WordCamp NYC 2009 – How to Choose Your Dream Theme

I am live blogging from WordCamp NYC,  please excuse any typos or less polished text.

Speaker: Adria Richards

If you are a beginner blogger, this is very useful for you. If you are not, move on to the next post…. Everybody wants a great looking site, looks easy, but it’s not. If you get a great looking site you get:

• increased traffic
• healthy SEO
• mentions on other blogs

Three themes types:

Free – use the ones from wordpress, they were checked and cleaned. There are a lot of good themes out there. Google cares what sites look like, they care about words. Free theme is like getting a used car from a family member – helps you to get from A to B.

Time – quick to set up

Cost – free

Support – you are on your own there, with forum support

Look - if you know how to code, you could work it out, but if not… you kinda stuck.

Commercial -buy one out there. you can go and buy a new car, that looks nice like most cars out there. fast, more options to customize. cost of $30 – $200.

Custom- hire someone to work with the two above. Can get you a ‘one off limited edition car’.

Time – depends on level of complexity

Cost – costly(ier) can be between $150 – $600

Support – your personal designer and developer. get references on them.

Look - unique, the best out there

Tagged as: blog, Search engine optimization, wordcamp, wordcamp nyc, WordPress, WordPress.com