10 wonderfully free WordPress themes
In my opinion, if you’re building a website around content, you can’t go wrong with the themes below. If you’re so inclined, a little extra design work can go a long way in making your website stand out. The list is order-less.
Photoria (WPZOOM)
Photoria is a nicely laid out photo centric theme with a very smooth and well designed image slider. The theme comes with an elegant footer and content pages are home to an excellent sidebar with social widgets.
Paragrams (Wpshower)
This is a lightweight theme built with grid design techniques. It includes a number of custom features, a drop-down menu and a bit of AJAX. A beautiful yet striking theme that any photo heavy website could take advantage of.
Grid Focus (5THIRTYONE)
Grid Focus is a nicely put together relatively transparent three column widget enabled theme.
Skeptical (WooThemes)
This is probably the theme that I’m most sceptical about (sorry!). But it’s built by WooThemes so it’s easy to use, quite vibrant and a bit different.
Vostok
Designed by Javier Cañada and coded by Rubén Lozano. Version 2.0 by Mark MacKay.
Homepage | Demo (Light) | Demo (Dark)
Vostok is a simple yet elegant theme that aims to achieve maximum legibility with minimum eye fatigue. According to the creator, code has been written with extreme care for web standards and accessibility.
Typebased (WooThemes)
Typebased is getting on a bit (released two and a half years ago), but it’s still a great option for a general blog. It’s easy on the eye, simple navigation and made by WooThemes.
Aperio Prototype (ThemeMeme)
This theme is again a little dated, but it uses spacing and images in an interesting way.
Esedra (NewWPThemes)
NewWPThemes have an obscene quantity of very similar WordPress themes (currently 365). Esedra is one of the nicer ones, like all their themes, it’s social and banner ad ready.
Easy Docs (Shaken and Stirred Web)
Easy Docs is designed to be a documentation tool, but it could be used as an online book. Essentially, you’re met with a table of contents, as you scroll past the table of contents a header will appear allowing you to navigate to other sections. A simple, yet elegant solution with lovely typography.
Spectacular (Smashing Magazine)
Spectacular is a designy theme with a few bells and whistles. The two column post structure (lower down) on the main page is quite pleasing, as is the navigation between posts.
