Start a new Wordpress site can be a hassle. There's a lot of things to consider before start:

• Are you using a PSD design to create the blog
• Do you require a specific template to work with
• Are you comfortable using other people templates
• Are you Html and CSS comfortable.

Many people will want to start directly with a ready to go template. There are some pretty ones that are free, and many more stunning that you'll have to pay for. If you feel that HTML and CSS is not for you this may be the best option. The only issue is that to make the page exactly as you liked will be a little more complicated.

Configurable Themes

There are some Wordpress themes that allow configure many elements, normally you'll be able to do this directly from the Dashboard, and make the site how you like it. Nevertheless you won't have a complete control of the sites, and if you want touch up some of the HTML and CSS you'll find it more difficult than other topics (because of all the options the site has).

• Atahualpa: Is probably the most configurable and flexible free theme for Wordpress.You have over 200 options to choose so your page will look really similar to what you have in mind. You can do every change directly from the Dashboard.
• Felixibility: This is another free and amazing theme with hundreds of options (250). This theme also has many skins ready to use, so you won't need to go over all the different options available.
• Suffusion: Finally this elegant and versatile theme with many different options. 19 widget areas, one-column, two-column and three-column fixed-width and flexible-width formats, 10 pre-defined templates, 18 pre-defined color schemes, two customizable multi-level drop-down menus, featured posts, a magazine layout and many more.

Framework

If you are a developer or feel more comfortable touching HTML and CSS you can do much more. You can use a theme that is close to what you want and add the modifications you want. But there is a solution much more simple and elegant.

You could use a Framework, a theme with a number of customization options. This kind of themes are perfect to create one or many sites, and to modify the code is made simplier, either through custom files or child themes.

• Thematic: Is a powerful framework theme with many options. It features 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It looks simple but is pretty powerful under the hood.
• Carrington this is much more than just a theme, is a CMS theme platform for WordPress that makes it easy to create unique looks for different categories, post types and comments by creating custom templates. One of the interesting things about this theme is that brings a variety of options, including a blog format, a text-only format, and a mobile theme that can be ran simultaneously.
• Roots another amazing free theme based on HTML5 Boilerplate & Bootstrap from Twitter.

Start theme

There are many Starters Themes, this themes are optimized and documented template files that let you create a site from scratch. With this themes you'll be able to apply a PSD design, and make it look exactly like you like it without the hassle of actually creating a theme from scratch:

• Bones: One of my favourite themes, because is more than a framework, is a customizable theme for your site. This project besides have all the basic and simple formating of other examples comes in two flavors. The classic that uses the 960 Grid and a simple CSS, and the Responsive designed for multiple devices
• Starkers: is a bare-bones WordPress theme created to act as a starting point for the theme designer. This theme is simple stripped to the bare minimum to make your site work.
• Sandbox: This is a theme with the ability to be easily skinned, so you can style only using CSS,it also has rich semantic markup and profusion of classes, dynamically generated by a few functions.

From Scratch

Finally, it may not be the better option, but you can create a site from scratch. It may be slower than other methods, but it will be a nice practice to actually understand how a Wordpress works. You can start with the Theme Development in the Wordpress Codex and start from there.

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