Where do I go for Wordpress themes?

About an hour ago, Tweeter @yukarip asked where to go for the “best Wordpress themes” and @funkyplates said she should talk to me. Oh, no pressure at all ;) (but thanks!)

The short answer is “there is no best place.”

I can hear some people now: “Ya, but…”

Ya but nothing… It’s kind of like asking “Where’s the best place to eat out?” You know that people will follow it up with “What kind of food do you like?” and “How much do you want to pay?’ or “What time of day are you going?” even “How many people are going?” as well as “What part of town?”.

Truth is, you sometimes need to go to a dozen restaurants before you find your own, personal Cheers.

Before you can go searching for your own “best place to find Wordpress themes” you need to know many, many things about your site – and yourself – like:

• What colours do you want to use?
• Will you be having a lot of pages?
• Are you comfortable installing plug-ins or widgets if the theme requires it?
• Are you able to recognize an “almost what I want” theme and either tweak it yourself or get someone to fix it?
• Who is the audience?

The honest truth is, it’s probably best to spend an hour or five going through many, many, many different themes (and you’ll start to see duplicates on different sites). Download lots, install lots and go through all the previews using your own site. Most of them look really sexy before you download, but once you have your own things up, you either find it doesn’t fit well or you’re going to have to install 5 plug-ins or widgets to make it look like it did “on the box.”

What do I do? I simply go to Google and start my search with “free wordpress themes” or “free wordpress templates” and spend some time poking about there. Then I move on to places like Theme Forest or something quite robust like Headway (which I’m still playing with…).

To start, I’d go up and down the aisles, find a lot of free ones and do a lot of taste testing; how do you know you’re going like something until you nibble?