Every week I’m asked by readers to recommend a WordPress template.
I thought it’d make an interesting discussion – which WordPress templates are your favorites?
I know it always varies from blog to blog when you’re choosing the best template for the job but I’d love to see some of your favorites.
Feel free to nominate both Free and Paid ones.
I’m using a custom made magazine style template I designed myself from scratch… I know I’d been trying to reinvent the wheel by doing that, but the satisfaction of success was greater than the regret(if any). Check it out!
I use a theme I created myself using Small Potato (wpdesigner.com)’s tutorial. BTDubs, great timing, since the theme was only implemented on my blog about a week or so ago. If anyone could give me some feedback on the theme, that’d be great — http://www.deanlozarie.com‘s the URL, don’t wear it out.
I use the K2 theme with some CSS modifications. It is easily customizable and has header photo options. Get it at http://getk2.com. See it in action at http://www.shopbiz101.com.
Love the one I’m using at the moment.
personally i have my own full custom theme at http://www.theaffiliatesecret.com. Took awhile to iron out the kinks but its worth making your own theme to separate your site from the hordes of others using virtually identical templates.. you have to be individual IMO :) in saying that theres some nice themes listed above, i especially like the revolution news theme. good work.. cheers Jared.
I have just implemented Statement from BlogOhBlog (http://www.blogohblog.com/), that I am really happy with. It is a really nice professional feel about it.
Hi Darren, I could list dozens but from a pure design point of view, I absolutely the classic WordPress theme “Kubrick”, quick & easy to modify and turn into a zillion different looks.
For an end user looking for something right out of the box, I’d also recommend “Massive News”. A powerful, flexible and easy to modify theme.
@Mike Martin (way up-thread, sorry!), have a look at some of Brian Gardener’s free themes,
http://www.briangardner.com/themes
perhaps specifically Revolution Blog.
I created a minimalist WordPress theme entirely by accident, because there was a glitch in the FTP’ing of images and so the floral background, finials, and vignettes never appeared. I quite liked the stark results I obtained and stuck with it on Sciencebase.
I think the arthemia and linoluna FREE theme by Michel(http://www.michaeljubel.com/) is the best Magazine theme ever. Hes an indonesian, because of which he hasnt made his presence felt on the net, but when he does, no other WordPress PREMIUM theme designer will stand a chance…..
Check out a modified version of the Linoluna theme at my new music site at http://pitchhaze.com
Personally I am a fan of Mimbo Pro, it’s more of a complete site (less plain) than many other premium themes and is designed to work out of the box with little to no modification.
Of course my own blog design…
http://www.wilihandarwo.com
I think my theme is pretty awesome. It’s designed by Speckyboy (www.speckyboy.com). It’s simple and clean.
As far as I’m concerned, I used for a long time pattern-10 as my theme, but I’m now using homemade themes.
The last I made is changing according to the time of the day you’re visiting my blog.
To me, the best free themes are Cutline (by Chris Pearson), Prosense (Dosh Dosh) and Mysty Look.
All three themes are very clean, very easily customized and depending on what your blog goals are, they can give you really good results.
Also, all those themes are SEO friendly, with little tweaks.
Jide has some cool themes here http://www.jide.fr/english/downloads/freshy2/
I am using Chris Pearson’s Cutline. I think it has a very clean, simple, uncluttered look, which is what I am going for with my travel blog.
However, much as I like Cutline, I am not convinced that I am using the right CMS for my site, and the type of material I am presenting. Some of my material is fairly current and time critical, such as recommendation of current holiday deals, while other bits, such as a run down of must-see sights of Paris, are relevant over the long term.
This is awesome.
So many blog designs and a lot to choose from.
I am using Cleaker2.1_Widgetized theme on my blog.
Looks good. Some customizations yet required.
Thanks for sharing this.
It’s been nominated already, but I might as well add my voice to those supporting it. I particularly like The Morning After: http://code.google.com/p/the-morning-after/
This guy have some great free templates, check it out: http://ericulous.com/
I like clean, white, minimalist themes. For my blog I’m using Scott Wallick’s wonderful blog.txt theme.
