You’ll find some really incredible AJAX WordPress Themes out there.  AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XHTML.  If you’re not familiar with AJAX, you may be familiar with some of the features it is responsible for on WordPress sites.  For example, almost any feature that allows you to stay on the page while updating the content is using AJAX.  Search results are a common use of AJAX in WordPress themes.  When you search and the results automatically appear without clicking search or pressing “enter”, this is AJAX.

The following are 50 of the best AJAX powered WordPress Themes for Fall of 2011.  We sincerely hope you enjoy.  If you liked this post, we would love to share more with you with Facebook.

Minimalista (An Ajax WordPress Template)

Animated Under Construction – Twitter & Ajax forms

Hungarian (CSS3 + HTML5 + AJAX Navigation)

jSale – jQuery and Ajax For Sale template

Under Construction Page with AJAX, Twitter feed

PhotoGrid – One Page Ajax Photography WP Theme

Ajax Launch Page

Powerful Errors – PHP/Ajax error template

Under construction/maintenance – Twitter & AJAX

Under Construction Page w/ AJAX contact form

Ajax Portfolio

Grace powerful HTML CSS AJAX template

Divine – vCard/Portfolio – With AJAX Contact Form

AIDA AJAX Paper Landing Page

Minimalisto – Premium WordPress Theme

Multimedia – Music, Video, Picture, Blog HTML 5

LauncherX – Countdown Template

XYLON UNDERCONSTRUCTION PAGE

Revoltz – Premium WordPress Theme – 3 in 1

Ultra Sleek 3D Look Under Construction Page

Distinct – Portfolio and Business WordPress Theme

DynaX – Landing Page.

SlickApp – iPhone / Mobile App Website Theme

Stuff

Alabastros Studios WordPress Version

FreshServe – A Web App / SaaS Website Theme

COSoo COming Soon Page Template

Style and Fashion

Atheron – Under Construction Template + WP Theme

Photorific – Photography WordPress Theme

4elements – Multi Purpose Business Template

Rounded Biz – Professional Business Template

Feature List – a template designed to sell

DesiredFolio

Vendible – Site/Domain For Sale XHTML/CSS

Mobius Domain For Sale xHTML/CSS

Manilla WordPress Theme

DigitFlip, UnderConstruction with twitter

Minerva XHTML Theme

cleanTypo Website Template 6-1 for clean websites

web access Website Template web 2.0 look

RamInfo Clean Corporate Business Website Template

Atlas Magento Theme

Integrity Website Template web 2.0 style

Business Showcase – Corporate Layout (HTML)

Grunge Under Construction Pages

Premium Company Template

Stuff – template

Carta – Minimalistic Html Template

ONELAND Landing page

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If you have ever come across BloggingTips.com, you’ll have noticed they have an incredible design.  It is use-friendly, professional and there’s just something about it that makes you want to subscribe to their content.  That feeling is due in part to the high quality content found on that site.  It is also due in part because of the design.  I contacted Birdtone to see what makes them tick and how they conceive designs.  This is an unpaid review of Birdtone Designs, the shop responsible for this cutting edge design.

Using Bloggtips as an example of their design strategies, you can see the content is priority one.  There are no flashy, distracting features.  If you notice two things on the page, they are either the content or the conversion tools (subscribe form and social media links).  That’s it.

They specialize in blogging designs with a focus on user experience and content.  Their designs are simple and so very easy to use, even a two year old could find what they need.  That’s a compliment.

They do two things really well.  Simplicity and a nifty “ripped paper” effect.  When each are used in the proper form, they create exceptional packages.  I don’t want to speak out of turn, but the cost of their designs are less than you might think.  Although it sounds otherwise, this was an unpaid review of Birdtone.  Here are a few designs from their portfolio.

Folioway is a new, amazing and unique WordPress theme for showcasing your work.  It is also a great option for a business wanting to display their products.  It features a smooth slider, unlimited built-in styles, shortcode support and stunning typography.

Slick Gallery Feature

The theme comes with a nice gallery component that lets you display your graphic work or products in a stylish way.  Great for artists or other creative folk, it will simplify the need to show lots of images on one page.

