But for someone new to this way of building a website or establishing a blog that very abundance of choices can be mind-bogglingly confusing.

So I thought it might be helpful to share briefly some of what I have learnt in years of using various different themes.

By the way, these are just my non-expert opinions (but learned through often frustrating experience). As regular readers will know, I am not a techie. I have taught myself some basics about site coding along the way – mainly HTML, a little about PHP and CSS (but not enough to impress anyone who really knows that stuff).

A little background on WordPress

Because of its origins, WordPress is commonly thought of as a blogging platform, which it is, but it is much more.

WordPress is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) which happens to have evolved from a blogging platform.

An important distinction to make is in terms of site hosting. You can have your site hosted, at no charge, with WordPress.com or you can “self-host” with the same software, from WordPress.org , on your own web server. For most of us, “self-hosted” means we choose and pay for a hosting service, as I do with HostGator.

In a post last year I wrote about why I recommend that businesses choose the self-hosted option from WordPress.org, rather than using a WordPress.com (or Blogger – hosted by Google) site.

To get an overview of some of the possibilities in using WordPress.org, check out the official Showcase.

There are thousands of WordPress themes and plugins available: many themes are free, some are “premium”, with either a one-off payment or requiring an annual subscription. I have used many free themes and eventually realized the truth of the saying about the support you can expect for a free product – “you get what you paid for”. So now I use premium services. But there is something to be said for using some free themes to start off, so that you get an idea of how it all works.

 What I look for in choosing a WordPress theme

The five things I look for are:

• Architectural Design
• Graphic Design
• Usability for a non-technical person
• Support
• Currency

1. Architectural Design

I have learned the hard way that there are many themes that look nice enough but ultimately don’t deliver in business terms because they lack a well-articulated architectural design. There is of course an underlying architecture for the WordPress platform, which is the same for everyone. I’m referring here to the architectural design of the theme itself.

It’s been immensely frustrating to find, on more than one occasion, that a theme which looked like seemed to need a lot more coding and tweaking to be able to serve my purposes. Nowadays I am more interested in finding out, as best I can, how good the theme developers are at coding than how good they are at graphic design.

A claim to incorporate an effective structure for SEO is increasingly, and importantly, a feature offered by theme developers – something to look for (and preferably not just have to take the developers’ word for it but get some third party validation if possible).

I prefer to have excellent architecture and excellent graphic design, but in a pinch I would go for architecture over elegant graphics.

2. Graphic design

The counterpoise to the previous point is that I look for graphic design which will work for my business. I see many WordPress sites that are a riot of color and drama, which is enjoyable enough to look at and may work for the relevant audience but which I see as not working for the audience I want most to attract.

One of the best ways I know to get ideas about what will work for you is to check out the sites of your competitors, especially the ones who seem to be doing well and where the site looks as if it was designed some time no longer than a couple of years ago.

Elements of graphic design I look at particularly are:

• layout
• ease of navigation
• style – I want it to look business-like in a corporate but non-stuffy sense
• typeface – elegant, appropriate to my target audience, and easily readable

3. Usability for non-technical person

This is very important for me. I don’t really enjoy getting under the hood and fiddling with layout, style, fonts and such, but I like to be able to do it when I want to and not find the process too much of an ordeal.

Understandably, you are more likely to find the premium services delivering consistently on this than do the free ones: the financial imperative is wonderfully motivating, although not all WordPress designers are good at explaining how to use their themes.

Some themes require more coding skill than others do if you want to modify them beyond the “don’t have to know code” options provided.

4. Support

As I indicated above, getting good support for free themes is not something you can expect to happen. My experience has been that even with those developers who do endeavour to provide some support for their themes, the support is more likely to be useful to other techies – people who know their PHP and CSS especially – than for the rest of us mere mortals.

And I think some developers get a bit bored with the whole idea of support. They are developers, after all.

In practice, I find that I get better support with premium themes than I have ever had with free ones. Stands to reason, but probably worth stating.

But even with a premium theme, it is not to be assumed that you will get quality support. It’s worth asking around, if you know people who use WordPress themes, about which providers offer and deliver quality support, consistently, over the long haul. And read the providers’ own blogs to get a feel for how well or otherwise they communicate – especially if you want someone technically skilled who can communicate in non-techie language.

The lack of an active support forum is a warning signal.

