What Feature Would Make You Pay for a Theme?

[brandingdavid]

I was wondering if there were any features that would make people pay for a theme? I recently bought a developer license of Thesis after having been against buying a theme because Thesis had everything I was looking for in a theme, especially continued development and SEO options.

What would make you pay for a theme, and how much is that feature worth to you?

Also, I don't understand why people buy single licenses. If you've ever bought one, can you enlighten me on why, since usually a developer license (where you can use the theme everywhere) is only around three single licenses in price.

[brandingdavid]

Full disclosure, I am launching a paid theme soon with every feature I have ever wanted, and more. It is going to be amazing, but even as I finish out v1, I am thinking about 1.1 and wanted to know if there are things you've always wanted in themes but never thought could happen. :) Let me know.

[Brad]

Complete theme layout control in the admin. The ability to create a container and then control the number of divs within that container and then assign what appears in those divs, i.e., script, post, widget, etc. You would need the ability to stack these containers as you see fit and be able to control the margins/padding of the layout. Kind of sounds like I'm asking for Joomla capability but better.

[jdh]

Going off of Brad's post above, if you do something like that, make sure it is drag and drop or it will be extremely confusing and hard to use for newer users.

Perhaps multiple color schemes built in? I know I usually take a theme and fudge the colors up a lot.

If you can, I sometimes do stuff with the sidebars. I will make double sidebars, make them wider, make them thinner, etc. So maybe a few options like this: "No sidebar, One wide sidebar, One skinny sidebar, Two sidebars, One top sidebar and the split to two sidebars underneath" or whatever. That would be totally awesome. :)

Good luck with your theme, David. I will check it out when it launches!

[Len]

Strange, but although I have never paid for a theme (and probably never will) I HAVE donated to theme authors the most being $50 or $60 I think. (yeah I know I could have just bought the damn thing) :)

[conorp]

I would pay for a theme that is easy to customise. Like don't you hate it when you buy this cool looking theme and the codes awful and you end up rewriting it all?

[tekzt]

This is really a hard question. I would pay for a theme that offers features i couldn´t create by myself, because of not having the knowledge for it, or would be very hard to create by myself, cause i´m a lazy guy who doesn´t want to spend time with complicated stuff that is available for a reasonable price anyways. But that´s probably more on the plugin end. I think paying for themes is more a thing for companies. i also believe that´s where the money is made. Off course i have no numbers, but i think most "premium" themes are purchased by companies or lazy designers who are hired by companies.

I´d actually pay for a new WYSIWYG-Editor that works like netobjects fusion (you know, dragging pictures, creating textareas etc.) minus messing up the code. Actually this is not because i like to work that way, it´s more because my boss said we won´t work with wordpress because it´s not so easy to customize content design when you have different needs for every single page (we have 250+ domains with 100.000+ products. He has absolutely no coding knowledge, but insists that he has to be able to edit a website by himself, when he sees something that doesn´t look like he wants it to. So at work i´m stuck with netobjects fusion and i hate it. We are 3 webdesigners there, who have all at least average coding knowledge, but we´re just not able to use it and work with a program that my grandma could create websites with...

[film_girl]

Good code, strong customization options, integrated elements/widgets and a good base design.

I purchased Thesis for myself, more to try it out -- and I was impressed with it. I actually used it for a client site that I did over the summer (client paid for his own license, of course) and was really happy with the results. It looks nothing like Thesis, but the framework saved me a lot of time that I didn't want to spend specifically marking stuff up for WordPress. I wouldn't say designers who use themes are all lazy. It's about allocating your resources effectively. If someone wants me to build something completely from the ground-up, in WordPress, I can do it -- but it'll cost more. I can get probably very close to the same result if I use a base like Thesis and it'll cost the client less.


I'll be honest -- aside from Thesis and Woo Themes -- I think most of the WordPress themes are completely subpar, especially when you compare offerings for other platforms. Premium themes were a big breath of fresh air when they started to arrive, but now, most of them strike me as totally, totally stale. Especially when you see stuff like this on other platforms. I used to think it was a WordPress limitation (and to some degree, that's probably true), but I've seen so many fantastic custom designs in the last 14 months or so for sites based in WP so it has to be something more than that.

[theresac]

i18n. Nothing so frustrating as paying $70+ for a single-user or $150 for a developer's pack somewhere and discovering that the themes are English language only. The translation itself is no problem, but it's infuriating to have to go through and add __() etc. to each and every theme file, especially when so many *free* (Mimbo, Hybrid, etc.) frameworks get it right.

I'd also pay for commercial themes that are better structured for child themes. Frequent updates don't do me nearly as much good when I have to take apart everything and put it back together again to get things working.

To add to what Christina said, compared to platforms like Joomla, the premium themes available for WordPress just aren't as visually interesting/ complete. I've yet to pay for a theme that hasn't required heavy graphical modification, although some of the non-magazine WooThemes have come close. Where are the beautiful JS menus? Where are the color options? Where are the choices for multiple layouts?

[andrea_r]

Where are the color options? Where are the choices for multiple layouts?

This right here. Yes yes yes.

Can I just say my pet peeve is themes that offer separate downloads for what is simply a different stylesheet color combo?