Wow, it’s lovely, bright, fast. But the Omni Theme ain’t free. It comes with a nice promise of support, and is designed to serve as a semi-portal to MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, etc. Interesting approach to the total social web experience. Do I want to cross over into premium themes? Yikes!

Here’s a mad WordPress blogger who keeps busy with handy lists of useful picks, such as 25 Outstanding WordPress Designs and things of that nature. Designs aren’t exactly themes, I realize. But they can pry open your imagination and shine light.

OK, this is a cool site. Either browse the themes by blog entry or go to the Theme Labs Demo Server and watch your choices hit you between the eyes. Really, just trying to say it’s a smashing experience. We say Leland rocks (even if he sometimes runs with the put-in-your-own “edit post” links if they mean that much to you crowd.)

I just tried a theme that I won’t mention by name. I was fooling around with it, and I thought, oh no, my host must be slowing down. Or, wow, the Wordpress world must be hitting my site HARD! And other such delusions. But as soon as I changed themes, the pages loaded quickly and everything was back in tip-top shape. Just goes to show you, theme choice can affect site performance.

Agilismarketing.com offers an SEO (search engine optimized) theme that is very simple, placing your latest post across the top of the home page. Otherwise, it’s two column, with the nav stuff to the left. And, yes Virginia, it does have “edit post”. Neat, helpful, quaint.