I think I just found my new favorite WordPress theme designer

So I’ve been blogging for almost 11 years and the last eight of it has been on WordPress. For those who have been reading my blog since the early days, you might remember when I used Typepad for the first few years. Switching to WordPress turned out to be a good mood and after spending quite a bit of time researching themes I found Thesis and boom – I was in love.

I think the best way to describe the Thesis theme for WordPress is – it really is the kitchen sink. You can completely customize every aspect of your design in Thesis, it’s a geeky developer-friendly way to build your masterpiece. At the same time…it can be a pain to make small changes in, and there are likely a zillion and one different features/options that you’ll never use.

Lately I’ve been on the lookout for a new theme that still has plenty of bells and whistles to make it customizable, but that offers a lot more simplicity. I’ve also found myself gravitating towards more clean, minimal design vs. the traditional busy blog feel. WooThemes used to be my source for well-designed themes but they’ve become pretty focused on WooCommerce so I find the personal blog themes aren’t as high on their list any more.

rich-tabor-themebeans

So I was excited to find a new theme designer who runs a site called ThemeBeans. How I found out about ThemeBeans is pretty unique. A little bit ago I sold the domain name Rus.io to someone who wanted to use it for a personal site. When I went to see if they had put anything up a few weeks later, I found a really clean-looking WordPress theme. I went to the About page and read all about this guy, Rich Tabor who runs ThemeBeans.

It was a little confusing…I thought the guy’s name was Rus or Russel which is why he bought Rus.io, why would someone name Rich want the site? Still, there it was, sitting in his About page, a bio and his email address. I ended up spending about ten minutes looking at themes on ThemeBeans and I was really impressed, it had that crisp, clean, simple design I had been looking for.

I emailed Rich Tabor and he got back to me and said he isn’t the owner of Rus.io. It turns out the owner bought his theme and kept the default content in there, which in the end made it look like I was visiting Rich’s personal site. It’s one of the best mistakes I’ve ever made because it led me to a selection of really solid WordPress themes that match the aesthetic that I’ve been looking for.

Who knew selling a three character .IO name would lead me to a new source for WordPress themes? Oh and ThemeBeans isn’t a sponsor, although I’m not going to stop them if Rich reads this and wants to! Instead this just a case of random serendipity and a site that I genuinely find to be exactly what I’ve been looking for. Pretty crazy when that happens isn’t it?

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton