There are literally hundreds of Wordpress themes available, a number which seems to be growing faster than anyone can keep up with.  Fortunately, most of them fall into a few basic interaction design patterns.  An understanding of what these patterns are and how they differ will make it easier to identify the right theme to begin a project with.   To distinguish this from other Wordpress theme categorization schemes out there, I’m grouping all themes into three major categories based on the way an information architect might think about it.  It is important not to get too distracted by the visual design(e.g. colors and graphics) or content-type specialty (e.g. text, video, photo) of a pre-built theme – at least, at first.  The look of things and the messaging and positioning of a theme  is much easier to change than the basic flow between elements, how the navigation, pages and sidebars are laid out, which features are deployed and in what way.

Blog Themes

Magazine Themes

Portfolio Themes

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