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Our first few weeks with a live FreeWP has had its share of positive and negative moments. On the bright side, everyone who has used the service seems to have had positive feedback for us with regards to the concept. People recognize that it makes sense to use a service like FreeWP whether you’re just getting started in the internet world or even if you’ve got years of experience running websites. However, despite the positive feedback, the brand-new FreeWP system has definitely had issues over the last few weeks. Most of the issues have been technical in nature and we’ve taken steps to resolve all bugs as soon as we become aware of them.

So what’s the main problem? To put it simply, getting free premium WordPress themes is a new business model and there aren’t existing pre-written tools and systems to make it happen smoothly right off the bat. Everything has been developed from the ground up. The FreeWP system needs to communicate properly with the web hosting companies and the web hosting companies need to communicate properly back to FreeWP as you work your way through the process. These systems are new and over the last several weeks they haven’t worked perfectly at all moments. To a certain extent, that sort of thing is to be expected. But that doesn’t meant that we don’t strive to keep those sorts of moments to a nearly non-existent medium. We definitely feel like we can do a better job and we are working on improving our systems on a daily basis. That being said, everyone who has had an issue has also had it resolved in short order (ie, the same day).

Right now we are undertaking a vigorous review to make sure that any additional bugs are caught and resolved. We are also asking our hosting partners to do the same on their side. Lastly, we’re also working on a redesign which will hopefully clarify the whole FreeWP process. Thanks for bearing with us during this launch period! We really appreciate all of the kind words that we’ve gotten from you, the customer.

Please feel free to contact us using the form linked at the top of the site. We should get back to you very quickly.

If you’re new to the world of web sites (or even if you’re not!), you might be wondering what a WordPress theme actually is and how it manages to transform the look of your blog or website with just a single click.  And, frankly, you have a right to wonder.  If you’ve ever played around with website publishing, you might have run across other systems that are not nearly as easy to redesign as WordPress.  And if you’ve ever just put up simple html files (possibly with scrolling marquees and animated GIFs back in the 1990s?), you probably remember what a pain it was to update even something as simple as the width of your website.  It required changing multiple numbers on every html file on your site.  Thankfully, the web has advanced quite a bit since those days and WordPress is designed from the ground up to allow you to take advantage of the best of today’s web publishing standards.

One thing you may have read at some point is that WordPress is a Content Management System, or CMS.  There are dozens upon dozens of CMSes out there other than WordPress — Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, PHP Nuke and many more.  Some are free and open source, some require a paid license.  However, free or paid, WordPress is BY FAR the most popular CMS-like publishing system for the web today.

So what does this have to do with what a theme is?  It’s simple:  WordPress is a Content Management System.  By definition, a CMS manages your content, not your design.  WordPress and other good CMSes make it easy to update your pages, add functionality to your site (via things like WordPress Plugins), write blog posts, publish your content to RSS feeds, add authors to your site and do many other things.  However, WordPress does not make it easy to design your website from within the WordPress interface itself.  A “default” WordPress installation comes with a default theme or two with some very simple options (keep in mind that I’m referring to the downloadable software being distributed at WordPress.org, not the hosted version of WordPress at wordpress.com).  If you want to change the look of your site, you either need to be skilled at graphic design, html, css and more — or you need a theme.

A theme itself is a series of files that tell WordPress to take your content and display it a certain way.  Remember that WordPress has all of your content — posts, pages, images and more — sitting in your website database.  WordPress doesn’t know what that content should look like.  The WordPress software needs a theme so it can know what your website should look like.  The nice thing about keeping the content and the design aspects separated is that you don’t need to touch your posts, pages or anything else to change your theme (in most cases — there are a few exceptions to every rule).  All you need to do in most instances is just upload a new theme zip file and then click activate.  If you’re using a premium WordPress theme (like those found here on FreeWP!), just refresh your homepage and you should be good to go.

Now you know what a WordPress Theme is!

As more and more people and businesses become web-savvy and start their own websites, WordPress has emerged as the current defacto web publishing system.  While alternatives such as blogspot, myspace, typepad and others have existed for years, there are a huge number of people and businesses moving onto their own domains to take control of their web presence.  There’s no doubt that having your own website and total control over your look and features is a must-have in today’s web environment.  More and more users notice things like your strange URL and discount the legitimacy of your business.  Not to mention the increased search engine optimization (SEO) benefits associated with having a good keyword domain for your business.

So, at the end of the day, what does this mean for webmasters once they manage to secure their desired web address?  First, webmasters need web hosting.  While blogspot and others are freely hosted for you, hosting your own domain will almost always require you to pay a monthly or yearly fee (don’t worry, it’s cheap!).  Second, webmasters need a site design.  Within the WordPress world, a “site design” is referred to as a WordPress Theme.

This is where FreeWP comes in.  FreeWP has secured deals with the best web hosting companies and the best premium WordPress theme companies to bring you an integrated product that cannot be found anywhere else on the internet.  When you pick out a theme at FreeWP and sign up for web hosting (no long term contract required) at our hosting partners, you get the theme (site design)  for free!  Yes, free.  You just have to sign up for your web hosting account via FreeWP.  And, if you don’t have web hosting or if you can cancel your web hosting elsewhere, web hosting is something you will need for your website no matter what.

The offers that are available on FreeWP are not available anywhere else on the internet.  In order to get these themes anywhere else, you would need to pay for them.  Of course, paying for them is a great value as these themes deliver world class web design for anywhere for a price ranging up to about $80 — but why spend that money if you don’t have to?

Pick out a theme on FreeWP today.