Free WordPress Themes: 2011 Edition
It’s interesting to look back at our previous WordPress themes round-ups. It’s almost like looking at a visual timeline not only of WordPress’ advances in theme design, but of the rapid development in functionality of the CMS itself. The themes from year to year clearly differ in style as Web design trends have evolved. As each year passes and more functionality is added to WordPress’ core, these improvements are strongly reflected in the themes developed for it.
Once upon a time, all WordPress themes looked like traditional blogs, with basic functionality and not a heck of a lot more. But as you will see from the themes below, that original “blog” design style is clearly gone, perhaps never to be seen again. It makes you feel nostalgic.
Nowadays, user requirements for WordPress themes are very high. Users expect all themes (including free ones) to have pages for admin options built in, where you can quickly set up your website and personalize it with a minimum of fuss. With the rise of these options pages, niche-specific theme designs (such as for portfolios, blogs or magazines) are no longer required and are, in fact, few and far between.
Most of the themes below can be tailored via the options panel to be anything you want, whether a portfolio, a content-heavy magazine-style website or a basic blog. Setting one up takes only 10 minutes. This actually gave us a few problems when it came to categorizing the themes below. We spend a lot of time researching, collaborating on and writing these round-ups. In fact, it is a Smashing Magazine tradition to publish the top 100 WordPress themes from the previous 12 months (this is our fifth edition).
Portfolios, Galleries And Showcases
Portfolium (Demo)
Portfolium is a clean and flexible WordPress grid-based portfolio theme, designed in a modern and minimalist style. It is ideal for designers, artists, photographers and other creative specialists who require a professional portfolio theme.
Shaken Grid (Demo)
Shaken Grid uses the jQuery Masonry plug-in, which “arranges elements vertically then horizontally according to a grid.” The theme is perfect if you need a gallery or portfolio or just want a unique grid layout.
Big Square (Demo)
Big Square is a stylish photoblog theme with a built-in gallery that is focused entirely on highlighting your creative visuals.
Journal Crunch (Demo)
Journal Crunch is a gallery and portfolio theme with all of the features you would expect from a premium theme: easy set-up via the options page, plenty of shortcodes, built-in pagination, Twitter widgets, AJAX contact form and much more.
Paragrams (Demo)
Paragams is a lightweight theme that is built on a grid and that could be used for various types of websites: portfolios, photoblogs even online magazines.
Imbalance 2 (Demo)
Imbalance 2 turns you WordPress-based website to an attractive blog, portfolio or online magazine. This free template has a strictly modern style with a minimalist touch.
Photoria (Demo)
Photoria is a clean feature-rich theme that would be perfect as a photoblog or portfolio. It comes packaged with a variety of templates and built-in SEO (via its extensive options page), and the theme is internationalized for easy translation.
Muse (Demo)
Muse is a simple gallery theme that can be used as either a portfolio or an inspirational showcase. It comes with custom page templates and built-in SEO, and it can be combined with a ratings plug-in to create an all-singing, all-dancing showcase website.
mimiThem (Demo)
This is far and away the most basic theme in this article. But don”t be fooled: it works effectively as a quick and easy way to get your portfolio online.
Dione (Demo)
Dione is a video showcase theme that uses the custom post type feature available in WordPress 3+.
Business And Corporate Websites
Academica (Demo)
Academica was designed specifically for educational institutions such as universities and schools. It’s a flexible and versatile free theme that can be easily customized and branded for any university, academy or non-profit organization.
Rotary (Demo)
Rotary is a two-column business theme that was built with all of the fantastic features of WordPress 3.0. It is centered on the idea of running your blog as a CMS.
Vanadiumitic (the link was removed due to the suspicious code of the theme)
Vanadiumitic comes with a featured content section, a dropdown menu, subscription buttons (Twitter, Facebook and RSS), an automatic thumbnail resizer, and widgets for popular and featured posts and featured videos, all packed in a powerful framework for easy back-end customization.
Gameliso (Demo)
This one’s a lovely clean theme.
Zincious (Demo)
The Zincious theme comes with a dropdown menu, subscription buttons (Twitter, Facebook and RSS), an automatic thumbnail resizer, a widget for popular posts, a featured content slider and a robust framework for easy back-end customization.
Ikonik (Demo)
Ikonik was designed as an online design store, although no e-commerce system is integrated. It could be used as a simple portal for selling vectors, icons, logos, buttons, themes and pretty much anything else.
Minimalist Themes
Expositio (Demo)
Expositio is a simple portfolio theme for photographers, designers and artists. Its integrated options help you customize the template from font to color.
Sutra (Demo)
Sutra is a minimal theme focused on simplicity, putting the writing front and center.
Extricate (Demo)
Extricate is a clean, minimal theme built on HTML5 and CSS3. The options page allows you to resize columns and specify post information.
Renova (Demo)
Renova comes with two backgrounds (full white or paper), six link colors, jQuery support for hover effects and mobile device support. The minimal style is for writers who need a simple layout without any distraction.
