Here at Free WordPress Themes we’re having some trouble getting the theme demo to work and one of the main reasons is that the themes aren’t named consistently. But the bigger problem when theme designers do that is the inconsistency that can hurt your theme as a brand.

As most of you know, WordPress gets the theme information you enter inside the style.css file and displays that in the Presentation portion of the administration panel.

Here’s how theme information of the WordPress default theme, Kubrick, looks like:

Theme Name: WordPress Default
Theme URI: http://wordpress.org/
Description: The default WordPress theme based on the famous Kubrick.
Version: 1.6
Author: Michael Heilemann
Author URI: http://binarybonsai.com/

The theme name is actually “Kubrick”, but in the style.css file, it says “WordPress Default”. Let’s say this is an ordinary theme you’re going to upload to websites like Free WordPress themes, or perhaps submit to theme design contests. Wouldn’t you want all the people who are going to look at and download your theme remember a single non-confusing name for your theme? “WordPress Default” or “Kubrick”? Which is it?

Sometimes, the differences are more subtle (e.g., “Web 2.0 Theme” vs. “Web2.0 Theme” vs. “Web2 Theme” vs. “Web2.0Theme”), but it’s a lot more pleasant and convenient to the people who will be using your theme to be consistent at all times, with every bit of punctuation and spelling kept in mind.