Smooth and grungy all at the same time, the Deviant theme just released by Elegant Themes makes quick work of showcasing your blog content.  For the price, you can’t afford NOT to be a club member and have access to all their sweet themes.

Feature List

• Opera compatible
• Netscape compatible
• Safari compatible
• Wordpress 2.9 compatible
• Six Color Schemes
• Threaded Comments
• Optional Blog-style Structure
• Gravatar ready
• Firefox compatible
• IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
• Advertisement Ready
• Widget ready sidebars
• Theme Options Page
• Custom thumbnail images
• PSD files
• Valid XHTML + CSS
• Smooth tabless design

Pricing

Unlimited theme membership for only $19.95 per year.

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase

Brand new to their portfolio, WooThemes‘ latest edition to their growing theme family is Optimize, a premium Wordpress theme packed with super hot new features, and entirely new WooFramework and 22 color styles to boot!

Don’t let the home page of the layout deceive you into thinking it’s just another image rotator.   This featured content presenter is dynamic in that it applies the smooth appeal of PrettyPhoto that allows a super modern lightbox effect that works for images AND video.  Just browsing the demo, the coolness of this is quite evident.

Just below the featured content area is the “life-streaming” bar that allows your most recent Tweet to be displayed.  This is growing more popular and certainly a neat add-on feature.

Below the Twitter box is a place to showcase your site’s content through “mini-features”.  Included in the navigation is a separate blog, which allows you to use this premium Wordpress theme to utilize Wordpress as a CMS.  The demo site uses it to showcase a portfolio, but you can use it to showcase your company’s work, regardless of what you work on.

Another thing that I really like about this theme is the smooth drop down functionality of the top navigation.  The look is clean and complete, unlike other premium themes that have a chopping drop down look.  These drop downs have styled backgrounds and fade in and out smoothly with no flash.

Feature List

• A custom home page featured area to showcase your work or products, with optional sub-featured area to give them more insight.
• Custom home page layout with optional Twitter box, Mini-features area, Info/Quotes box and option to insert any page above/below mini-features area.
• Sexy jQuery effects and PrettyPhoto (lightbox) integrated in theme.
• An optional integrated portfolio section to show off your work/products.
• Custom Woo Widgets for use in the sidebar and in the widgetized footer: Search widget, Ad space widget, Flickr widget.
• 22 stylish alternate colour schemes to choose from plus custom color picker so you can set your own background color and link color.
• Last but not least, the brand new WooFramework2 with updated options panel

Pricing

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License

WooThemes latest grunge-rock theme lights up the stage with a blend of sophistication and rough edges that makes Backstage the perfect theme for your band. With a featured content scroller on the home page, dynamic widget locations and the famed WooThemes backend framework, this theme is sure to help you be a rockstar.

Feature List

• A home page slider showcasing band/musician photography.
• A home page dedicated module to the band/musician biography.
• Unique page templates for your discography/music archive, and image & video galleries.
• Neat theme integration with media attachments.
• Custom Woo Widgets for use in the sidebar.
• Home page widgetized zones for a media widget showcasing images, videos or music.
• A recent news widget.
• An upcoming shows widget.
• Flickr and advertising widgets amongst others.
• 7 stylish alternate colour schemes to choose from.

Pricing

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License

Theme of the MONTH

Over time I find it entertaining to watch theme developers grow and their skill increase.  One can often look over their theme portfolio and see time go by as little attributes improve.  You can see hints of framework upgrades and witness tiny little accents get a little cleaner with each theme.

For a while now, I’ve kept it no secret that Woo Themes is my favorite designer, but ElegantThemes is quickly catching up.  It is pretty easy for me to know when I really like a theme because I start justifying in my shiny head how I can use it.  The latest addition to their family, Lumin, is a premium Wordpress theme that very well may soon be the new portfolio site for Too Creative, my “parent” company to all my blogs.  I love the smoothness, the gradients, the subtle fades of elements, the dramatic accents and the clever use of shadows.  I feel good when I look at it, really good.  I know other people will think I’ve got a great site if I’m using it; and impressing people is important when you are showing off your stuff.

ElegantThemes has a great number of themes and they have a backend framework control panel that has become much more sophisticated over time.  The Lumin premium Wordpress theme comes packaged with 3 preset styles, a smooth featured content slider on the home page, a gallery display preview by just mousing over the thumbnail, built-in advertising management, and a slew of other features that are sure to make your  mouth water.

Pricing: one of  the best things about ElegantThemes (and what could be the start of a trend!) is the low barrier of entry when it comes to price.  The number of theme developers are growing and what many of them are doing is offering subscription pricing that gives developers and users alike the opportunity to have access to all the new sweet themes they come out with with a flat monthly fee. ElegantThemes comes in at just shy of 20 bux a year; that’s right, I said $20 A YEAR.  Not too shabby, indeed!