Feijoa (Demo)
This is a four-column layout with a simple sidebar and was designed using the jQuery Masonry plug-in.
Simply Delicious (Demo)
This minimalist theme features big images, a clean style and easy browsing: perfect for modern blogs and portfolios.
Wordfinder (Demo)
Wordfinder is a simple magazine-style theme for users who want to start a blog with a minimal layout. The theme has many layout features, including two home page styles and six colors for links and hover effects that are easily customizable via the options page.
Theophilus (Demo)
This jQuery-based, Cufon-enabled, lightweight and minimal WordPress theme was developed by Timothy Long.
Blogum (Demo)
Blogum is a simple grid-based blog theme, designed with a modern and minimalist style. It supports all WordPress 3.0 features, giving you extra flexibility.
Mini Hyper (Demo)
Mini Hyper comes with a basic options page where you can add your analytics tracking code and change the logo. Other than that, Mini Hyper is widget-ready and works in all browsers.
Min (Demo)
“No bells and whistles, just simple and to the point.” Min’s main content area is set at 560 pixels, and it has two widget-ized footer areas to handle navigation and anything else you feel like putting there.
Papaver (Demo)
Papaver is an elegant, minimal theme. You can set the content to one, two or three columns.
Codium Extend (Demo)
Codium Extend is a minimalist theme that supports all of WordPress 3+’s features and comes with support for smartphones (iPhone, etc.) and tablets (iPad, Galaxy Tab, etc.).
Delicate (Demo)
Delicate is a clean, minimalist theme with a focus on typography and structure.
Melville (Demo)
Melville was inspired by classic literature. It has no distractions; just a simple design that focuses the reader on your writing.
Yoko (Demo)
Yoko is a modern and flexible theme, with a responsive layout based on CSS3 media queries. The design is optimized for big desktop screens, tablets and smartphones. You can use new post formats (such as Gallery, Aside and Quote), choose your own logo and header image, and customize the background and link color.
Hybridside (Demo)
With a minimal design and simple structure, Hybridside allows writers to choose the body background and the color scheme for links. It has full support for thumbnails, WordPress menu navigation, five widget areas and a print-friendly style sheet.
Aqualine (Demo)
Aqualine is a unique and minimalist theme that has an extensive options page. Pick your own color accent, choose between thumbnails and excerpts or the full content for the main page, and more.
The Scoop (Demo)
The Scoop is a four-column minimal magazine-style theme, with a focus on elegant typography. It is ideal for content-heavy websites.
David Airey Theme
David Airey has released his old blog’s design as a free WordPress theme. As you probably know, that minimal design offers the perfect platform for your writing.
The Columnist (Demo)
The Columnist was inspired by the grid structure and typographic techniques of traditional newspapers. It was designed with a grid-based layout, an elegant typographic hierarchy and some CSS3 and jQuery greatness.
Swiss Dessign (Demo)
The four themes below, originally featured on Smashing Magazine in January, are simple yet powerful, with a touch of traditional Swiss design and layout. Their distinct style is what separates them from the other themes. They allow you to select the focus of your work, since you are the artist and should be in control of the visitor’s experience. Each theme comes with a full video overview and support for using and managing it.
Simplest Free WP Theme
This is perhaps the most basic WordPress theme you’ve ever seen. It’s so basic that it’s not even worth showing a screenshot of it. But it is useful. It’s a fully functional theme that would be perfect for anyone looking for a barebones WordPress framework. It has only 83 lines of PHP and 75 lines of CSS.
Blogs And Personal Websites
Spectacular (Demo)
This theme was commissioned by Smashing Magazine and designed by Maleika Esther Attawel. It offers a warm and comfortable environment for personal musings. It comes in two flavors: HTML 4.01 and HTML5. Both German and English versions are included in the download package.
Protean (Demo)
Protean is a WordPress theme from Landau Reece that allows bloggers to customise their website design for individual blog posts.
Skeptical (Demo)
Skeptical’s layout is flexible: you can display “Related posts” next to your latest posts on the home page or have a completely widget-based sidebar. You can also add your Flickr stream to the footer and showcase three noteworthy blog posts with a tag that you declare in the settings.
Graphite (Demo)
Graphite, built by Medialoot from the ground up using HTML5 and CSS3, comes with portfolio post types, two alternative home page image sliders and built-in admin settings.
Harimau Malaya (Demo)
Harimau Malaya was purpose-built as a throwback to when blogs looked like blogs. It is a simple but complete theme, suitable for every blogger out there.
Pongsari (Demo)
Pongsari, a simple and clean theme, was built using the WordPress 3+ default theme TwentyTen as a framework. It comes with support for WordPress 3+ thumbnails and custom menu functions.
Typominima (Demo)
Typominima is a free, minimal typography-based theme that was designed to enable writers and publishers to express themselves online in a clean and beautiful environment.
