If I depended on my artistic flair to earn a living, I might be in trouble. Fortunately for me, there are cheap templates, and there are designs I can imitate.

Because I have been using it for years, I have found WordPress easy to start using it as a basic CMS for some of my clients.

My favourite place to buy a template is Themeforest. I host small sites for clients who do not have big budgets. Themeforest provides attractive templates at a very affordable price. However not all themes are equal. Here are some things you should consider.

1) Read the comments. Users often post comments about themes. They contain useful info. You do not want to buy a theme that has problems and issues, and you especially do not want to buy a theme from a designer who does not respond to that are raised problems.

2) Buy a well supported theme if you can. At ThemeForest, at least one designer has posted training screen casts.

3) If you are buying a theme for a client, buy cautiously. Themeforest displays the number of times a theme has been sold. I prefer themes by designers who have made number of sales. Also, I tend to choose themes by designers who have posted multiple themes that I can also check out.

4) Ensure that your theme is web standards compliant. There are tools you can use to check the template before you buy it. Read about this subject to learn more.

5) Use the theme preview and look at the CSS files. Do the CSS files contain useful comments? Can you figure out how the CSS corresponds to the pages you see? If you need to customize the template, you may have to work with these files. Don’t buy yourself grief. Buy templates the employ some CSS best practices.

6) And, finally, it never hurts to have a good book to help you alter the template, or to add functionality. I depend on Smashing WordPress, but there are others. And, of course, there is a lot of information available online.

7) Do not buy a template just for how it looks. Be smart. Buy something you can support and change with ease. Buy something that provides good functionality. Buy something that saves you and your clients headaches.