Custom Shortcodes

Custom shortcodes make styling your blog easy.  No CSS necessary, just frame something in a brief code snippet and voila!  Shortcodes can create styled boxes, dropcaps, buttons, anything.  This helps keep the style of your blog uniform and professional.

Custom Styles

The theme comes with built-in background styles as well as an infinite color option using the unlimited palette that exists in, umm, the world.  With a few clicks, you can customize the look of your design without having to actually customize the theme.

Professional Typography

WordPress themes often neglect quality typography.  Folioway comes with an impressive set of typography that lends credibility and professionalism to your site.  High quality typography communicates your message effectively.

Folioway is a professional, stunning and impressive theme for almost any use.  It is particularly equipped to be used as a portfolio or design showcase blog.  The designer has paid attention to every detail, producing a high quality product for only $35.  Check it out now.

We all know Themeforest, ElegantThemes, Woothemes and the other major theme designers.  But there are hundreds if not thousands of other theme designers out there that are either obscure, new or quietly producing some of the best WordPress themes out there.

These theme designers offer high quality designs for a comparable price.  However there is one huge benefit to using these little-known designers: their themes are largely unique.  For example, some major providers sell thousands of themes each month.  That means if you deploy that theme on your WordPress site, several thousands other sites are using the same design.  On the contrary, choosing one of these designs means your site looks unique to a lot more people.

Check out some of these designers.  We think you will be pleasantly surprised, and hopefully you learn of a couple new designers you never knew about.

YooTheme

If you’re looking for a jazzy, creative and completely original theme, check out YooTheme.  Pingable’s design is actually a modification of a YooTheme product.  They started by creating Joomla templates, then realized Joomla is dumb, bloated and a sinking ship.  Now they make both, porting all of their previous Joomla templates onto the WordPress theme framework.

Design Disease

You may have seen their work over at SmashingMagazine.com, but they don’t tend to churn out a great deal of themes, just the occasional, high quality, funky looking design.  They also do custom work starting at $1,500.

Organic Themes

I have to admit, the name caught my eye.  Obviously themes can’t be organic, but I appreciate the sentiment.  I also appreciate their designs.  I’m going to go ahead and make up a word now, simplism.  That’s what comes to mind when I browse Organic Themes’ work.

SoloStream

Although their themes aren’t drop-dead gorgeous, they may be the right foundation for your custom work.  Every vision needs a starting point.  Every painter needs a canvas.  And so on.

RocketTheme

They also started with Joomla and just recently launched their WordPress membership package.  Unlike most designers, you can’t buy these themes individually, you must join their “club”.  This is a much more common model in the Joomla community.  By joining the club, you get access to all their themes, but can only use them on a specific number of sites depending on which license you purchase.  Similar to Elegant Themes.  RocketTheme has always led the pack with Joomla designs, now they are bringing their expertise to WordPress.

Mojo Themes

Mojo Themes is one of the larger providers listed here.  They also produce Magento and Tumblr themes and have a really killer deal going on at press time to celebrate their anniversary: 14 premium items worth $442 for $25.  Similar to the themeforest bundles that occasionally come out.

Up Themes

I have seen their work elsewhere, but perhaps there has been a rebranding at some point.  EVO in particular is familiar looking.  Either way, there is some nice work and creativity displayed here.

Pagelines

If I hadn’t already invented the word “simplism”, I would invent it again to describe the work of Pagelines.  Their work is both elegant and minimal, which is a lot harder to pull off than one might think.  Kudos Pagelines.  They also feature a drag-n-drop feature which is really nice.  Although I haven’t personally tested it, it promises to be handy.

Graphpaper Press

I’ve always been a fan of graph paper.  The actual paper with the little squares on it.  So neat, confined, clear.  It really makes one feel secure.  Oh, and the design shop isn’t bad either.  Their stuff looks really classy.  You can never trust a design shop that uses someone else’s theme on their own site.  GraphpaperPress’ work is truly unique.

The WP Ninja

Your run of the mill, standard WordPress themes, with a little kick added in.  There is something for everyone over there, a good mix of functional, blog and professional themes.  Definitely worth checking out.

Designer Marios Lublinski has put together some truly beautiful, free WordPress themes.  They are simple while elegant, making use of sharp contrast between black and white.