Edgy Ellen (Demo)
This theme from WP Classic has a stylish design, clean grid patterns and custom typography. It comes with an options panel that will help you set up your website in no time.
Copperific (Demo)
Copperific has a stylish slider to showcase highlights of your portfolio. It also has a built-in Twitter and Facebook button for easy sharing of posts. For monetization, it has four 125×125 banner ads that are integrated in the system’s back end. It has a custom dropdown menu, an automatic thumbnail resizer, a widget for popular posts and a lot more.
Grey (Demo)
Grey is generic enough to be used for almost any kind of blog. Whether it’s a blog about design, photography, fashion or some other passion, the Grey theme should suit your needs. It is built on a simple layout, but with a lot of little touches of subtle details and textures.
Neonsential (Demo)
Neonsential brings a grungy yet elegant look to your blog. The fancy home page slider highlights your featured posts. It is WordPress 3.0-compliant and backed by a robust framework for quickly setting up your website.
Anniversary (Demo)
As the name suggests, Anniversary was built as a celebration of and thank-you to WordPress. It’s a classic-looking theme, with several layout options and a customizable “Thank you, WordPress” banner in the header.
Shopping/Ecommerce Theme
Velvet Sky (Demo)
Velvet Sky is a Prestashop and WordPress shopping theme that was recently released on Smashing Magazine. It features a custom homepage with combo slider, horizontal and submenu menu integration, custom slideshow, it supports one page checkout and guest checkout and is IE7+, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Chrome compatible.
Mobile-Optimized Themes
iPhonsta (Demo)
Offering a mobile version of your website is an easy way to strengthen your visitors’ loyalty. iPhonsta has a fluid layout, it fits most mobile screens (despite its name, it will work on most smartphones), and it configures the font size automatically.
jQuery Mobile
This theme is optimized for mobile devices, such as iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. It is a great starting point for building a mobile website.
Magazine-Layout Themes
Agency (Demo)
Agency is a magazine-style theme that puts your content in a beautiful wrapper, complete with subtle, elegant page elements. It features a custom slideshow, a built-in contact form, custom gallery styles with lightbox functionality, and two widget-ized sidebars.
Nublu (Demo)
This sleek blue theme comes with a configurable slider, drop-down menus and Cufon-enabled headlines. It also comes with automatic thumbnail generation and the WordPress 3+ menu system, and it sports a Twitter bird that sings your latest tweets.
Splendio (Demo)
Splendio has a unique magazine-style design, based on the TwentyTen theme.
Sight (Demo)
Sight, previously featured on Smashing Magazine last November, is a powerful theme that is best suited to magazines-style blogs. It was built on a grid and has a modern minimalist style. Customize the content view using either the standard blog view or the grid view.
Lucky Guess (Demo)
Plenty of CSS3 techniques are used in this theme. You will notice both loud and subtle text shadows in the headings, text orientation effects and box gradients. The theme also makes use of Google fonts, which render much faster than the popular Cufon fonts.
Yellow Magazine (Demo)
This theme could be used for a magazine-style website or, just as effectively, for a corporate or business layout. It comes with a basic options page, built-in pagination, a content slider and integrated social bookmarking buttons.
Suburbia (Demo)
Suburbia is a clean and flexible grid-based magazine theme with a modern and minimalist style. The theme is suitable for most types of websites, including blogs, online magazines and portfolios.
The Morning After (Demo)
At 100,000 downloads, The Morning After is the grandfather of modern WordPress magazine themes. Originally designed by Arun Kale, it was bought last year by WooThemes, which has restructured and modernized the theme with its own powerful development framework.
iTheme2 (Demo)
iTheme2 is the perfect theme for technology- and Apple-related blogs. It uses media queries to target different displays, such as desktops, notebooks, iPhones and iPads, and other mobile devices, without a plug-in. The layout automatically adjusts to the user’s viewing area.
Magazine 1 (Demo)
With its simple, stylish and dark design, Magazine 1 is a professional solution for any blog or magazine website. It features jQuery content sliders, a “Most popular posts” widget and multiple colors for the background and content. It is easy to customize and use.
Custom Community (Demo)
Custom Community is a BuddyPress theme that enables you to easily build a website with all of BuddyPress’ built-in features: the easy-to-use jQuery slideshow, post templates with thumbnail integration, and a powerful options page for customizing every part of the theme.
Aluminiumism (Demo)
The Aluminiumism theme has a grungy watercolor style yet still maintains a classically clean look. It features a prominent content section, a dropdown menu, subscription buttons (Twitter, Facebook and RSS), an automatic thumbnail resizer, widgets for popular and featured posts and featured videos, and a heck of a lot more.
Elegant (Demo)
Elegant is a simple yet professional theme. It has two color schemes (black and white) and is best suited to corporate magazines but is flexible enough for blogs and portfolios.
Amphion Lite (Demo)
Amphion Lite comes packaged with two skins, a home page content slider, integrated social sharing buttons, custom page templates and a lightbox plug-in for image galleries.
