If you have a Wordpress blog or website, you'll know how useful themes are, but also how hard it can be to find exactly the right theme with just the "look and feel" you want. Don't you wish there was a program which would let you design your own theme without knowing a word of code? Well, there is - Artisteer!

Artisteer is Wordpress theme creator software. The full version of the software will also create Joomla templates, Drupal themes and DotNetNuke skins - but for a Wordpress user, the Home & Academic edition is all you'll need. At $49, it's about half the price of one typical Premium Wordpress theme - and for that investment, you can make as many themes for as many sites as you like!

So what's the catch?

If there is a serious catch, I haven't found it yet.

Artisteer is easy to use - I jumped straight in without even looking at the documentation and had no trouble finding my way around. When you're happy with your theme, all you have to do is cilck "Export", save the zip file to your PC, then upload it to your Wordpress site exactly like you would upload any other theme. The themes are all widget-ready, too.

I particularly liked the wide range of preset colour schemes - I'm not that good at working out which colours will look good together, so I liked being able to click through the various schemes and find all the hard work done for me.

In fact, you can even ask Artisteer to suggest whole themes for you - just click on the "Ideas" button and it will present you with a variety of themes in different combinations of layout, colours, header, fonts etc. When you see one you like, you can edit it to add the finishing touches yourself - for instance, you might change it from a two column to a three column, or upload your own header image, make it wider or narrower, or change the background pattern - all by just picking from a menu!

To be strictly accurate, there is a catch - no software is that perfect!

The catch is that the design options on Artisteer are limited. There are endless options for colours, images, backgrounds etc (especially as you can easily upload your own), but the layouts are basic. They're all fixed width (though you can choose the width). You won't find fancy headers with rakishly angled RSS feed symbols, or little blue Twitter birds that poke their beaks over the top of your sidebar. You won't see rotating header images or graphics that trail over the edge, or funky sidebars.

To show you what I mean, here are two of my own Wordpress sites. The first, Belly Dance Oz, uses a professionally designed theme by Templatelite. You can see a graphic artist has created this - the orange brush stroke for the Search box, the coloured sidebars, the textured background. Compare that to my Ballet Wear site, which uses an Artisteer theme. I'm happy with it, but there's no question it's not as exciting as my belly dance site!

There's a school of thought that says you should use a plain Wordpress theme, so visitors will be attracted to your content - and your ads - instead of being distracted by a pretty wrapper. If that's your philosophy, Artisteer may not be worth the money. There are lots of plain themes out there and it should be easy to pick one you can stick with for a long time.

Even if you're in the market for a more sophisticated theme, you may ask, "Why bother making your own themes, when there are so many free ready-made Wordpress themes out there?'

The biggest reason, for me, is time. When I started my first blog, most of the good Wordpress themes could be found on the main Wordpress site, and they had an accurate, helpful filter so you could pick your features, and up would pop the sites that fit your criteria.

Recently, I went trawling for a theme for my new ballet site, and discovered that many of the best themes aren't on Wordpress.org at all. That meant hours of Googling, trying to sort the wheat from the chaff - there are lots of sites all repeating the same tired old themes, and there's also a lot of bodgy amateur Wordpres theme designs out there!.

Time and again, I found a great-looking theme only to discover the download link was broken, or it downloaded but the theme was broken, or it only worked on some browsers, or it didn't have some of the advertised features, or - in one case - it broke my site (another three hours wasted getting it back on air). At that point, luckily, I stumbled on the Artisteer site and grabbed it with both hands!

Next time I want a theme for a new site, I will probably Google again, in case there's another exceptional design out there like the one I used for my belly dance and flamenco sites - but I won't waste hours searching down obscure alleys. If nothing jumps out at me, I'll be using Artisteer to design my own!

For those who can't understand why I found it so hard to find a theme - I guess I'm just fussy! In fact until I found the Artisteer site, I was considering buying a premium theme - only I couldn't find one of those I liked either! The problem is, I have some quite specific requirements, and as I don't know much about coding, I need a theme that has those features out of the box.

First, graphics. My blogs are mainly about dance - try finding a dance-based theme other than hip-hop! I do know how to change an existing header, but they're usually wide and not very deep these days - it's very difficult to fit photos of dancers into that shape, and often you can't change the depth of the header without breaking other aspects of the theme (or at least, I can't)!

Next, layout. Apparently, professional bloggers like two-column themes, so not many designers are making three-column themes, which is what I need. I have an eBay affiliate shop on each of my sites, so I always need the extra sidebar for the shop.

Third, colours. The current fashion is for strong, dark coloured backgrounds with white or light text. I find that my eBay affiliate software (phpBay) doesn't display the listings well that way - so I need a theme with a light-coloured main column and black text.

Put all three together and perhaps you can see why I've struggled. But not any more!

If you'd like to know more, visit the Artisteer website.

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photo by Peregrino on Flickr.