There have been a few theme clubs around for a little while now and, if I’m honest, I never really understood their appeal for individual users. We all like to change the look of a site from time to time, it helps keep things fresh, but does anyone really change a theme enough to warrant joining a club?
When you design a website for a client you do a lot of work to find out exactly what it is they need the site to do. You find out who they are, what they are communicating, what kind of clients they have, etc and so you are unlikely to take an off the shelf theme without doing a lot of work to it.
When you are designing your own site you should really do the same but the existence of so many themes probably means that most people try a different theme before they make significant changes to one that isn’t doing the job. After all, you wouldn’t want to waste a weekend only to discover that your perfect theme was three clicks away, right?
Even the best themes require customisation though, so once you find that theme that seems to sum up what you need why wouldn’t you stick with it? There must be a reason why you would change and I wonder whether it is the bloggers, the themes, or just the nature of blogging that causes the need to change?
The fact that these clubs exist then must be down to one of several options:
One more option is simply that bloggers don’t use any more themes through clubs than anywhere else but see them as a cheaper way to get the one theme they want.
This interests me a lot, so tell me, how often do you change your blog’s theme? and what is the main reason why you change?
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[...] Andrew Rickmann of WP FUN raises several interesting questions about theme clubs in the WordPress theme development scene. Perhaps the biggest question is that of significance: [...]