome WordPress theme but you don’t want to start from scratch, you could do worse than base your theme on Biblioteca. If you’re not a developer, then by no means are you alienated from using Biblioteca; the advanced theme options and in-post SEO options make it a great choice for any blog – take a look at WPShout and you’ll see; pretty much all I’ve done is change the background on the theme.

As in accordance with WordPress itself, the theme is GPL, although offered ‘as is’ with no free support. You can see the theme live here and grab the download it here. Enjoy!

About a month ago, Leland made me aware of a new project he was working on, building a business around the outstanding domain name CustomTheme.com.  As you’d expect, this new project is a service building custom WordPress themes.  While speaking with Leland, I was given the opportunity to be among the first to give the CustomTheme.com service a try (before it officially launched).  I jumped at the opportunity and ended up having him build a custom design for a new website I’m working on, Blog Tutorials.   Blog Tuts is similar to WPHacks.com, but will be expanded to cover SEO techniques, blogging tips, etc.

As far as the new design goes, here is a screen shot of the new custom design which was built specifically for Blog Tuts:

Last night I got the new design loaded on Blog Tuts and today I received word that Custom Theme was finally ready for the official launch, so I wanted to take a moment and let our readers know about this new service.   According to the services page, Custom Theme is able to accommodate just about any type of WordPress design you may need, including blog themes, magazine themes, gallery themes, and even CMS themes.

As of the publishing of this article, right now the beginning rate for purchasing your own custom design is as low as $299.00, which you’ll find is very competitive within the custom theme market.

Want to learn more about this new service?  Check out CustomTheme.com!

Premium theme designers are not the only ones using frameworks these days, however, and a few can actually be used by anyone in the development of their own personal themes!    As with traditional WordPress themes, WordPress theme frameworks have free options, as well as paid alternatives.    In the post below, I’ve collected the five major theme frameworks, and I intend to update this post as I learn of more WordPress theme frameworks.

Note: If these theme frameworks look a little plain, that is intentional.  Frameworks are designed for someone to use as a building point, so they lack a lot of images and design elements.   Once downloaded (or purchased), you can then build upon the framework to make your design.   Many of these frameworks also include child themes, which allow you to quickly convert your framework into a ready to use design.

Thematic WordPress Theme (FREE)

Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.

Thematic Framework | Live Demo

WP Framework (FREE)

WP Framework is a blank WordPress theme framework by Ptah Dunbar, which aims to cut down on your theme development time. It gives you a solid theme foundation to build your project on top of so you can focus on project-specific features right from the git-go.

WP Framework | Live Demo

WP Unlimited Framework (Single-Use $59.00 | Developer’s Pack $150.00)

The WP Unlimited theme has a fairly simple design but a very complex control panel, allowing the user to set up their blog without touching any code.    Once the functionality is in place, then you can easily customize the design to meet your personal needs.  Here is a screen shot of the control panel:

WP Unlimited | Live Demo

Thesis Theme Framework (Single-Use $87.00  | Developer’s Pack $164.00)

The Thesis theme framework is the most popular theme framework which has a cost associated with it and has built a loyal cult following.   Among those followers are some very high profile WordPress sites built upon the Thesis framework, then customized for their personal needs.  You can look through a list of these clients on their homepage.

Among the reasons people love Thesis is their attention to SEO techniques and the complex control panel:

Thesis Theme | Live Demo

One Theme Framework + One Panel (Single-Use $60.00 | Multiple-Use $110.00+)

By default, One Theme offers a variety of styles/looks to choose from and a complex control panel to get your site setup without having to hard code anything.    The One Theme also features several child themes to give the user more customization options.

In addition to the design, you get their comprehensive control panel which they call One Panel:

One Panel Control Panel

One Theme Framework | Live Demo

Know of a WordPress theme framework we are missing?  Please leave a comment or let us know about it!

One of the theme designers that recently caught my eye is a team of WordPress theme developers who launched a new website called WordPress Now.  Since the website has launched, they’ve already got three themes released, and the have two more which are in their final development stages.

Here are the three designs that WordPress Now currently has for sale:

Bloom Theme

Triumph Theme

Elements Theme

To see the true flexibility of these themes, you can view the live demos of each theme here.

As an added bonus, I spoke to the developers at WP Now and was able to land a couple sneak previews of upcoming premium themes that haven’t been released yet.

Vintmint Blog Theme (Not Yet Released)

Simplista Lifestream Theme (Not Yet Released)

So, what all is included with the purchase of a WordPress Now theme?  Your purchase includes a number of features (features differ with each individual theme), a large FAQ for answering questions, tutorials for getting started, and of course theme support!

WordPress Now also offers some impressive price options, offering their themes for as low as $49.00 to start, as well as offering a few WordPress developer options for designers.   Their two unreleased themes (shown above) will be available at even lower prices ($29.00 and $39.00 respectively).

If you’d like to learn more about WordPress Now, you can read more about the features and support information here.