“Coming Soon” And Landing Pages
Landis (Demo)
Landis is a simple one-page landing or “Under construction” WordPress theme. It keeps your users informed while you build your amazing new website. The quick landing page simply tells visitors what is going on and when your website will launch.
Timelaph (Demo)
Timelaph is a sleek, dark, spaced-out theme for landing pages and email newsletter subscription pages. It integrates easily with Feedburner to redirect RSS feeds and help build your email subscriptions.
Placeholder (Demo)
This landing page is perfect if your website is in development and you simply need to let visitors know how to get in touch with you. Also, the built-in countdown timer is a nifty way to tell visitors when the project will launch.
Theme Development Frameworks And Bare-Bone Themes
Platform
This is the free version of Platform, a drag-and-drop design framework for WordPress. With this framework, you can design and build your website faster than ever before, entirely in WordPress’ back end.
Roots
Roots is a starter WordPress theme made for developers and based on HTML5 Boilerplate, Blueprint (or 960.gs) and Starkers. It helps you rapidly create brochure websites and blogs.
HTML5 WordPress Shell
With this framework, you get custom templates (including 404 and 503 error pages), the mother of all WordPress body tags, support for WordPress’ new menu system, Modernizr (i.e. HTML5 feature detection) and an HTML5 reset style sheet, @font-face examples, support for iPhone detection, and IE conditional style sheets.
Boilerplate: Starkers
This Boilerplate framework was developed by combining HTML5 Boilerplate and the bare-bones Starkers into a minimally marked-up, HTML5-ready framework. The Boilerplate theme is designed to function as a parent theme to whatever child you would like to add. But you could just as easily use this as a starting point and alter the PHP as your design requires.
TwentyTen Five
TwentyTen Five was originally launched in the Smashing Magazine article “Using HTML5 to Transform WordPress’ TwentyTen Theme.” It is basically an HTML5 upgrade of the default TwentyTen theme, and yet it is much more than that. With its support for brand new HTML5 elements and its compatibility with all modern browsers (although to use HTML5 with IE versions 6 to 8, you need a pinch of JavaScript, which is included), this theme is perfect as a development framework.
Theme Starter (Demo)
This is a starter theme for those who are looking for a starting point in WordPress without having to dissect anything more complex. The theme is WordPress 3+ compatible and uses the new menu navigation and thumbnail functionality.
Constellation (Demo)
This great starting point gives you the flexibility to provide bespoke styles for different devices, totally up-to-date HTML5 code (which is fantastic for SEO) and a flexible grid system, on top of all of the other goodness bundled in the HTML5 Boilerplate.
Bones
This feature-rich bare-bones theme was built using some of HTML5 Boilerplate”s recommended mark-up. It also has a ton of features, such as page navigation, breadcrumbs, a widget for related posts, HTML5 video with fallback and a heck of a lot more. Bones was designed to make the developer”s life easier; it”s meant to be hacked until it fits what you”re looking for.
Skimpy
Skimpy has basic WordPress 3.0 functionality, including custom menus, thumbnails and custom sidebars. A couple of other useful tweaks are commented out, but you can comment them in and do what you want with them. The only style included is a container that sets the width to 900 pixels.
Further Resources
For nostalgia, or perhaps to visually track the development of WordPress themes, browse back through the top 100 WordPress themes from previous years.
Please note that some of those themes (especially the ones from 2007 and 2008) may be outdated and incompatible with the latest version of WordPress. Use with caution.
- 100 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes: 2010 Edition
- 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009
- 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes: 2008 Edition
- Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen: 2007 Edition
(al)
Alex Cristache / Blogsessive
July 5th, 2011 4:54 amHi Paul, thanks for remembering about Typominima and including it in such wonderful company! Superb collection! Cheers!
Moin
July 5th, 2011 7:12 amThanks for the great round up Paul, but I guess you missed a pretty good theme here:
Blog-O-Folio WordPress Theme Version 1.0 (http://www.noupe.com/freebie/blog-o-folio-wordpress-theme-version-1-0.html)
Collis
October 16th, 2011 7:49 pmOh, I like the Mac theme http://themify.me/themes/itheme2
Josh
July 5th, 2011 4:57 amAnother really great wordpress showcase. Thanks Paul. It’s amazing to see how far wordpress has come, it really can be anything for anyone these days.
btw – really like the minimal dessign theme – nice.
Samuel Taylor
July 5th, 2011 5:59 amVanadiumitic is a complete ripoff of the Eight Hour Day website. There are some others in there that are pretty cool. I love the work of wp shower. Nice post.
Charlie
July 5th, 2011 6:12 amIt also has encrypted spam links in the footer
Vitaly Friedman
July 5th, 2011 6:30 amThanks for the heads up. The link was removed.