Another warning signal is that if there seems to be a long-standing but unfulfilled promise for a new release of the theme. That can mean it’s proved too difficult to update the theme, or maybe that the developer is not that interested any more in improving the product.

Instructional videos on site are a good sign of a company committed to support – as long as the videos are up to date: there are few things in this department more frustrating than trying to follow the steps in a video, then discovering it is out of date.

A well-frequented, busy support forum is a good sign that there is real interaction going on between the theme company and its userbase. If members of the forum are voluntarily providing help for one another, that is another good sign. Of course, you may have to become a paid customer before you get access to the forum.

5. Currency

I always want to have a theme which is to a degree timeless in terms of having a practical user interface and up to date in its look and feel.

I want to know that the theme is well supported and I am impressed when it is being used by leaders in the blogging/social media world.

If you have not followed the story of how various themes have come on the market, one way to get a sense of which ones are current and delivering good results is to do some searching for blog posts offering reviews (bearing in mind that some of these “reviews” are fairly uninformative promos for a particular theme for which the blogger is an affiliate). My experience is that blog posts comparing two or three industry-leading themes tend to be more informative than single-theme reviews.

An example of an informative blog post comparing themes is this one which compares Thesis and Genesis and has, at this writing, 160 comments in which you will find some gems of information and insight. Another example of an article which is informative and non-boosterish is this comparison between Genesis and iThemes Builder.

Recommendations?

Everyone has their own needs, skill sets, preferences for how much or how little time they want to spend or not on learning some CSS, or generally on tweaking their site.

That said, there are three main providers which I can confidently say meet the 5 criteria listed above. (These are affiliate links but I am recommending them because I know they work and meet my criteria).

• Thesis from DIY Themes (I have used this on a number of sites)
• Builder from iThemes (the theme currently used on this site)
• Genesis Framework with Enterprise Child Theme (which, after a lot of checking,  I have purchased but not yet installed)

Do you have any other criteria for choosing a WordPress theme/provider?

I love books.

I love talking about books I enjoy.

I don’t really love reviewing books, although I’m pretty sure that in doing so I learn more about the subject than on a more casual, less accountable reading.

But lately I seem to be getting quite a few requests to accept advance copies of books, both on subjects to do with the main focus of this blog, working from home, and also on social media, about which I blog more frequently on my Des Walsh dot Com site.

And I’m not keeping up. The books are starting to become something of a burden, not a pleasure.

Part of the challenge I have with the whole exercise of reviewing is that I have this sense – old-fashioned, quaint even, as it may be – that I should actually have read a book before posting about it. And related to that is the fact that I want to feel that I’ve done justice to the book.

At the same time, I realize that the authors and their publicists might prefer I did not take that line and if I was not going to read the whole book, couldn’t I at least skim it and write a brief post about it, with a link?

Not an unreasonable expectation.  Just not an easy one for me to deal with.

There is also the fact that some PR/marketing companies offering books for review don’t realize I’m in Australia and then have trouble getting the publisher to ship the book here.

Time for some clarification

So for a recent pitch I received from someone I did not know, I wrote what I thought was an honest and hopefully helpful response, and in which I included a “let you off the hook” clause for the possibility that they hadn’t realized they would need  to ship the book to Australia :

The concept certainly looks interesting and I am sure there is a demand. I’m frankly being rather cautious about accepting books for review as it’s not my primary focus, they tend to pile up and I feel guilty and even more so when the people who have sent them follow up, quite understandably, with prompts.

Also, if I accept a book for review I will only do so on the basis that I can review it honestly, not just write a puff piece. I would add that I do not seek to gain any notoriety by being unfair or unkind and I do try to “accentuate the positive”.

Then there is the expense for you as I am in Australia and do not any more agree to review books from electronic versions. Some publishers refuse to ship review copies to Australia.

Sorry to be less than enthusiastic, but I wanted to be open with you. If you still want to chance my getting around to reviewing the book, please let me know and I’ll send you a shipping address. If you decide otherwise I will understand completely.

Guess what? Date sent Feb 1, as of Feb 28 no reply.

Not holding my breath.

Anyone care to share their thoughts on this, perhaps showing me a better way to handle it?

Image credit: “Books behind the bed”, zimpenfish, via Flickr, Creative Commons

I included some information and positive comments about the book in  a post here some months ago. At the time I fully intended to do a longer review post fairly soon after that, but each time I went to start that review I was blocked, so to speak, but the thought that I might not do it justice.