But my book-in-progress I’m using Antbag’s Darkwater theme. It’s minimalist as well, with a no scroll background you can customize if you want.
http://www.briangardner.com/ – great themes. I’ve just upgraded to his latest Revolution theme, although I’ve hacked a little it to do what I want:
Here’s the Gardner theme:http://www.revolutiontheme.com/blog/
and here’s my ‘modded’ version:
http://www.blogfromitaly.com/
Now my blog is a ‘magazine’ / traditional blog hybrid!
If anyone would like a copy of the modified theme, let me know – as long as Mr Gardner does not object.
Alex
I like the Zeke theme layout. I only customized the banner to suit my blog.
All my current blogs are originally based on Sadish Bala’s free MistyLook template that can be found from http://wpthemes.info/
I’ve been swapping sidebars from right to left, added footer, removing header images, etc., but I still lot of original stuff in there as well.
I run a modified version of Justin Tadlock’s Structure theme. You can see it at http://geeksdreamgirl.com/. I love my web design/graphic art girl – she is so good!
I think the best template is Blue Weed by Blog oh Blog.
You can see it in action, with some ads modding here http://www.technicoblog.com
I love K2 with a beautiful skin and I think it’s one of the best for seo.
I think premium news theme has the best templates out there and the forum support is great
http://www.premiumnewstheme.com/
Re-styled modicus theme, a few colours make a lot of difference. Cool writing as well
http://luckysocks.net/
I like Simpla by Phu. I use it on chromaticsoul.wordpress.com mostly because it’s clean and easy on the eyes. Also, it’s free. I’ve seen some others I like out there but my main focus is clean and simple. If I hosted a site, I’d probably use the one that Open Education (http://openeducation.net) uses.
I use Options by Justin Tadlock(http://www.justintadlock.com). It is a great theme. Also good themes are Brightness by Daily WP(www.dailywp.com/brightness-wordpress-theme/), and Gablog theme by Gabfire (http://www.gabfire.com).
Darren, In my previous comment, I wrote a very small comment, but after writing that I thought about it more and decided to write a new post on this subject on my blog.
So I have made a list of good free and premium themes that I will recommend users to use:
http://www.balkhis.com/web-designs-resources/excellent-free-and-premium-wordpress-themes/
i second the morning after!
I nominate the Essence iTheme which is a very professional configurable theme that can be easily used for businesses not just blogs.
Here is a simple site I created for a small construction company client – Wheeler Brother’s Construction if you want to see it in action.
There are 2 themes that I have slected to experminet with until I make my final selection, that I really enjoy.
Fallseason and
Cutline 3 col-split.
While I am not a programmer I found it easy to make a few changes to the fallseason theme.
http://nielsp.ca/cameraworld/
The other theme Cutline 3 col look very rich in features but it is a little harder to figure to make a few changes.
http://nielsp.ca/lightandcolour/
These are both experimental as I try to figure out which will be the new theme once I have tweaked it correctly and then migrate it up a level in url address.
Niels Henriksen
Interesting question. I am actually considering moving from Drupal to WordPress, so this will be helpful. My overall preference is for three-column themes. I really like the magazine layouts quite a bit, but I think that they can be too impersonal for more personal/friendly blogs. I think that Smashing Magazine has found a good assortment:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
In this list I like Gridline Lite pretty well.
I use a modified (read: changed beyond all recognition and original coding…) version of “compact” from Themes Lab.
http://www.themelab.com/free-wordpress-themes/
I use it basically as a bare-bones template for creating my own.
As a designer and a marketer I usually find both sides competing when it comes to WordPress templates.
The design side says make it “Pretty” & Memorable
The marketing side says make it functional, forget creativity, get those clicks/sales/etc.
That said, I waded through a ton of crappy themes before finally settling on two choices:
Prosense & Cutline
As you can see from my janky (1st) blog http://www.w00tpwnage.com where I run a lot of my usability experiments, I went with prosense. (After I screwed around with placement and slapped on my own logo naturally.)
It is a really great theme if you want to customize & get a HIGH click through rate. It’s also SEO friendly, but I haven’t really done much with that.
However, I think in the long run Prosense is too generic and simplistic.