They are built specifically for designers to showcase their work.  This works because the colors palettes are simple and basic.  His themes are minimalist in that they don’t draw focus.  Rather, they direct the browser to focus on the content.  This is why his themes are built for artists and designers.  I his words:

I design and develop modern and minimal WordPress themes. My focus for this website is to develop many beautiful WordPress themes for graphic designers, illustrators and mainly artist, to display their amazing artwork.

Here are some of his free themes

Note the attention to typography and minimal font sizes.  I also particularly enjoy the strike through mouseover link styling.  A couple of these themes return to the left-hand menu layout which was a common trait of designs a few years ago.  Personally, I enjoyed the style and would love to see it make a comeback.

Contemporary Design

Studio Dessign

Minimal Dessign

Swiss Dessign

Style Dessign

Check out all of Marios’ free themes here.

Note: This is not a sponsored post.  I just really like Marios’ work.

WordPress comes feature-rich and smooth right out of the box, but have you ever wondered how to customize WordPress?  As in, really making it your own?  Want a blog? Done.  Want a static website? Done.  But are are lots of other ways you can use WordPress to meet your web needs.  Here is a list of helpful tools and tips for how to customize WordPress.

If you’re interested in how to customize WordPress, consider reading our past article on making your blog stand out, as well as this one about WordPress tutorials.

How to customize WordPress

If you’re skilled, you can create a theme from scratch.  This is by far the hardest way, even premium theme creators often use some of their previous themes as frameworks.  To start creating a custom WordPress theme, check out some of these resources.

• Official WordPress Codex Tutorials
• The WordPress Loop Documentation
• WordPress Template Tags

Artisteer

Artisteer is a finicky option.  It will not create a premium quality theme in terms of design.  But it will be valid XHTML and clean CSS.  The good news is you can use Artisteer to create lots of different kinds of themes.  I use it to create a framework for custom themes, then go back and customize them further.  Check out Artisteer here, or read this full review we wrote back .

Hybrid custom theme

Search for a theme with a strong foundation, valid XHTML and clean CSS.  It should have many of the features you want but not all.  You can then take that theme and completely hack it up to meet your needs.  Think about adding new widget positions, changing the column structure or adding a new menu.

When choosing a foundation theme, go premium.  You’ll be glad you did.  They’re just better made, cleaner, with a solid code foundation.  Here are three of the best providers:

• WooThemes
• ThemeForest
• Elegant Themes

How to Customize WordPress’ Look and Feel

Custom Default Gravatars

The Gravatar is an often underlooked (not a real word) feature of WordPress.  The Gravater was incidentally created by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress.  WordPress comes with a default Gravatar when commenters do not have one.  This is a nice, simple way to give your website a customized feel.

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars

Custom Comment Styling

Comments are the second easy way to add a custom feel to your design.  Nesting comments is a great way to encourage discussion on your blog.  Quality comments and good discussion are great ways to explode traffic.

• http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-style-author-comments-in-wordpress-27

Creating an effective “about” page

Your “about” page is the first step when a reader really likes what they see.  When you make the effort to write superb content, a reader will find it and seek more info about your site.  Next stop… conversion!  If they like what they read on your about page, they will sign up for updates and you’ve nailed it.

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/01/best-practices-for-effective-design-of-about-us-pages/

Revamping your footer space

Footer spaces are now being used to show lots of information or tools.  It’s no longer just a silly copyright section.  The link below has some great examples of usable footers.  Customizing this section of your site really gives that extra customized feel.

• http://www.reencoded.com/2009/07/07/20-great-wordpress-footer-designs-for-inspiration/

Customize your WordPress 404 page

Hopefully users aren’t encountering your 404 page often because your links are all current.  However, it does happen, sometimes out of your control because outside sites will link to your site incorrectly.  Customizing your 404 page says to your readers: “we went the extra mile to offer you a unique experience.”

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/404

Customizing the login page

If your site employs the user function of WordPress, creating a customized login page can be a nice touch.  Somehow branding the login to match your site but also be creative is a great touch.

• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bm-custom-login/
• http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/custom-wordpress-login-screen/
• http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-of-best-wordpress-custom-login-page-designs/

Revolutionary thinking (put content before ads)

The instinct to make a few bucks for all the time you’ve spent on the content is sometimes overwhelming.  But if you listen to one piece of advice on this page, prioritize content over revenue.  You will reap the benefits.

