Hunting for a new WordPress theme can be an overwhelming task, given the sheer number of theme providers out there. With tens of thousands of WordPress themes in the wild, it’s not always easy to narrow it down or to know which themes are high quality.
Theme Friendly aims to solve this problem by providing a sortable list of professionally-reviewed WordPress themes. Alex Mansfield launched his new Theme Friendly concept today with 35 theme reviews from nine different commercial theme shops.
Theme Friendly Sorts Themes Based On Quality Score
Theme Friendly solicits donated copies of themes from WordPress theme authors. Mansfield then uses a subset of the WordPress theme review team guideline checks when reviewing the themes in order to generate a quality score. He documents exactly how the theme got its score and records any additional information that might be useful for sorting, ie. theme type, feature support, layout options, plugin support, page templates available, translated languages, etc. This results in an excellent, detailed list of sorting options in the sidebar.
Visitors of the site can search themes by their own requirements and then read up on the quality score. Searching the site returns results sorted by quality score, rather than most recent submissions. The idea is that anyone shopping for a WordPress theme can make a more informed decision as a consumer, based on the review provided by Theme Friendly.
Mansfield manually reviews each theme by the same criteria. He disclosed that he does in fact use affiliate links but that they do not in any way influence the theme reviews. If you’d like to learn more about his process in creating the site and the technical details behind it, check out his series on Creating a Commercial WordPress Theme Review Site.
The Theme Friendly concept provides another helpful way for consumers to explore and purchase WordPress themes. If you like the idea of having a site where you can find professionally-reviewed themes, there are a few things you can do to help Mansfield expand his library. Drop him a note on his contact form to let him know what is the most frustrating part of shopping for WordPress themes. If you’re a WordPress theme developer, you can also get in touch with him to request a review of your theme and its addition to the Theme Friendly library.
I thought about this problem (finding a good theme) a while back too. I think this one of those nice ideas that doesn’t scale, at least not in the current form, or the forms of similar efforts (like the various theme finder sites). In an ideal world there would be a resource to read detailed feedback from in-the-trenches users, because there is only so much information you are going to get from someone who’s passing through a theme with a checklist type approach. It’s much different than someone who’s used a theme for one or more sites and had to actually build something with it. Also, I think perhaps the bigger factor for customers is not just the code quality, but the service behind the theme. A theme that passes all checks and scores well code quality wise is not useful if the theme author closes up show months later (it happens).
I also think the affiliate model is broken for this type of thing. You need a ton of referrals to make noteworthy amounts of income. Lots of shops don’t have affiliate programs, so there’s a persistent tension between having to review these things even if you try to stay as neutral as possible.