Today I noticed a lot of Blogspot blogs serving up 502 errors, making almost all the Blogspot-hosted blogs I frequent temporarily innaccessible. For a lot of Blogspot users, the image below will look very familiar:

Don’t get me wrong, Blogspot (a service of Google) is great for some people, and this may just be a hiccup, but do you really trust your blog in the hands of a free service? If you want to have peace of mind in knowing your blog is safe from these unexpected Blogspot outages, and want to make the switch to a self-hosted WordPress on your own domain name, read on.

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Today we have yet another free CSS template from Rambling Soul - ported into WordPress by yours truly. This free WordPress theme has some especially interesting features in addition to being widget-ready. A dynamic tabbed navigation menu is visible on the homepage, with a featured post from a category you select. I’ll get into detail with that later in the post.

Live Demo | Download

Now onto the features…

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Do you see a WordPress plugin over at the official WordPress site you’d like to use on your blog and not sure how to install it? Not to worry, this tutorial will guide you through every step of the way. If you already know how to install a WordPress theme, this WordPress tutorial will be a breeze for you. This tutorial will teach you:

1. What WordPress plugins are
2. What WordPress plugins can do
3. Finally, how to install a WordPress plugin

This will be just a quick guide on the topic of WordPress plugins.

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As the title suggests, today’s free WordPress theme release is very minimal. This black and white theme is great for those looking for a simple and minimalistic style. It features two widgetized areas in the footer, one on each side. View the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

It seems wherever you see a WordPress theme promoted nowadays, you see it described as being widget-ready. The free WordPress themes available here are no exception. In this tutorial available exclusively at Theme Lab, you will learn:

1. What exactly a widget-ready WordPress theme is
2. Why you would even want to use widgets anyway
3. How to use widgets to customize WordPress site

As usual, complete with screenshots so it’s easy for a beginner to follow along.

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Today we’re releasing another template from Rambling Soul ported into WordPress called Clean & Green. No special features in this one, just a clean and widget-ready WordPress theme. View the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

UPDATE: I made a typo in the download link, which is why there was a 404 error. Fixed now, sorry about that.

I was messing with the sidebar a few minutes ago and added a few things to it, including the Subscribe area at the top. You might have noticed an error which caused the whole site to break while I was doing this. That’s fixed now, sorry for the inconvenience.

Today we’re proud to release this beautiful free WordPress theme, ported from the “Imagination” template by Rambling Soul. It features a separate homepage for the latest posts and space for “asides” or quick notes. Live demo is available here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

This theme is packed with features, including an options page where you can do the following:

• Set the category for “asides”
• Choose how many asides to display
• Set how many content posts to display on the homepage
• Set how many What’s New? posts to display on homepage

The category you choose for asides will be excluded from category lists on the blog. There’s a screenshot of this options page below.

Hope you enjoy, and if you have any requests from their selection of free CSS templates be sure to leave a comment.

Wow, three posts in a row without a free WordPress theme release? Well here you go. This template was originally designed by SymiSun, a new web design firm who was generous enough to release this high quality CSS template, which we ported into WordPress. It has two widget-ready sidebars and has a “Theme Options” page similar to the one on Tech Blue, where you can exclude and order the pages you want (located at the top). Live demo is available here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

With such a strong response from my post yesterday offering integration of WordPress to free CSS template designers for free, I started a new category called Ported Themes to showcase all of these. Expect some more of these CSS templates turned WordPress themes very soon.

Okay, here’s the deal. Small Potato over at Wpdesigner recently launched a $5 Themes Club. What is a “themes club” exactly? Most membership-based template clubs will offer access to a collection of templates, along with access to any future templates added to the mix as well. Some have “membership levels” which may limit your use of these templates and may restrict you to a certain number of domains/sites. I know this sounds a bit complicated, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

What’s so great about Wpdesigner’s club is the simplicity of the program. The $5 gives you access for one year. You get at least 12 WordPress themes throughout the year, including these already made club themes. As long as you don’t give them out for free or resell them, you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want with the club themes - use them for your own sites, clients, whatever.

Hopefully you have a pretty good idea about what this theme club is all about. Small Potato is giving away 20,000 accounts to his $5 themes club. Let’s do the math: 20,000 accounts multiplied by $5 each equals $100,000 worth of accounts. He was nice enough to sponsor 50 free accounts just for Theme Lab readers.

So how do you get one? I’m going to make it very simple:

• Leave a comment on this post expressing interest in getting an account
• Make sure you leave a valid e-mail
• I will personally e-mail you a coupon code which you can use to sign up
• These free coupons will expire at the end of 2008
• I’ll continue this giveaway until all 50 coupons are spoken for

That’s about it. Comment away!