I love WordPress. You love WordPress. We all love WordPress.
Part of the appeal back at the time was the two clean, professional, SEO-friendly themes this blogging software came with. Yet, WordPress also brought on an explosion of creativity as designers have been creating custom themes for years. Along the way, the classic themes became outdated, pretty much, with free and paid themes taking over the lead as the professionals’ choice.
With the release of WordPress 3.0 a new default theme was introduced: Twenty Ten. It took me a while to give it a shot, especially as I had been playing around with Thesis at the time. Lately, I’ve been trying both on various blogs, and at this point in time, Twenty Ten is my favorite.
What I Like About Twenty Ten -
- Clean Design.
- Customizable background color and header.
- Several widget areas.
- SEO-friendly – or should I say, as SEO-friendly as I need it to be. While Thesis gives you more control over SEO variables, I think it’s actually a waste of time to over-optimize your blog for the search engines.
- Free and always up to date!
I confess, I like the fact that I’m dealing with a default WP theme too. Keeping it simple, and at the core of the WP open source community.
I’ve just switched over to Twenty Ten on this blog here. Hope you like it – didn’t even bother with a unique header image yet. Once I do that, I may play around with the colors too.
How about you? Have you tried Twenty Ten yet? I’d love to hear more about how this theme worked for others.
It’s certainly quick at loading I like it, it’s very minimalistic, once you have changed the defualt image and made it your own, then it will look even better
.-= Karen´s last blog post ..Dark Ramblings from Angus Maiden =-.
Glad you like it – I couldn’t tell about loading times yet, so glad to get your feedback on that one, thanks!
In my opinion there’s new good stuff and also a lot of “garbage”. I am a wordpress theme designer and have done tens of skins. Well, this transition made me want to kill someone. WordPress stood for SIMPLICITY and EFFECTIVENESS for all these years. Little by little their script will become as filled with useless features as php nuke was back in the day. I wish they’d just stop and just work on the security and not put all kinds of menus and editors and things we were able to live without with no problem.
I hear you. That often happens to popular scripts though
Vbulletin comes to mind as something that blew up into a monster too.
Don’t get me started on VB and IPB, you’ll ban me for foul language
Hi Ramona
You have my vote on WordPress concentrating on the security… guess they leave that to the many security plugins.
.-= Keith Davis´s last blog post ..Facts tell… emotions sell =-.
I haven’t quite thought about the idea to use the twenty ten wordpress plugin, Anne. I always thought that default wordpress.com sites that come with the plugin can’t get customized and that you don’t have enough field to play with. But now I actually come to see what you mean when you say that one might overoptimize a blog with extreme themes like thesis. I guess the guys at WordPress would obviously know what they are doing from an seo standpoint. Might not be such a bad idea to install a clean plugin of this kind. Plus you mentioned it’s customizable as well.
I love the twenty ten theme, i’m using it on my blog too. I will eventually get around to doing a custom design for it, but with a theme that works and looks great, there is no big rush
.-= Davis´s last blog post ..Welcome to The Elusive Affiliate =-.
Agreed, I’m thinking the same. It’s fine as it is, at the very least good enough for a while before I get the time to customize.
I love it. Also considering it for a couple blogs.
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog post ..See You October 1st-ish =-.
Hi Anne,
I’m using this on a client’s blog too. I like it’s simplicity too and the ease of use, changing the header and background color as well.
Cheers!
.-= Jun´s last blog post ..New My Client Center Features =-.
Is twenty ten a premium theme? Would love a side by side detailed comparison vs thesis.
.-= Mark´s last blog post ..Joomla Shopping Carts Worth Trying =-.
It’s not only free, but is also a default WP theme. It comes with any WordPress 3.0 and above installation. I don’t think I’m in the position to make a detailed side by side comparison with Thesis, as I’m probably not that much of a Thesis expert. All I can say is, for Twenty Ten, I don’t feel like I need to be an expert… It’s just a good ‘ole WP theme!
I’ve used Twenty Ten on some niche sites and loved it! I thought maybe it was part of the little battle concerning Thesis and the GPL, giving us a free theme that does so much, and we bloggers reap the benefits!
In the end I decided to go back to Thesis on most of my sites. That could be because I’d already paid for it so wanted to justify that somehow.
.-= Christie´s last blog post ..How starting my business in the wrong state killed it before it began =-.
I still have Thesis on some sites. I even have other themes on other sites. With some of them, I’ve already done the modifications I needed, so not about to change these anytime soon.
Hi Anne;
This theme actually looks quite a bit like a pared down Thesis. And the fact that it’s free is a bonus.
Good work and good job reminding people that sometimes the simplest problems (ie: finding a blog theme) are solved by the default answer!
Cheers! (And thanks for commenting on my blog too – BTW!)
- Don
.-= Don Power – Promotional Videos | Social Media Marketing ´s last blog post ..How to Get a Job by Dissing your Employer =-.
Hi Anne,
I’ll have to admit I really like the look. And I am getting extremely fast load speeds also.
A header with a collage of all your websites might be nice. But heck, I say go with what you have here.
Can you forgive my O.C.D.? I’m really glad the green is gone!
.-= Jeffrey Morgan´s last blog post ..Try Doing This =-.
Glad you like the change
No more of that green lol, promise! Interesting idea about the collage – thanks! Might do that when I find sometime!
Hey! You can use TwentyTen Weaver that gives you more power to customize your blog. I’m using that for my blog.
I read lots of about Thesis theme and wish to buy one in near future. I was trying to find comparisions to decide whether the money worth. Your post is one bit on that quest. Thanks for your views.
.-= Suresh Khanal´s last blog post ..Create Your Own Avatars – You Are NOT Spam Bots =-.
Glad you found it useful – will check into the weaver thing, I guess it’s a plug-in.
As you rightly said, it’s clean BUT I’m not a huge fan of clean as I like me some colors which is why I prefer the “flashy” wordpress themes.
P.S: Any attempt at installing the subscribe to comments plugin yet ?
.-= Udegbunam Chukwudi´s last blog post ..Top 9 Ways Of Forcing Google To Crawl Your Site Faster =-.
Yeah, I did actually install it a while ago. Let me check and see why it’s not working.
Weird, it’s installed, yet not working with this theme, which is an official wordpress theme. I guess I’ll have to find a different plug-in that does.
Anne – what can I say but welcome.
Can’t believe how good the WordPress default theme looks now… that horrible default blue thing just seems like a bad dream.
And now you have nice easy comments and CommentLuv – can’t be bad.
.-= Keith Davis´s last blog post ..Facts tell… emotions sell =-.