In the video review, which is just over 12 minutes, I give my impression of the book and single out some of the features that appealed to me, including its comprehensiveness, realism, thoughtfulness and humor.

I’ve noticed that in the video , where I mention the subtitle of the book I say “from home”, not “at home”. A slip of the tongue which I believe I compensate for adequately in the video where I explain the distinction and why the authors are concentrating on the phenomenon of people working at home.

Undress for Success is a valuable resource for anyone currently working at home, anyone thinking about it, employers, public policy-makers and others. I am indeed impressed.

Have you already been through the book, or at least skimmed it? Please share your thoughts here .

With the eye-catching title of Undress for Success, the just-published book by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish promises to reveal “The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home”. I’m up to Chapter 8, which is part of Section 2 – “Pajama Paychecks: Jobs You Can Do in Your Jammies”. The breezy style of the book title and section and chapter headings is reflected in a lightness of style in the book, without sacrificing the fundamental seriousness of the topic. Which means it is not a light read, but a good one.

The authors emphasize that the book is about working at home, not working from home. They give the example of plumbers, who work from home but can’t actually fix your drains if they stay at home. The focus of the book is on “work the offers a full-time income and can be done at home”.

The scope of this blog is different, in that it looks at business from the point of view of professionals working from home – many of whom will work for most or all of the time at home.

But given those distinctions, I have nevertheless already picked up enough information and ideas from the book to be looking forward to some more reading this coming weekend.

Reading the book has also prompted me to revisit some posts here about working from home, under the title of Working From Home and Loving It. I was surprised to see that the last post I had done in the series, one of three I did on “myths” about home based business, was late last year!

Posts so far in the series, commencing with the general post introducing the series, are:

Working From Home and Loving It: a Series

Working From Home and Loving It: The “Not a Real Business” Myth

Working From Home and Loving It: The Isolation Myth

Working From Home and Loving It: The Myth of Financial Insecurity

But the series was actually meant to go further. In the original concept, back in October, I Working From Home and Loving It: a Seriesa,had stated my aim of covering:

• Myths demolished (e.g. the myth of not having a “real” business)
• Pleasures of working from home
• Challenges for the serious business builder
• Secret weapons for the home based business owner

Not sure what happened to the plan!

Anyhow, right now, with so much gloom and doom talk around and so many people not having currently a choice to work in “away-from-home” locations, seems like a good time to pick up the ball and move on from the myths and onto the next segment, pleasures of working from home.

Next week. Promise.

In my post yesterday about Blog Action Day, I promised more information about a project we are supporting, with a focus on children.

It’s called simply The Library Project and it is about providing books for children in developing countries. Quite simply, books help their education and education empowers individuals and communities to rise out of poverty. Simplistic? Maybe, but I believe it works.

It’s easy, in developed countries, to take for granted the availability of books for children. By way of illustration, one of the biggest challenges Suzie and I had to deal with on our recent trip to the US for BlogWorld Expo was how to get out of a bookstore in Las Vegas without buying so many childrens’ books that our luggage would be overweight.

It’s not that in Australia we don’t have a range of childrens’ books – just that we don’t seem to have the range they have in the US and like all books they are more expensive here. Also, as in other developed countries, we do have public libraries with childrens’ books in abundance. And then there are school libraries.

In China, Vietnam and in other developing countries there are schools with few books, or no books at all.

The Library Project seeks to play a role in remedying that, book by book, school by school, and generally to support education in Asia, through the generosity of people around the world.

There are three programs:

• Elementary School Program in China and Vietnam
• Orphanage Program in China and Vietnam
• Earthquake Program (Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces, China)

If you are thinking, as I did at first, “A library? I don’t have the sort of money needed to build or stock a library!”, then I encourage you to check out the options for helping with The Library Project. If you are like me I suspect you’ll be surprised by what can be achieved with amounts of money that for comparable projects in the developed world would be regarded as negligible.

For example:

For $250 – $500 we are able to provide 500 to 3,000 Chinese language children’s books, plus tables, chairs, and books shelves where appropriate.

You can do a group project or contribute individually. To make it really easy, they will take PayPal donations. For US readers “The Library Project is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, and all donations are tax deductible.”

If you do decide to contribute, or perhaps have a project to get a group of family, friends and colleagues to, say, sponsor a whole library, be sure to blog about it, then let us know in the comments and make sure you include the link back to where you have blogged about your project or your thoughts on Blog Action Day 2008.