As you will probably have noticed (unless you’re new to this blog…in which case a warm “Welcome!”)…

…there’s a whole new look to the place!

I finally decided to bite the bullet…

…and get myself a premium theme for the blog.

I’d been thinking about this for a while, both for aesthetic reasons and to improve functionality.

Problem is there are a lot of great themes out there, many of them free, so I ended up paralysed by indecision.

Fortuitously…

… master marketer and copywriter Ray Edwards hosted a very useful webinar last week featuring theme designer Cory Miller.

On the webinar, Cory talked about using WordPress in general and his themes in particular.  One of which is the “Flexx Professional” that I have decided to use.

There are so many great things about this theme.  As the name suggests, it’s very flexible and hence very customisable.  PLUS it has some features that make it a very powerful content management system.  It seems to me that this is a perfect tool for creating a wide range of “mini-sites”.

Anyway, I’ve only just started figuring out what I can do with the theme…so watch out for more changes!

One other reason for going with Cory was that my original theme was a free one that he designed and had made available through Michel Fortin.  So, an element of the old “reciprocity” marketing principle at work.

If you want to find out more about Cory Miller’s range of premium WordPress themes, check out www.iThemes.com. At US$79.95, they are an absolute steal, in my humble opinion.

Oh, and the graphic in the header?  That comes with the theme…it’s not me (although I wish I had hair like that, in contrast to my “fashionably short” look!). I’ll be changing it shortly.

There’s a very cool feature where you can have a number of images that rotate.  However, once I’d got over the initial childish excitement and put my hardcore direct response marketing hat back on, I turned it off because it seemed to me to be a distraction.