Charlie
July 5th, 2011 6:58 amZincious, Copperific, Neonsential and Aluminiumism are all from the same site and all have spam links in the footer
SlowX
July 5th, 2011 11:36 amTAC (Theme Authenticity Checker) is a great plug-in that checks for clean themes w/o hidden links/spam: http://builtbackwards.com/projects/tac/
Kenneth
July 7th, 2011 6:00 amI second that. All sites with encrypted “dating site” links in the footer.
I don’t mind leaving a link to a designer but i’m no fan of encrypted stuff
Lee Kennedy
July 5th, 2011 6:09 amA smashing collection with some stunning themes. Keep up the good work.
manuele haisek
July 5th, 2011 6:54 amyahooo!
Themes Kingdom
July 5th, 2011 7:00 amHi Paul, Thank you for Landis mention, we truly appreciate it and glad you found it useful.
Tinjaw
September 22nd, 2011 7:54 amI just tried installing the Landis theme and WP complains:
The following themes are installed but incomplete. Themes must have a stylesheet and a template.
Name Description
Landis_theme Stylesheet is missing.
Nataasha
October 2nd, 2011 12:26 amIf you manually install it through an FTP program like Filezilla it works. I had the same problem installing it through WordPress but it was fine through Filezilla.
aeryxz
February 25th, 2012 12:46 pmYou have to install it by unzipping the first landis file, then uploading the landis.zip file within the directory WP
Manfred Dahli
July 5th, 2011 7:12 amLove the minimalistic one, inspirating ..
bit.ly/m79irV
Catalin
July 5th, 2011 7:23 amNice collection! But man, there’s a lot of Lobster! (you know…the font)
Anyway, thanks for sharing these.
Jon
July 6th, 2011 8:29 amLobster is destined to be the new Comic Sans.
jurriaan
July 10th, 2011 5:52 pmI’m afraid so. At first i thought it was beautiful but now it’s getting overused already and it starts to bore me.
Bernard Muller
July 5th, 2011 7:23 amGreat post! Nice en inspiring themes.
Mason Hipp
July 5th, 2011 7:28 amGreat list guys, thanks for mentioning Graphite from MediaLoot =D It’s awesome to be in such good company.
Now, time to start downloading some of these …
Ashvin
July 5th, 2011 7:32 amWe been waiting for this! Thanxxx
Martyn
July 5th, 2011 7:37 amWow, what an amazing resource! This page definitely takes a top level spot on my bookmark bar!!
Ubuntufreak
July 5th, 2011 7:47 amNice collection !
One correction the link for the Sutra theme points to Expositio which needs correction.
Ragged Orchid
July 5th, 2011 8:01 amFYI, I went and checked out the “Rotary” theme and it is NOT free- the author requires a $5 fee to download. :(
liebesiech
July 5th, 2011 8:10 amHoly crap! Love it! Love it! THANKS FOR THIS COLLECTION!!!!!!!
JustinS
July 5th, 2011 8:13 amHow Jenzoo can be on a list of “Free” themes when the link takes you to a page that charges $35 for the download?
Vitaly Friedman
July 5th, 2011 8:50 amIt was free when we prepared a round-up. Apparently, the owners changed it to “Non-Free” themes shortly after that. The link was removed, sorry for inconvenience!
JustinS
July 5th, 2011 9:06 amNo worries. Appreciate that you corrected that so quickly.
Fred
July 5th, 2011 8:22 amEach time I open Smashing Magazine I hope for this post. And Here it is !
Thanks !
JPry
July 5th, 2011 9:04 amThanks for the collection of themes!
Just an FYI, the “Quality Control” theme is no longer available for download from the original developer. He posted some information on his blog back in February: http://spencerfinnell.com/2011/02/01/on-quality-control/.
While it looks like an awesome theme, it’s probably best to remove it from the list.
Christiane Rosenberger
July 5th, 2011 3:34 pmThank you JPry, the theme has been removed!
SlowX
July 5th, 2011 9:41 amWish more of these were different, but a lot just seem like variations on a theme: logo, gallery, columns detailing categories…
Then again, for folk who want out-of-the-box solutions, there are some nice ones here.
SlowX
July 5th, 2011 9:43 amPS The “Theme Development Frameworks And Bare-Bone Themes” were AWESOME! They deserve their own post, IMHO.
:D
joshuasbones
July 5th, 2011 10:15 amHasn’t Quality Control changed hands? I thought it was becoming a for-pay product.
Muneeb Ahmad
July 5th, 2011 10:38 amOnce again Smashing Mag, you’ve beat every other list by providing top-quality free themes at their best! Thank you so much! :)
Dovydas
July 5th, 2011 11:43 amThank you! Awesome collection! Now i will have from what to choose for my portfolio !
Rob Bell
July 5th, 2011 12:48 pmFantastic, a veritable smorgasbord of WordPress themes – thank you for compiling this compendium.
Ilithya
July 5th, 2011 12:58 pmThank you for this post! I have been looking for a masonry free theme since I had trouble trying to implemented in my theme. Regards!
