WordPress theme generator software-WordPress Tools

With WordPress theme generator software,creating your own WordPress theme can be very simple. Sometimes it’s  indeed possible to find a free theme that fits their needs perfectly and then the task may only be about changing the logo and a few colors. The disadvantage with this approach is the risk that your site looks similar to several other sites. There are many websites helping us with finding WordPress themes and of course you can use them as starting point and change as much as you like. It is also a good idea to consider themes that have been designed specifically to be changed and more act as WordPress theme frameworks. Finally there is the option to create your own theme. There are many advantages with this approach – like having a unique look and feel, having complete flexibility of how to design the theme etc. Unfortunate getting a WordPress theme designed and implemented by a skilled web designer can be quite costly, but if you find the right designer the result will be excellent. If you can’t afford this, but still want the flexibility and unique look of your own theme there is another and much cheaper solution. This article will give you an overview of the best WordPress theme generators currently available and review Artisteer in detail. The idea behind this kind of software is to allow people that are not skilled designers and developers to create themes anyway. Of course keep in mind that a generated theme will probably no be as unique and awesome as a theme create from scratch by a top designer. Still I think it is worth to give it a try. I have also found a few other theme generators you can have a look at.

Artisteer Theme Generator

 

Artisteer has been around for quite some time and support export to several other platforms than WordPress (Joomla, Drupal etc.). It is probably one of the best tools you can own for WordPress if you want to take control of you theme look and feel yourself. For less than $50 you can have an endless number of custom WordPress Themes at your finger tips. Once you start it up you choose the export format you need and in this case we pick WordPress. Other interesting options are in my opinion Joomla and Drupal and HTML page, but it depends mainly on your preference.

You can design the theme you need with great flexibility in this software and it runs on your pc and is really responsive. You should start by using the Suggest Design button. Pressing it will load random theme designs and believe me they are random and you quickly see it is not just a single theme with different colors Artisteer circle through. It is completely different themes that are presented.

Once you have found a theme that is worth adjusting to fit your exact needs you start improving design elements. Below I show you how pressing Suggest Header and Menu have changed these elements.

If the random approach is not preferred for you it is possible to change the design yourself fast and easily. The design is broken up into 10 elements; Colors & Fonts, Layout, Background, Sheet, Header, Menu, Articles, Blocks, Buttons and Footer. Below I show you how the shape of the menu buttons can be changed from a set of pre-sets. The same flexibility is found for any other element of the page layout. Just hovering the mouse over a design setting makes Artisteer apply it as preview – pretty cool actually!

Now it’s important that you understand that when it says ‘random’, you’re not going to end up with a rainbow-colored website with strange backgrounds and fonts. Artisteer has been cleverly programmed with sets of complimentary colors, fonts and layouts.for example when you click ‘suggest colors’, it will pick out a pallet from a list of professionally created sets. The change color theme effect is awesome and you need to try it out yourself.

Another element most of people want to change is the background. In Artisteer you can choose from a list of good looking prebuild backgrounds, but you can also upload your own files, add texture, gradient etc.

The vertical menu can also be adjusted easily and I think the available predefined designs look great.

Artisteer also comes complete with a bunch of stock images that you can use in the header, articles etc. The software allows you to choose an image from the built in categorized collection or you can import your own – just remember that you get the best results with transparent background gif or png format. You can also add Flash effects to give the header a dynamic look and feel.

Another nice feature is the Page layout options, which allows you to easily move around your menus (vertical menu) and your columns/sidebars (horizontal menu).

This way you can easily add another sidebar or move it form one side to another.

There are several more options we have not showed here. I recommend you get the trail version and play around with it yourself – it’s fun and very effective at the same time.

Once you’ve got a design you’re happy with, you can preview it in your browser (supports I.E, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari – provided you have them installed) – this is a great way to make sure everything is displaying properly for all users. Below you see the theme loaded in Firefox. As I’m using a trail version for this review the software have written “Trail” all over it.

Then comes the exporting of the theme is just two clicks away – you can choose whether to export as a folder or as a ZIP file. If you want to upload the theme using an FTP client, use the folder option, however if you wish to use WordPress’s theme upload function, you’ll need it in a ZIP. I have tried to export to ZIP and install it as a theme in WordPress. It just worked as with any other theme I have used.

Best of all, Artisteer takes care of all the tricky coding of making the site look good across all browsers – it displays properly in all major browsers. In fact it also passes official W3C CSS validation with no problems. In other words; no more hours of complex coding and fiddling around to make sure that everything is properly formatted with correct syntax and no errors – it’s all done for you.  Artisteer comes in two versions – Home/Academic and Standard. The standard edition exports in all formats (XHTML+CSS, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, ASP.Net, CodeCharge, and DotNEtNuke) and has a full library of images, colors, fonts, textures and gradients, while the Home/Academic version only exports in WordPress and XHTML+CSS and has slightly more limited libraries.