Somebody please explain WP templates to me

[aazura]

So my webguy wants me to choose a Wordpress template by Friday. I have looked at scores of them online and they all start looking alike after a while. I'm not sure if I'm looking for total design, or just layout. How flexible are the templates once you've chosen them? Can you change color scheme and fonts, for example? He's making me a custom header, so I know I don't have to worry about that part.

Here's what I'm looking in, in general:

-magazine style, that can imbed pictures within text
-probably no more than 2 columns
-horizontal header that is big enough to grab interest, but not so big that it takes the whole screen

Does anyone have some they can recommend? Seriously, this shouldn't be this hard!

[andalee-oriental]

It is hard! I'm going through the same thing with my Web guy (my boyfriend) and basically if they are good enough programmers they can change almost anything you need. You just need to pick something with a nice skeleton. Here's some I like:

Simply Ornate: A Free WordPress Theme - Smashing Magazine

Berita Business Wordpress Theme

Lady In Green » Blog Archive » If you wanna download this Theme

[sabrinabellydancer]

You can generally change the following quite easily:
Layout regarding navigation Left/Right
Font Style
Font Colors
Images
Background color
General Template Color Scheme (depending on how its coded)

A good rule of thumb is to find a template that most closely represents what you want, because this will reduce the number of coding hours you must pay for customization.

[mekyria]

It's hard to imagine a theme if you have no visual aid to work with to see the changes that will be made. What sometimes works is making a moodboard to represent the font, colors, athmosphere of your website, in addition to examples of websites that you like.

The technical side is that you can customize a lot in WP templates, but the translation from your expectations to the WP theme is difficult.

[andalee-oriental]

Yes, I created a PSD and my boyfriend said he could "skin it" using my file.

[aazura]

Thanks guys! This helps a lot. I would have thought this would be the easy part, but man it's overwhelming! The search continues...

Andalee--I like the lady in green template. Looking for others along those lines.

[andalee-oriental]

Some more:
1) BlueDiamond wp theme | SkinPress.com - It would need some tweaking and might have some bugs, but it's my fave.
2) WordPress › Arclite « Free WordPress Themes
3) WordPress › magicblue « Free WordPress Themes
4) WordPress › Dum-Dum « Free WordPress Themes
5) WordPress › Q-press « Free WordPress Themes