Mike
July 5th, 2011 1:53 pmExcited to try out the theme “Distant Dawn”. Unfortunately, there is a “FATAL CALL: To an Undefined Function” on each page instead of content on an out-of-the-box installation. In addition to this, there is a hidden banner ad in the header.
Needless to say, I am disappoint.
VollInDieFresse
July 5th, 2011 2:41 pmAppreciate your effort! Thanks for the collection.
Adam
July 5th, 2011 2:53 pmQuality Control is no longer available for download, as the developer sold it to a AppThemes… a while ago. Why was this included?
Lester Bambico
July 5th, 2011 3:22 pmSimply Delicious under minimalist themes has the wrong image,
it features the thumbnail for Shaken and Stirred. :)
cudazi
July 5th, 2011 5:52 pmI have a freebie for a simple one page portfolio site if anyone’s interested – http://bit.ly/dbaB6Z
John
July 5th, 2011 7:30 pmWow, what an awful column, one of the worst I’ve read here. Bad links, suspicious code, designs that have changed hands months ago, and many of these aren’t even free. And the designs themselves are amateurish and bland. Did you spend even 5 minutes researching this list?
Elder Tanaka
July 5th, 2011 7:42 pmBest WP showcase ever! Thanks a lot.
André
July 5th, 2011 9:18 pmI`m a great fan and a faithful SM reader. I`m quite aware that we`re talking about free WP themes here, so I don`t expect them to be outstanding design creations that will solve all the world problems. They can be useful and sometimes we need that. That sure makes the purpose great. But I would ask you guys to reconsider your review work so this kind of (quite preventable) problems don’t occur again.
As John (38) said, “bad links, suspicious code, designs that have changed hands months ago, and many of these aren’t even free” made this a bad post considering SM standard. Besides that, most of the themes here presented are not fresh.
Hope you take this the good way.
Freddy Cano
July 5th, 2011 9:21 pmI installed portfolium on my website and I can’t get the admin bar to show. Does anyone know how is it being hidden. I couldn’t find any functions falsifying it.
Jatin Hariani
July 5th, 2011 9:28 pmThanks for the amazing collection. These will come in really handy someday. Bookmarked!
Ejaz
July 5th, 2011 11:03 pmThis is great collection, especially bare bone themes, frameworks and landing pages.
Kanchan Rai
July 5th, 2011 11:24 pmThanks a lot!! These are wonderful themes and amazingly free!!
For a guy like me, who has just started using WordPress, it’s really a big deal!!
Distant Dawn, Copperific, Elegant Theme, just amazing collection!! Man!
Rob
July 6th, 2011 1:26 amHi, great roundup! The minimal listing for “Simply Delicious”, the screenshot is wrong, any chance this can be changed? Will be greatly appreciated.
sarah
July 6th, 2011 2:25 amVery complete list.
Maybe, if you like it, you can add also our Beauty&Clean, a minimal and corporate theme…Take a look: http://bit.ly/lZIapp thank you!! :)
Dzinepress
July 6th, 2011 5:23 amprofessional listings and would like to use in my personal website too.
Jason
July 6th, 2011 11:28 amNo mention of the Whiteboard framework? http://whiteboardframework.com/
jen
July 6th, 2011 11:45 amThe Rotary theme is not free any more. From their website that you linked to: “Update 3/13/2011: This theme is no longer free. You have to pay $5 to download. Thank you for your support.”
Vincent
July 6th, 2011 11:46 amI downloaden SPlended and I love it! Thanks for that.
Though, one question, anybody knows how to remove the Facebook and Twitter buttons beneath the search option, I dont use those and want them rmoved :)
pimsainnum
July 6th, 2011 5:28 pmThank you for share .
Just download all.
Anggi
July 6th, 2011 6:16 pmThanks Paul for listed iKonik
but we have more wordpress ecommerce themes that can download for everyone
For music online store :
Disco http://tokokoo.com/blog/2011/05/free-wp-e-commerce-theme-disco/
Apparel online store:
Kakileema http://tokokoo.com/blog/2011/04/free-wordpress-e-commerce-3-8-theme-kakileema/
Furniture online store:
Bangkoo http://tokokoo.com/blog/2011/03/free-wordpress-e-commerce-3-8-theme-bangkoo-furniture-online-store/
and Gadget online store:
Kelontong http://tokokoo.com/blog/2011/04/free-wordpress-e-commerce-3-8-theme-kelontong-for-your-apps-e-store/
AppCloud http://tokokoo.com/blog/2011/04/free-wordpress-e-commerce-3-8-theme-appcloud-for-your-apps-and-gadget-store/
i hope you guys enjoy with our wordpress ecommerce themes
Chuckles
July 6th, 2011 7:38 pmBoo…..absolute crap. These are awful and terrible. Expect much much better from Smashing.
Ricardus
July 6th, 2011 10:34 pmThanks for sharing all these great themes.
Ramon
July 7th, 2011 8:48 amGreat Collection.
