After extensive research, I feel confident compiling this list of 20 top WordPress theme designers. The criteria I used to determine the top WordPress designers includes aesthetically pleasing portfolio overall, outside votes, page rank, WordPress is their main medium, and overall community participation and exposure. Page.ly plans to integrate more of these designer’s free and premium themes into our WordPress hosting service in the near future.

Due to the vastness of the WordPress community, I’m sure we may have overlooked a few. If you know of a talented WordPress designer, please mention them in the comments section.

The 20 Top WordPress Designers in alphabetical order by first name comprises of:

Adil Pienaar

Adil Pienaar is the co-founder of WooThemes and one of their lead designers. He’s located in Cape Town, South Africa.

Brian Gardner

Brian Gardner is a self taught WordPress junkie who loves Starbucks lattes and many other things. He runs StudioPress which offers premium WordPress themes. He’s located in the Chicago area.

ChiQ Montes

ChiQ Montes of WPThemeDesigner.com is based in the Philippines and has released numerous free themes to the public.

Cory Miller

Cory Miller is the CEO of iThemes and has a background in journalism, marketing, and webdesign.

Evan Eckard

Evan Eckard of evaneckarddesign resides in the bay area of northern California.

Felix Krusch

RichWP is Felix’s company. He currently resides in Montreal, Canada but loves to travel.

Gisele Jaquenod

Gisele has numerous WordPress themes on deviantart.com. She’s originally from Argentina but will soon relocate to Norway.

Jason Schuller

Jason owns Press75. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington

Jesse Wingert

Jesse designs all of the themes for WPnow.com and strives to add a new theme every week. He’s also a co-founder.

M. Popvici

M. Popvici of Digital Nature is located in Romania

Magnus Jepson

Another designer of importance is Magnus Jepson of Woothemes. He’s a co-founder who lives in Norway.

Mark Forrester

Mark lives in London, England but is originally from South Africa.  He’s a designer/ co-founder of Woo Themes.

Michael Jubel Hutagalung

Michael is the founder of ColorLabsProject and resides in Indonesia.

Mike Durkin

Mike is the CEO of Solostream. He has a background in sales, marketing, and operations.

Pirelli Matteo

Pirelli of banelicious lives in Italy and holds most of his work on the site deviantart.com.

R. Bhavesh

R. Bhavesk of PremiumThemes.net

Roderick Sauskojus

Roderick of Modthemes.com is the lead designer. He lives in the midwest but originated from Arizona.

Roshan

Roshan of Rambling Soul specializes in CSS templates but many have ported his designs into WordPress.

Sawyer Hollenshead

Sawyer is the founder of GFXology.com. He specializes in design and photography.

Suthan Sangaralingham

Suthan is the co-founder and lead designer of 1Three

Setting up WordPress from scratch is not too bad if you have done it a few times and know your way around the Internets.

The OLD Way-

Here are the basics steps that you’ll do to get a site up and running using WordPress-

1. Register a Domain name Somewhere
2. Research and purchase a hosting plan from Somewhere
3. Wait for hosting plan to be setup/ready
4. Point your domain to your new hosting plan
5. Setup FTP user account
6. Setup Database, and Database users
7. Download WordPress
8. Unzip it
9. FTP up to your hosting account
10. Run the WordPress Install
11. Login and change basic settings
12. Browse for and add a good theme
13. Browse for and add common/needed plugins
14. Write your first post/page

Total Time: 20 minutes for an expert, easily 2,3 or even 4 hours for the average user.

The Page.ly Way-

Total Time: 2 minutes for anyone

Also, If you are an accomplished WordPress user check out our new white labeled reseller plugin. Soon we’ll allow WordPress theme companies the ability to add their premium themes to our library.

The website reseller option is in the final stages of development. Here are a few more screenshots.

By: Sally Strebel

Previously, image editors were intimidating to beginners but with technology, the editors available today prove very easy to use. In fact, they are so quick and easy to use that even professionals take advantage of their features. After some extensive research, the following editors validate their ranks as the best free web-based image editors.

Picnik

Picnik’s ease of use makes it a front runner in the image editor market. It’s nicely designed and comes equip with many basic editing features such as crop, resize, rotate, create, and more. Picnik is great for simple editing and works with Mac, Windows, and Linux. No downloading is required. Just upload a photo.

Image Editor

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer makes photo editing fun. Start by uploading a photo and become pleasingly overwhelmed by the robust system.  Features include basic editing controls, effects, decorations, layers, smart features, and much more. Check out FotoFlexer’s tutorials to learn more.

Aviary Phoenix

Aviary Phoenix offers a powerful set of image editing and manipulation features. The features include layers, editing toolsets, and the ability to collaborate with others.

Aviary Image Editor

Drpic.com

For quick and easy edits, check out DrPic. From the home page, all features are present. Once editing is complete, choose a format and save the image to a disk or the web.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Take Adobe Photoshop Express for a test drive and you’ll see why photoshop is considered the gold standard. The application allows users to upload, organize, edit, and share their images. Add decorations to photos including text bubbles.

Photoshop Express