I recently got sick of browsing through the same free themes repetitively, so I started making mine. Turns out PhotoShop doesn't like my computer much, but I found this program. It's actually pretty cool because you can just click a button and it will randomly put together different images, sizes, colors, etc to make a unique theme. Then once you found one that looks kinda good, you can easily modify it to look the way you want it. artisteer.com Code (markup): What do you guys use? Free Templates? Premium Templates? Photoshop? another program? Do you hire someone to make you one? Do you code it by hand?
The code generated by artisteer is ugly but not much uglier than some premium themes out there. I kinda like it, if as you say the theme is tweaked and fine tuned by hand. But nothing beats an hand coded theme, especially now that loading speed is going to influence serp placement. So I'd say: hire an experienced developer for serious projects.
If you want to make your own they have bare themes that you can build off, like themeshaper. There's also a bunch of good tutorials if you want to create one from scratch it's not that hard. Everything is just broken down like header, footer, sidebar and content.
I usually just google "top best wordpress themes" or "top free wordpress themes" until I find a theme I like; then I cut it up, move things around, take things from other themes and make it how I want it. Its worked for me so far, and its thought me a lot about php
Yh I google most of mine, just add something to it for example, 'celebrity wordpress theme' Hope this helps Hugh
http://wordpressthemesbase.com/ Code (markup): and http://topwpthemes.com/ Code (markup): Are good wordpress theme sites. The themes are free as well
well i think it depends. each situation should be reviewed separated from others. i mean that free templates are good in some situatuions, in the other - premium ones. ectually i agree with stampavideo about experienced developer. it is the main thing i think. any way if you would like you could take a look at these wp templates.http://www.websitetemplates.bz/wordpress-themes.html
I have found a interesting link where you can get WordPress ready Templates: [photoshopsociety.org/themes.php]
Me too kaos...I got tired of searching and searching for a theme even though I knew in my mind what the one I wanted should look like. I was just looking last night as I am moving my websites around and adding more. I remembered that I had Artisteer...so I opened it up and built a template more to my personal specs. I have many frameworks downloaded on my computer as I like to play in the code, but I'm no programmer and that is a very long and tedious process for me, but I can build something in Artisteer and slowly tweak it over time. At least an Artisteer template is a unique creation. Eventually, I may hire a designer, but I don't have the capital for that right now.