PressCastle Aims to Put Every WordPress Theme in One Place

PressCastle launched this month with an ambitious goal: to put every WordPress theme in one place. The site currently has more than 13,000 themes that are categorized and searchable. The themes were collected from more than 250 sites and represent 400+ theme authors.

If you visit the Themes section of the site you can filter themes based on price, layout, framework and genre with subcategories for each. PressCastle is in the process of adding filters to the themes to specify compatibility with multisite, BuddyPress, bbPress, Jigoshop and other commonly used plugins.

The site is using affiliate links on the themes to help fund the efforts required for indexing this massive library. The launch post claims that they now have the largest and most up to date index of WordPress themes on the web. They plan to update it with new theme releases and remove discontinued items along the way.

I entered a few common search terms related to WordPress themes and found that the search engine was quite accurate in returning relevant information. Although, from a consumer standpoint, I have a difficult time connecting with the whole medieval castle theme they’ve got running, I can see the utility in the indexing and searching capabilities PressCastle provides. But does it solve a real problem?

Are WordPress Theme Indexing Sites a Fad?

The fact that themes are scattered throughout hundreds of websites can make it difficult to locate one that you want to use. PressCastle is trying to provide a solution for this. Theme Friendly is another site that recently launched with a similar goal of helping users find the perfect WordPress theme. While Theme Friendly has a different angle in that it provides reviews on the quality of themes, the work is similarly powered by affiliate links. Only time will tell whether affiliate commissions will be adequate compensation for the amount of effort required to keep these indexes current.

Theme indexing sites seem to be popping up quite frequently these days, all of them vying to capitalize on the high demand for WordPress themes and the difficulty users have when searching. The question remains – will any of these sites actually take off and gain a following? In many cases their efforts seem to be duplicating the results a user might find with a reasonably formed search engine query. So I put the question to you: Are you likely to visit a WordPress theme indexing site when shopping for your next theme?