Features List:

• Opera compatible
• Netscape compatible
• Safari compatible
• Wordpress 2.8 compatible
• Three Color Schemes
• Threaded Comments
• Optional Blog-style Structure
• Gravatar ready
• Firefox compatible
• IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
• Advertisement Ready
• Widget ready sidebars
• Theme Options Page
• Custom thumbnail images
• PSD files
• Valid XHTML + CSS
• Smooth tabless design

Pricing

Unlimited theme membership for only $19.95 per year.

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase

Looking for a stylish business slash portfolio premium Wordpress theme?  Look no further.  Woo Themes has come to the rescue again with another release from the personal stash of one of their developers: the SophisticatedFolio Theme.

This hot new theme comes packed and ready to jam with the famous Woo Themes framework, 10 styles to choose from and 10 custom widgets to play with.

Some of the many features include:

• Tell the world about yourself or company in the intro text and upload an image to show off your work in a stylish fashion on the home page
• A seperate custom category for showing off your portfolio
• Custom Woo Widgets for use in sidebar and footer: Work With Me, Testimonial, Twitter, Subscribe, Contact, Flickr, Twitter, Search, 300×250 ad, 125×125 ad
• 10 stylish alternate colour schemes to choose from

So, what’s the bottom line?

Single-use License: $70
Multi-use License: $150
Theme Club Standard: $62.50 upfront and $15 per month
Theme Club Developer: $100 upfront and $20 per month

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License

Digital Farm is at first glance super funky, but upon closer inspection, this new premium Wordpress theme addition from Woo Themes holds a more refined secret.  Originally serving as the theme for the personal blog of Woo Themes developer Mark Forrester, the Woo Team decided to release the theme to the general population as Forrester upgraded to a new skin.

One of the things that I like about this theme is that out of the box it comes with 7 preset styles that range from the spunkalicious default to a mild sleek corporate look and feel.  Depending on what you are planning on using the theme for would depend on which skin you’d like to start with, but the navigation layout lends itself perfectly for using it as a blog that doubles as a portfolio site coupled with scattered info about who you are and what you do.

Along the top is a main navigation that can be used to keep your pages visible and below the “header graphic” is a separate category navigation that certainly comes in handy when you want to keep all the good stuff separate.

I have to admit, I’m a little biased towards Woo Themes as they are definitely one of my favorite theme developers.  I’ve used several of their themes on client sites and have grown to love the thoroughness and user-friendliness of the back-end control panel options.  Everything is well laid out and simply put.  I’m no coder, developer or genius, so I like it easy; which is the same as most of you, I assume!  Another thing I like is that the code is clean and easy to edit.  From time to time I may need to get a little dirty in the code to do what I need and the Woo Theme structure lends perfectly for that with well commented code and no hidden secrets.

Let’s see what this beauty looks like.

Some of the many features include:

• A completely customizable header region with theme options to upload your own background header graphic and logo image.
• A tag based, optional sidebar slider to showcase your portfolio or any collection of posts/imagery
• A page template dedicated to showcasing all your older, archived posts for the sidebar slider above
• Complete control over excerpt vs content being displayed in the home pages blog posts, and archived posts
• 4 custom woo widgets and two widgetized sidebar regions for full control over your sidebar display
• 7 delicious alternate colour schemes to choose from, with two minimal, corporate designs for a completely different look and feel.

So, what’s the bottom line?

Single-use License: $70
Multi-use License: $150
Theme Club Standard: $62.50 upfront and $15 per month
Theme Club Developer: $100 upfront and $20 per month

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License

Magfolio from PremiumThemes is a magazine or portfolio style premium Wordpress theme.  The cool thing about this Wordpress theme is that it combines the idea of wanting to showcase the “latest” news and keep a portfolio section as well.  This magazine style theme allows easy customization with a unique back-end control panel and comes packaged with the PSD file so you can change the look and feel easily with the original graphics.

Another thing I really like about this theme is the Twitter feed box built into the home page layout.  I like this because it looks clean and not out of place.  So many themes try to do this but ultimately fail to keep a consistent look.  This is a great looking theme.

Some of the many features include:

• Fully customizable front page with full ability to change the graphics using the theme admin panel
• Custom back-end control panel
• Localization support
• PSD File Included
• Separate “blog” section
• Gravatar and threaded comments
• Fully supported through support forums
• Set up and ready for ads with placeholders in place
• Sidebar fully widget ready with a custom widget

So, what’s the bottom line?

Single-use License: $59
Developer License: $159

Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License