You may have heard of Adii and his amazingly skilled eye for good website layouts. He creates Wordpress themes and the pinnacle of his endeavors is arguably his Premium News themes. These themes are magazine-style layouts that break from the typical blog mold. They’re pretty good in putting a more professional face to your online identity so people won’t just go “just another blog”. However, these come at a price of at $99 and higher, big bucks for some people that cannot invest more than a decent web host for their sites. It does offer previews and demos of what the site looks like with dummy content, but how about some real meat, some case studies of how Premium News Theme works for actual sites? Well, I’ve picked up the scent of at least two websites that use one of official versions of this theme. Take a look around to get some ideas of how they adapted the design to fit their needs.

Blog Premiere

Jason Pereira, AKA The University Kid, recently launched a new startup called Blog Premiere, an online magazine that focuses on the efforts and advice of blogging. Blog Premiere uses the Gazetted Edition of Premium News Theme, which is CNN-like in its look and feel, but only when you consider the color choices. TUK did a good job in keeping his site intact with the theme, though there are a few mishaps ehre. You can’t see the content that appears under the “popular” and “comments” tabs in the box on the right hand side, which I figure is just a content glitch on TUK’s part.

Put Things Off

Put Things Off is run by Nick Cernis, whose history of putting things off has led him to create this website, which, fortunately for everyone, doesn’t look rushed. PTO uses the original Premium News Theme with the neat slideshow-like area showing featured articles on productivity. He has went all out to add his own personal spin to the theme, making a few changes to the color scheme and branding. Everything looks in place here, and it feels less “out of the box” than Blog Premiere.

Either way you look at it, don’t just judge these sites for their design. They both have great content and show a lot of potential for being somewhat new. Take a look at what they offer and how they present themselves, and perhaps it will encourage you to get use the theme sometime in the future.