Basic Features:

• 2 columns
• Right sidebar
• Built-in lifestream module
• Built-in gravatar support
• Built-in contact form w/ custom control panel options
• Animated dropdown menus
• Custom archives page
• Numerical pagination on archive and search pages
• Author-highlighting for comments
• User profile module
• Widget-ready
• Works with Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera
• XHTML and CSS standards compliant

Requirements:

• WordPress 2.6+
• Host server with PHP5+ and cURL installed

Screenshots:

Index Page

Post Page

My Take:
For a free public WordPress theme, the Agregado is in a class of its own. It has some very cool built-in features that some premium themes don’t even have. Among those features, the one I like the most and I’m pretty sure is also what most Agregado users love is the the built-in lifestream module which lets you display stuff from your Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Del.icio.us, Pownce, Flickr and other web services/social networking accounts and integrate into your blog. You don’t have to worry about installing a plugin or bothering with the code as it’s already built-in. All you have to do is configure it from the control panel.

Aside from the nice built-in features and the eye candy design, I also like the cool animated drop-down menus for the pages/subpages and categories/sub-categories. Agregado is also widget-ready which means you can continue using your favorite widgets in case you decide to use this theme. If you want to customize the design and color scheme of Agregado, you can do so by downloading the PSD file.

Thanks to Smashing Magazine for sharing this beautiful WordPress theme and hats off to the theme designers, Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson for a job well done! Looking forward to your next collaboration and more quality themes like these in the future.

Preview or Download the Agregado WordPress theme.

After the huge success of Mimbo, the author Darren Hoyt finally released his first and much anticipated premium theme, the Mimbo Pro Magazine Theme last week. For this project, he collaborated with Ben Gillbanks.

Here’s a short introduction from Darren himself:

Mimbo Pro is a powerful and feature-rich theme for WordPress, developed by Darren Hoyt and Ben Gillbanks and released through Ben’s Pro Theme Design marketplace.

Already familiar with the original Mimbo? Imagine no more manual template editing, no more Photoshop, no more image-cropping or FTP’ing… Enjoy using WordPress like a CMS, now more than ever.

Screenshot:

Mimbo Pro features:

• Control panel options for Google Analytics and Feedburner, logo and header image management, homepage categories, optional color schemes, and advertisement management
• Custom templates for categories, archives, authors, sitemap, search results
• Auto-resizing for images
• Built-in contact form
• HTML controls for comments (bold, italics, blockquote, link)
• Print-friendly options on single-post pages
• Two widgetized sidebars with optional advertising
• Tabbed and separated comments/trackbacks
• Built-in gravatars and author highlighting
• Cookie crumbs on single-post pages
• Print.css stylesheet
• Optional microformats in the footer

The Mimbo Pro Magazine theme is available in two packages, the Single Site license for $89.99 and Multi Site license at $199.99. The Multi Site license includes PSD files and lets you remove the footer link. If you decide to purchase this theme and want to learn more about how to use or customize it, you might want to check out the video tutorials that are provided for free.

My Take:
One of the unique features of the Mimbo Pro theme is the section located right below the featured post in the index page. In that section, you can browse through the recent posts or stories by clicking on the arrows on both sides. Mimbo Pro makes use of a thumbnail script (created by Darren) that automatically resizes images so resizing images becomes a non-issue. Aside from that, it includes some features that you can’t find in other WordPress premium themes like control panel options for Google Analytics and Feedburner.

I haven’t had the chance to test or try it out from within the admin panel so I can’t really rate the features of Mimbo Pro. IMHO the Mimbo Pro doesn’t really stand out design-wise unlike other premium themes we’ve seen recently. I guess the features make up for that. Anyways, I give the Mimbo Pro Magazine Theme a 4 out of 5 rating.

Btw, if you’re not interested in buying the theme you might be interested in making money thru Mimbo Pro’s affiliate program. For more information regarding the affiliate program, click here.

Preview or Purchase the Mimbo Pro Magazine Theme for WordPress

The theme I’m reviewing today was created by Darren Hoyt, an experienced web designer and developer and is called the Mimbo 2.0.

Mimbo is a magazine-style WordPress theme which makes extensive use of WP’s template tag system to create a non-traditional layout. It contains no images and only minimal CSS styling. Mainly it exists as a clean, grid-based starter layout for designers to install and style to their own liking.

Screenshot:

IMPORTANT:This theme is built to work on WordPress 2.3+. If you’re using an older version of WP, most likely you’ll encounter problems or errors which means you’ll have to upgrade your WP installation. Also, make sure you read the installation and configuration instructions before you implement this theme on your blog.

My Take:
I’m sure many WP users would like to use the Mimbo 2.0 theme not only because of it’s good design but also it’s 100% FREE. Even with its many sections and content, the main page looks organized and not clattered. Although the Mimbo 2.0 was created for online magazines or online newspapers, I don’t see why any reason why it can’t be used for a personal blog. With a few modifications and customizations here and there, I’m sure it will work.

One drawback to the Mimbo 2.0 theme is that it requires the user to edit/modify several files and lines of code before it can be used. Because of that, newbies or WP users who have little or no background in CSS or HTML would have a hard time using this theme. However, it’s possible to ask the help of a friend, a fellow blogger or maybe the theme author with the editing and modification of the theme. One more thing, sorry to disappoint widget lovers but this theme is not yet widget-ready.

EDIT:
Was just contacted by the author himself Darren Hoyt, informing me that the latest release of Mimbo 2.0 is widget ready.

Overall, I give the Mimbo 2.0 a 4 out of 5. Great job Darren and looking forward to more WP themes from you!

Preview or Download the Mimbo 2.0 theme for WordPress.