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A few posts back I switched to the Wordpress K2 theme and felt then that it was too much like a personal blog. I switched back to my old 3-column theme which I was much happier with. The only problem was that it was developed for Wordpress version 1.5 and does not utilise any of the newer functions available in version 2.0. Not that it matters, but since I’m on already on the latest version, why not use a theme made for it?

It was a couple of weeks back that I Googled the words “3-column k2” and came across two new styles for the K2 theme.

The first one was developed by Bharath Kumar. He simply calls it “3 Column K2”. I personally like his style as the main body resides on the left and the two sidebars stick to the other side. I think this is how people would normally read direction-wise, i.e. left to right.

The other one was developed by Hakan Aydin. He calls his design “3K2”. It is similar to Bharath’s but the main content stays in the middle while the sidebars are located on the sides (left and right). This is an equally good style as well since the main content is located in the center as the focal point.

If there are two equally good 3-column K2 themes out there, which one would you go for?

The answer is: it all depends on you.

With the 3 Column K2, Bharath specifically stated that he will not be updating his work for the SVN (short for subversion - kind of like work in progress) releases of the K2 theme. The current version of K2 at the moment is R167, however, it is still in second beta (unfinished). The current SVN release for K2 at the time of writing is R345, which fixes a lot of bugs in R167 and contains a lot of features and improvements, but remains unfinished as it is still being heavily worked on. This is where Hakan’s 3K2 exceeds Bharath’s 3 Column K2. The former’s version is more up-to-date than the latter and that means it contains a whole lot more new features like Widgets and localisation support plus a whole lot more.

So which one would you go for?

If you’re after a basic and stable 3-column theme for K2, then pick Bharath’s 3 Column K2. If you’re after bleeding edge technology, go for Hakan’s 3K2.

I’m currently trying out Bharath’s version at the moment and am liking it. However, I’m tempted to try Hakan’s one as well since it has more features. Perhaps I will try his when K2 has gone a bit more mature.

Going through their posts regarding K2, it seems apparently it’s very easy to implement a second sidebar in the default K2 theme. You just have to know a bit of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which I’m just starting to learn myself at the moment.