Tips for Creating a Free Wordpress Theme
Written by Vinh Le on April 11, 2008 – 3:48 am
2 Comments
Who Else Wants to Create a Great Custom WordPress Theme and then Give it Away for Free?
It seems as though designers are cranking out free wordpress themes super fast these days. This is with good reason though, as people cant seam to download them fast enough. And the number one reason people make free wordpress themes is to create backlinks to their website. It is even becoming more (un)popular for people to sponsor a wordpress designer in exchange for having a link at the bottom.
About six months ago I stepped into the realm of creating wordpress themes for free as a tool to build my reputation in the blog design community and get more backlinks to my blog. I managed to get hundreds of backlinks and it even helped my technorati rank as well. Here are my thoughts on the process and results of creating a wordpress theme for free.
1. Pick a unique name
The benefits of picking a unique name for your wordpress theme cannot be understated. People will actually search for your theme if it becomes popular enough in order to get updates or see what else you are doing. I know this, because google analytics tells me that there are people who find my blog by searching for my theme’s name.
I called mines “dreamworks redux,” just to give you an idea. I see a lot of wordpress themes that roll out with names like [insert color name] + [insert generic word]. Google will return millions of results for that search term so they won’t be able to find your website.
2. Create a cool header design
When you submit your theme into wordpress theme galleries, all people will see is the name of your theme and a small screenshot of it. Based on these two things, a person will make a decision on whether to give your theme a download. A lot of themes that are getting submitted have the same old plain header design that if you make yours stand out just a little more, it will increase the chance of your theme getting downloaded.
3. Make it widget-ready
People who download free themes also love free plugins. They tend to download a ton of it so it is important to make your wordpress theme not only widget-ready, but make sure it looks good. There is a standard that most widgets use in their code so it makes it easy to write CSS for it. So there should be no excuses for not making the widgets pretty.
4. Test it yourself, then have someone else test it
Once you release your theme, hundreds and thousands of people will download it. So make sure it works in the major browsers and all the features you included in it works as well. A lot of people won’t bother trying to fix a bug themselves because they don’t know how to or could just easily download another free wordpress theme.
A well tested theme will make a good first impression, while one full of bugs will leave a bad impression. Even if you fix it later, they might not decide to download your theme again because of their previous bad experience. So make sure it is well tested!
5. Prepare to provide support
It is guaranteed that no matter how well you built your theme, someone will run into problems with it. And they love it so much that they are willing to track you down and ask for help. It is important to expect this and fix bugs that come up. Your fans will love it and continue using your theme. If you don’t fix it, they will change themes and you will lose out.
About The Author: Vinh Le
here to eradicate bad blog designs. There is no reason a blog should be using a bad blog design when there are resources available to help you build a better blog design. Visit his website at Blog Design Blog| All posts by Vinh Le
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2 Responses to “Tips for Creating a Free Wordpress Theme”
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And if you can include… make the codes clean by validating them. Our WordPress Themes Gallery would be delighted to feature valid css and (x)html themes.
Very good points, certainly #2 is very true, and a well executed header will be one of the first things that will either draw someone in, or push them away from using your theme . & On another not, a nice website you’ve got running there Vinh Le, keep it up.