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UPDATE: I missed getting this post out in time for the contest. But you should still check out Michael’s themes just the same — they will make your blog look great!

A good friend of mine, Kyle of Hack WordPress is holding a contest with three great prizes. They’re all premium WordPress themes developed by Michael of Solostream.

I’ve used one of Michael’s themes on my flagship blog a while back. That was when themes were starting to make a huge splash in the blogosphere offering new features and appealing designs. And Michael’s themes were leading the way!

One of themes being given away is called WP-Vybe and it looks awesome! Branding is critically important to differentiate you from all the gazillion other blogs out there. With this in mind, Michael delivers a generous area at the top of the theme that enables you to make it clear to your readers who you are and what they’ll find there.

One thing I like best about this theme - in fact, I don’t think he has a theme without it — is the area just beneath the blog title that features the latest post. It leaves you plenty of room to tease your audience with the first few lines of text of your post PLUS an image to accompany it. And not to short change your other featured articles, to the right of the featured post is a list of such articles so your readers get the most current information when they land on your home page.

Check out the navigation both above and below the blog title. There’s no way readers will miss those. And if you want to minimize the amount of space it takes up, WP-Vybe also enables dropdown menus for subnavigational elements.

So far, I’ve only just described the top portion of the theme. Below it you’ll find an attractive 3-column layout that provides your readers with textual navigation to the left, a middle column showing excerpts of your posts and a right column, which, among other things, contains places for a variety of advertising.

Here’s a list of what you can expect feature-wise with this incredible theme:

• Theme settings page in your Wordpress control panel.
• 2-column or 3-column layouts.
• 10 different color options with control panel setting for further customization.
• Optional featured article glider for home page.
• Gravatar integration.
• Optional banner ad integration.
• Optional built-in post thumbnails.
• Optional logo/header image integration via control panel.
• Built-in site search.
• Built-in drop-down navigation for sub-categories and sub-pages.
• Built-in author page and author profile with Gravatar support.
• Widgetized sidebars.
• Comment and trackback separation.
• Post author comments highlighted.
• Basic SEO techniques integrated.
• Original Photoshop files (PSDs) available for download via control panel.
• And much more!

If your blog is looking a little tired, maybe it’s time you think about giving it a face lift. Start your search at Solostream for some well-designed and unique looking themes.

If you enter Kyle’s contest, you might even win one for free!