Think of this as a design choice as well as a chronological choice.  When starting a new website, forego the advertising until you feel it is absolutely necessary and you have the traffic to make it worth it.  You choose which is better: little traffic with many ads to make a few dollars or few ads, making lots of money with lots of traffic.

• http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2010/06/09/blogging-pitfalls-advertising-overload/

Custom content archives

Users need to be able to access your content.  If they come back to find some older content, the search form may not work.  Also, complete archives will help search engines know about all of your content.  You spend time writing it, should people be able to find it?

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_an_Archive_Index

Custom Admin theme

The admin theme will only be for your benefit or that of your writers and editors.  However, it can be nice to change things up, and some custom themes can add a whole new experience for the admin.  It can also save you time if you spend a lot of time in the dashboard.

• http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/how-to-customize-the-wordpress-admin-area/

Additional Resources

Check out these other resources and articles on customizing WordPress.

• http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/10-ways-to-customize-and-personalize-your-wordpress-blog/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/13/10-custom-fields-hacks-for-wordpress/

If you have your own tip for how to customize WordPress please share it below.

These themes all demonstrate the excellent skill of incorporating vivid color.  Designers have masterfully chosen color pallets… sometimes wide ranging, sometimes simple.  Have your own example of a great use of color in a WP theme?  Please share as a comment below.

Below are 15 examples of stunning, professional and effective WordPress designs.  These sites took various design elements into account including the use of negative space, color contrast, eye-popping dimension.  They utilized various textures and color palettes to impress the viewer.  Enjoy!

Want to see what our readers are interested in?  We ask readers to submit their favorite, new content and resources so we can share them with you.  Without further delay, here are some of the best recent submissions for your enjoyment.

50 Striking Typography Tutorials Using Photoshop

In the broadest sense, typography is the design and use of typefaces as a means of visual communication from calligraphy to the ever-developing use of digital type. we creating list of striking techniques of typography tutorials using Photoshop. Typography is sometimes seen as encompassing many separate fields from the type designer who creates letterforms to the graphic designer who selects typefaces and arranges them on the page. We hope you all like these stunning typography graphics and also can share your own typefaces.

50 Stunning Poster Advertisement Ideas

Poster designing is one of the most creative part of graphic designing and helping for brand advertisements, now web designers also like to draw advertisement posters for web promotions and we have some awesome collection of Poster designs in this creative post. Creative Posters always attract users whether they graphical posters accumulate to the side of roads, in the paper flayers, wall posters, telephone cabin and even when distribute on the way, they always grab the viewers attention and invite them to take some immediate action. This is my favorite alternatives for inspiration is poster design, by looking at great posters, you can learn a lot about composition, typography, and use of colors…

40 Stunning Tutorials about 3D Text

Adobe Photoshop is powerful tool for create any kind of professional designs and effects for both categories like Print Media and Web Designs, we’re proudly present beautiful listing 3D Text Effect Tutorials Using Photoshop, We have collected 40 best ever cool 3D typography text effect trainings. you’ll find all these beautiful, high-quality Adobe Photoshop tutorials from top tutorial sites and designers, they did excellent work in all trainings and sharing helping techniques about Photoshop.

50 Ultimate Useful Free MAC Applications

Apple always produces most powerful products, one of those are Mac Machines and we presenting “50 Ultimate Useful Free MAC Applications” we dug up from famous resources all over the web and arrange on our platform for you Mac lovers. Each of listed are free to download and use as you required in your field, one of the greatest things about Mac Computers are wealth of extremely talented developers that are willing to share their amazing creations without asking for a single cent, because everyone loves to get free Applications.The following list may come in handy too. In this weekend, we’d like to showcase you a list of really useful yet free Mac Software’s you can install for your Mac, we create our list in 3 category: Free MAC Applications for Freelancers, Music and Video MAC Applications, Free MAC Productivity Applications, File Sharing and Transfer Applications and MAC Apps for Web Designers.