Just to point out, Sutra links are wrong, it has the same links as the entry above (Expositio).
AJ Clarke
July 7th, 2011 11:42 amThere are some really great free themes here. Another one I think should be included is “Portafolio” which is one of the best free portfolio themes out there:
http://www.wpexplorer.com/portafolio-wordpress-theme.html
ben
July 7th, 2011 9:09 pmbetter collecting some adsense ready theme for us. i need one.
Riaz
July 7th, 2011 10:15 pmUh…. what about the Rockettheme Gantry Framework? Also free… also excellent.
http://www.gantry-framework.org/
Eva
July 8th, 2011 6:38 amGreat resource. Seems a lot of these are for portfolios or photographers etc. Bottom line what are your list of best ecommerce free wordpress themes?
Anggi
July 8th, 2011 9:28 amwhat i listed are for best free wordpress ecommerce themes
Brian
July 11th, 2011 1:16 amRotary theme is no longer free..
Adam
July 11th, 2011 2:26 amThe post is amazing. best wordpress resource there is !
Esteban Mucientes (@mediotic)
July 11th, 2011 9:20 amWordPress Shell links to Boilerplate Stalkers :-((
matejlatin
July 12th, 2011 4:12 amI really like the ones with light colors and clean design… but I’d never settle for a free theme as I insist on creating original design for every website… even my own
Haddicus
July 12th, 2011 8:35 amI like a few of them, but I’m surprised at the inclusion of some…. that look absolutely horrible.
jep
July 12th, 2011 9:55 amDon’t say “free” if they aren’t please
Tim Bednar
July 13th, 2011 9:32 amI fear looking like just another “me too” — but I would I would like to submit the Ashford CMS Framework for your readers consideration. It is free.
http://ashford.turtleinteractive.com/
Caroline
July 13th, 2011 9:44 amGreat line up thank you. It seems that you forgot to include Ashford as a free framework though.
Jason
July 13th, 2011 10:39 amI second @Caroline’s sentiment – no Ashford?? It’s free, incredibly flexible (I haven’t had to use a different framework for a single client request in almost 2 years), and has been featured in previous Smashing Mag roundups.
Chris
July 13th, 2011 12:20 pm+1 for Ashford, the quick rising star. Great code, insanely helpful support, and an aggressive roadmap (nicely communicated) make it the framework to watch.
Documentation for Ashford is also being created and updated faster than one would expect to be humanly possible.
What are you waiting for? Cmd + T or Ctrl + T and head over to ashford.turtleinteractive.com/ now!
Mike Perez
July 13th, 2011 3:26 pmAgree regarding Ashford theme. definitely deserves a mention here. Great free framework, although we use the premium version.
Lori Ann
July 13th, 2011 6:29 pmSome good themes here but I’m also really surprised Ashford isn’t on here — it’s flexible and powerful enough to give you what multiple of these themes offer, all in one install. And it really is free, too.
Heidi Lumpford
July 13th, 2011 10:43 pmGreat theme, however, themes from Padd Solution contains encrypted footer which links to spam websites, also there are suspicious lines in the encrypted pages which Theme Check and Anti Virus detects as security issue.
A shame, because if it’s USD1, I’m sure more people are willing to pay for it than free with dubious links in the footer.
Jenni
July 15th, 2011 1:41 amThere’s another free premium wordpress theme that you’ve missed it: http://www.intenseblog.com/wordpress/theproton-brand-new-free-premium-wordpress-theme.html
Erich Miller
July 15th, 2011 8:12 pmI’m looking for the +1 button… :)
Shailesh Tripathi
July 18th, 2011 4:28 amNice theme i’m gonna use it on my next site. I loved the layout and design of the site. Share it to each other is my current website and I am constantly conscious of it’s design factor. Happy for nice themes.
Sergio
July 23rd, 2011 5:14 amI really want to start creating my own theme, but there are times that too much information becomes overwhelming. Can anyone suggest a clean/naked theme out of the eight posted above?
Roots, HTML5 WordPress Shell, Boilerplate: Starkers, TwentyTen Five, Constellation, Bones, Skimpy… I found this other ones online as well, Handcrafted WP Starter Theme, H5 WordPress Theme.
Laura-Jane the Rawtarian
July 24th, 2011 9:07 amThanks! Lots of goodies on here. Appreciate it!
Mizzie
July 24th, 2011 7:33 pmSome great designs here. Thanks a lot.
Sergio
August 2nd, 2011 7:25 amCan anyone suggest a clean/naked theme out of the eight posted above?
rohit
August 9th, 2011 12:43 amnice themes
Wilson Selem
August 24th, 2011 10:18 amI find that your writing is rather good with an assorted range of interesting data. By the way, was thinking whether you would love to exchange contacts with my web site, as I am looking to compile more links to further expand and make headway for my web portal. I do not mind you laying my links at the main page, just having this web links on this page is good and adequate. Moreover, please leave a message at my web site if you are interested in exchanging links with me, I would really like that. Thanks and I hope to hear from you shortly!
webwitch
August 29th, 2011 12:29 amSome nice themes here but too many contain suspicious encrypted code. I wouldn’t use them because of this so am surprised they are showcased here.