Other “templates” I like:
problogger.net
ShoeMoney has a nice set up
weblogtoolscollection.com/
dailyblogtips.com
Revolution
StudioPress
It really just comes down to a combination of a few things:
1. A nice strong logo that will fit nicely in the “not too big” header area (mind the fold) with horizontal page navigation
2. An overall clean look with quick load time (Clean code, optimized graphics, SEO friendly, Ad/Adsense friendly, etc.)
3. The proper mix of sidebar(s) to content with appealing sign-up/email/rss and search area near the top
4. Flexibility. If you’re the next Darren or John the look of your blog is going to have to go through several major overhauls. Not to mention you’re going to want to customize a bit to make the template “your own”
Currently I’m experimenting with magazine style WordPress Themes & Horizontal sidebars.
That’s about it.
I used Options by Justin Adlock, http://justintadlock.com/archives/2008/02/24/options-wordpress-theme on my site http://thegreenroutine.net.
I haven’t hired an artist yet to skin my site, but once Options is skinned it looks really sweet. It’s free, and has more back-end features then any other free theme I downloaded.
Here is a post showing the best skinned versions of the theme:
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2008/06/15/showcasing-another-10-great-options-theme-mods
I like the iTheme template which you can find here: http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/wp-themes/
interesting that you mention this, because i was hunting for the right wp theme. i just revamped my blog with NT- Pink flowers by Awinsjclarke.
http://www.vanae.com
i like the theme because:
– great skin (clean & vibrant colors)
– customizable
I’m a big fan of templates that are very clean and use white space well, I think the default wordpress template is HORRIBLE and REALLY needs to be updated to today standards. – http://www.carsforgirls.com
I think John Chow’s Theme is awesome. Omni theme is pretty good as well. http://www.omnitheme.com/ I think I may pay to use this theme someday. Right now I use a modified version of prosense but I think it doesn’t look that professional.
My site is based on the simplistic designs of Sadish.
Simple, clean, and easy to edit. I agree also the Revolution theme is nice, but I am starting to see it pop up all over.
Like Darren said, it really depends on what you’re doing.
It’s already been mentioned above, but I use “News” by http://www.Quommunication.com for my site: http://www.AppleSlut.com
The template is extremely fast loading (due to some fancy php code) and it looks fantastic- IF you can stick with the formatting. I only blog a few times a week so it’s perfect to have the “featured” post at the top.
A couple of “quirks” I’ve learned about this theme:
+ looks best with a 280×280 pixel image in the featured post
+ Need to write about 3 paragraphs before using the “more” link in the featured post – to fill up the space.
If I follow those two tips, it always looks great!
All templates have these types of “quirks” about them. Instead of simply picking the best looking template, think about it’s “quirks” and decide if you’re willing to fit your posts into the style of the template.
Very simple but i like http://www.bttfblog.com wordpress layout.
My favorite theme is custom made. TylerCruz
I always like the content to be in the middle while there are 2 sidebars. 1 on each side. Nice amount of ad space.
I’m using Wucoco by Mike Lococo for one blog, Prosumer by Nuradin Jauhari for another, and Seashore by Sadish Bala for yet another, all free and obtained on the WordPress Theme Viewer. These all have been modified some and are due for more modifications soon. I use WordPress.org software on a hosted server.
All are 3-column themes with a banner picture at the top. They are simple, clean and modifiable. These characteristics fit into the nature of my blogs well. I like 3-column designs because you can put ads and navigation above the fold.
One thing to watch out for when searching for WordPress themes: They are not all suitable for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org, particularly the navigation tabs. Since the two WordPress’ have different file setups, those themes that have hardcoded and difficult-to-change file access conventions are not usable for both without a lot of work.
I use Ads Theme from bloging-secret.com. It’s a free wordpress templete. Three columns layout. Simple and clean cut. Netural color schelude. I use it as a notenook or journal for a home maintenance contractor [my job]. So far, I’m happy with the templete.
I’m using a heavily modified Suhweet by Solostream. I downloaded it back before it went premium, and have been perfectly happy with it.
Anything by Justin Tadlock is great (several already mentioned above). As is Darren Hoyt’s work.
I also subscribe to Themelab. They are turning out theme after theme. Most of theirs are ports of open source designs to WordPress, but if you want a combination static site with a blog, you will probably find the combo there.
There are some excellent themes out there now, and I must confess, I’m a theme junkie. I have multiple WordPress installs on my local machine, just to check out the latest themes. If I didn’t do that, I’d be starting a new blog every day just to take advantage of all the wonderful designs that have come out.