WordPress.com themes that support post formats, WordAds, and bylines

I’ve been looking for a theme that will support my WordAds account, support post formats, and show my byline. As of this writing, only 57 out of 206 themes support post formats. Only 24 support post formats and WordAds. I wonder how many of those 24 show bylines. Let’s see:

1. Blogum: no
2. Coraline: no
3. Debut (Premium): post only
4. Dusk to Dawn: no
5. Elemin (Premium): yes
6. Forever: post only
7. Fruit Shake: yes
8. Funki: no
9. iTheme2: yes
10. Licorice: yes
11. Matala: yes
12. Mystique: yes & no (Gallery: yes; Aside, Image, Quote: no)
13. Next Saturday: yes & no (Video: yes; Aside, Audio, Chat, Gallery, Image, Link, Quote: no)
14. P2: yes
15. Quintus: post only
16. Rusty Grunge: yes
17. San Kloud: yes
18. Selecta: yes
19. Skeptical: post only shows “about…” not “by…”
20. Spectrum: no
21. The Morning After: yes
22. Toolbox: no
23. Twenty Eleven: post only
24. Twenty Ten: post only shows “about…” not “by….”

So the only WordPress themes that support WordAds and post formats and show bylines on the front page, multi-post pages, and post pages are the following, along with the post formats they support:

1. Elemin (Premium): Aside, Gallery, Link, Image, Quote, Audio, Status, Video, Chat
2. Fruit Shake: Aside, Gallery, Image, Quote, Link, Status
3. iTheme2: Aside, Gallery
4. Liquorice: Aside, Gallery, Image, Quote
5. Matala: Aside, Gallery, Image, Quote, Status, Video
6. P2: Link, Quote, Status
7. Rusty Grunge: Aside, Gallery, Quote, Status
8. San Kloud: Aside, Gallery, Image, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, Video, Status
9. Selecta: Aside, Audio, Chat, Gallery, Image, Quote, Video
10. The Morning After: Aside

Unless you pay $75 extra for the Premium theme Elemin or $30 a year for Custom Design, you don’t have much in the way of themes that look what you might call plain, normal, traditional, or professional. So, what’s a working girl to do? For my interpreting / translation blog, I’m using Twenty Eleven because it supports WordAds and post formats and at least shows my byline on post pages. For my Communications & Media blog, I’m using Twenty Twelve, which did show bylines when it came out two weeks ago but stopped showing them last weekend, even on post pages. Strange. I am hoping they’ll fix this, and I am also hoping Twenty Twelve will support WordAds.

At the moment, I am using two of the ten themes that made the list, but not for the reasons I filtered for. I’m using Matala for my personal blog  (with a solid color background) simply because I like the general look of it and how it presents posts of different formats. I’m using P2 for my family blog so my husband can easily post on the front page. P2 does look somewhat professional and “normal” (not funky), so I might rethink using that on one of my other blogs. Another theme that looks pretty “normal” is Yoko. It shows no bylines in front page and results pages — except for on image and video posts! This is fine, because most of my posts on my singing & signing blog are videos. Besides, it shows bylines and Author info on all post pages, and Yoko supports all these post formats: gallery, image, video, aside, link and quotes.

Sometimes, post formats don’t matter

When do post formats not matter? When all your blog posts are the same format! For my photography blog, I’m using Ideation and Intent because it is bright, colorful, shows bylines, and shows off my photos in a playful and plentiful way. I’ve created a separate blog post about photoblogging themes.