Would love to see a collection of “safe” themes though.
William
August 30th, 2011 6:04 amThere is one more web design related free theme http://www.flashmint.com/wp/2011/08/wordpress-theme-freebies/
victor@tihai.md
September 7th, 2011 1:02 amAnother simple and perfect theme for personal blogging that supports post formats, and several customization options is BlogoLife – http://wplook.com/blogolife
e11world
September 8th, 2011 11:31 amA GREAT post with some very nice themes. You guys always put a smile on my face!
dimitris
September 9th, 2011 8:44 amwarning from my antivirus when i view the ikonik demo. be careful
Trojan:JS/Agent.FA is malicious Javascript embedded in a Web page. The Javascript is designed to circumvent popup blocking by security applications.
Shekhar Mehta
September 18th, 2011 12:56 amThanks for sharing all these excellent collection of themes. There is one nice theme at fmys.com that is bluemoon you can include that theme in this list.
Maybelle
September 19th, 2011 6:15 pmI couldn’t have found a better article than this, it is sooo comprehensive and very informative. Thank you very much! More power to you and to Smashing Magazine!
Ami
September 20th, 2011 7:02 amThis was probably already brought to attention, but the Agency theme is no longer free (if it ever was). Too bad, it would’ve come very handy.
Naomi
September 21st, 2011 4:13 pmSooo Rotary under Gallery…is NOT free…he want $10. Grrrr
Ashutosh Nigam
September 22nd, 2011 1:48 amawesome themes of wordpress……thanks for sharing
Adam
September 23rd, 2011 11:20 amHere is another clean and simple feature theme, it’s very flexible and easy to setup.
show your work of in exciting ways.
http://www.moonthemes.com/themes/the-feature-premium-wordpress-theme/
Indika
September 26th, 2011 8:16 pmHi Paul, a great theme collection! thanks a lot. I really like “Placeholder” theme in this collection. But there is a simple error in “Sutra” theme, both links of this theme are linked to “exposito” theme. Please correct it!
Stephen
September 28th, 2011 2:48 amTried one of the themes from Padd Solutions and it has some dodgy encoded links going on. I would suggest removing their theme(s) from this list.
Thomas
October 8th, 2011 12:30 pmFantastic post. A big help. Thank you.
Chantal
November 4th, 2011 10:20 amFantastic post, as usual! However, I adore the papaver theme, only the link takes you to an empty background page… Not that I expect anyone to know the answer, but if someone *does* happen to find out where it has moved to, please post?
Thanks!
Nick
November 4th, 2011 1:22 pmAwesome roundup! Definitely going to be sharing this around.
We just built a super clean and flexible 2 column theme too.
You can check it out here:
http://www.artofblog.com/33-a-dream-to-host/
Thanks for all the work that went into this post.
Thanks
November 5th, 2011 9:32 pmThanks!!!!
Thomas
November 15th, 2011 3:14 pmHey.
Love the post. Anychance someone could show me a wordpress template thats similar to this – bit.ly/4p3Mfk
Would really appreciate it.
Pigi
November 23rd, 2011 3:01 amBest 3 themes i’ve downloaded “Elegant theme”, “velvetsky” and “the scoop”
Thanks
bob
December 7th, 2011 2:37 amrotary costs $10 – these are supposed to be free themes
bob
December 7th, 2011 2:55 amthis is a pretty dire artical actually – most of the themes listed are either now pay themes, removed and link to money making blogs or just bad themes.
If thats a year in review it seems like free wordpress themes are dead and now you have to pay – even for garbage ones
Tiffany Youngren
December 30th, 2011 8:14 amGreat list – thanks! Love it. (But Agency isn’t free….)
Ryan
January 13th, 2012 9:53 amThis is a great list of freemium themes! What about simplefolio? Great free theme with slider, breadcrumbs and great SEO!
Ed G.
January 15th, 2012 3:43 pmDissapointed….sent one over to a client who liked it, only to find out it wasn’t a free theme. Looking back, there are quite a few that are not free on this list…..
bodybuilding
March 5th, 2012 1:42 pmI’d like to thank you for the efforts you’ve put in writing this website. I really hope to see the same high-grade blog posts from you later on as well. In truth, your creative writing abilities has motivated me to get my very own site now ;)
Brent R
April 12th, 2012 7:18 amGreat article. I am experiencing some of these issues as well..
Bro Fahroe
April 15th, 2012 10:02 pmwow,.. nice theme and templates,… i found it for my blog
romina
May 30th, 2012 3:45 pmthrough the template and I could get!
http://como-maquillar.com/
seiko
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karthik
June 24th, 2012 10:57 amnice work , appreciate your efforts