30+ Useful Jquery Tutorials Using Advance Techniques

Although there are many great techniques already but hopefully these listed jquery tutorials will help you too and it will also give you a more professional feel and you will get latest techniques for modern design requirements of Web Developers.In this our first jQuery Tutorials article, we will presenting some really useful trainings about how to learn jquery techniques step by step and also will productive in your websites developments.Hope you will like these listed tutorials and leave your comments.

20 Articles and Tutorials About Using Negative Space

Negative space, also referred to as ‘whitespace’ in design, can dramatically improve your designs and help them breathe more and have a much better flow. Today we have collected 20 articles and tutorials to get you started understanding negative space and effectively applying those principles in your designs.Whether you’re a graphic designer or you design solely for the web, I am certain you will learn quite a lot from those articles. Some of them are geared more towards web-design but some also refer to drawing and painting or simply talk about how to effective use whitespace to craft more interesting designs.

We downloaded the free trial version of Artisteer, a WordPress theme generator that also can export Joomla and HTML website themes.  We then dished out $49 to test the full version with all the features enabled.  It had a promising feature list and made some heady claims as to what was possible with this $49 chunk of coding.  The short version of this review: the software is not worth it.  The long version follows.

In their words:

Artisteer is the first and only Web design automation product that instantly creates fantastic looking, unique website templates and blog themes.

	Design awesome blogs and cool web templates in minutes
	Export to Blogger, Joomla, WordPress and other CMS products
	No need to learn Photoshop, CSS, HTML or other technologies
	Fun and easy to use!

With Artisteer YOU immediately become a Web design expert, editing and slicing graphics, coding XHTML and CSS, and creating Web Design Templates, Joomla templates, Drupal themes, WordPress themes, DotNetNuke skins, and Blogger templates all in minutes, without Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and no technical skills.

These are impressive claims.  As a follow up, they offer these as the “Top 10 reasons to use Artisteer”:

1. Generate cool Web design ideas.
2. Adjust generated designs to create great looking Web and Blog templates.
3. Create perfectly correct, validated HTML and CSS that conform to Web standards.
4. You don’t need to learn Photoshop, CSS, HTML and other Web technologies to create great looking designs, including images and buttons.
5. If you are a Web designer, generate ideas, prototypes and quick Websites for your clients and friends.
6. Choose and use many included design elements, from backgrounds to photo objects and buttons.
7. Automatically solve problems with image aliasing, Web browser compatibility and other details requiring time and knowledge.
8. Learn how to create professional HTML and CSS code.
9. Save money on WordPress Themes and Web design templates.
10. If you don’t have the time, hire your kids to create great looking web design for you.

In our words:

Number 10 is probably the best reason to use Artisteer.  Why? because it can really only produce a theme worthy of a child’s blog.  Although there are some fancy and handy features which are outlined below, the end product is a well packaged piece of junk.

The Pros:

• The interface is super easy to use.  Literally point and click to change the layout.
• The “suggest a design” feature is very cool.  One click and the software will assemble a random set of parameters into a theme.
• Exporting into a full theme package takes just a couple quick steps.  The Home version which we purchased for evaluation allows the exporting of WordPress, Blogger and HTML themes.  The Pro version allows the aforementioned formats plus Drupal and Joomla templates.

The Cons

• As we mentioned, the quality of the themes is poor.  Unless you are a highly skilled graphic designer that can completely customize the theme after export.
• The files exported clearly indicate that Artisteer was used in a Readme file.  Also, the CSS files have the “art-” prefix which hints at the generator of the theme.  This isn’t a big deal for personal use themes.  But if one wanted to sell these themes as their own design, Artisteer would give them away.
• The layouts are limited to specific formats.
• There are three built-in widget options with very limited placements in the themes.
• Menus look amateur in quality.
• Customizing the menus takes quite a long time to get the hang of.
• You can’t pass off the themes as your own. (Read as both a pro and a con)
• It is pretty expensive ($49 for the limited version, $129 for the expanded)
• Their support was fast but snotty.

Our final opinion: The software is neat – but would be neater if it were free.  It produces quick themes if you don’t care about quality or aesthetics.  The support staff lacks interpersonal skills.  Overall, Artisteer is not worth the investment.  You’re better off dropping half as much on a professionally designed, well supported theme over at ThemeForest.com.