Yesterday I purchased my first premium wordpress theme. After a lot of searching, I settled with the StudioPress Lifestyle theme. You know not know the name StudioPress, but I guarantee you’ve seen their Revolution in use. I chose the Lifestyle theme because it gave me exactly what I was looking for in terms of style and features.

StudioPress Lifestyle Theme [Demo]

In the past I’ve always just taken a free wordpress theme and tweaked it to my liking. I never wanted to pay for a wordpress theme when there are thousands of really good ones out there. For example, I took the basic Arthemia free wordpress theme and used it on Gator Envy. I added a custom header, changed all the colors and put in two advertising spots. Here is Ian Fernando using the same theme, only he customized his too. You can tell they are both using the same theme base, but by making a few tweaks you can give it your own look.

With the Lifestyle theme, I plan to change the colors and give it a custom header… that should be enough to distringuish the site from the demo.

Outside of having the most visual appealing themes out there, I chose StudioPress because when you purchase the Pro theme package for $59.95, you can use the theme on as many sites as you want. Some premium themes only give you the option to purchase a single-use license or a “developer” license. So if you’d want to run the theme on multiple sites, you’d have to shell out $200 for a developer package. That’s not the case with StudioPress… for $59.95 I can use this theme forever on as many sites as I want. They also give you free lifetime upgrades, access to a support forum with thousands of posts and dozens of tutorials that show you how to customize and use your new theme.

Once I launch my new sites using the Lifestyle theme, I’ll be sure to post them here and recap my experience using StudioPress.