About WordPress Themes And What Free WordPress Themes To Use
Briefly about WordPress
Wordpress is the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world and is currently the most popular CMS in use. Since WordPress is used by millions of website all over the internet, and seen by tens of milions, uniqueness in design is a tough task.
In WordPress, the looks of your site is determined by the Theme you use. Changing your WordPress theme will have no effect on the content of your website (the posts, the comments, the pages) it will only change how these are displayed. So, if you are new to WordPress and want to test different themes, don’t worry – playing with themes will not ruin the content of your website!
WordPress Themes
I can put these into 3 main categories:
- Free WordPress Themes - these are themes developed by WordPress enthusiasts for fun, fame or to improve their coding skills. There are also a great amount of free WordPress themes developed by professionals and released for free as a way to promote their work/skils.
Usually these themes come with a link to its author in the footer, that I advice you too keep, in sign of respect for the person that created the theme you are freely using.The good about Free Themes:
They are FREE, of courseThe bad:
No support, sometimes lack of documentation, and probably you will find around the internet houndreds if not thouseds of websites looking exactly like yours. Themes are not updated on a regular basis. Customizing these themes may require good knowledge of HTML and PHP - Premium WordPress Themes - these are developed by professionals and you can have them for a fee. Depending on the licence type the fee my vary. A single licence (you can use the theme just on 1 website) may cost from $35 to $ 150. There are also vendors who offer their themes as part of a membership plan, so you can get the themes for less, but all the premium features (support, updates, etc) will cease if you cancel your membership.
The good about Premium Themes:
You get support, theme updates, the price may be reasonable, the theme is documented and most of the times you get a tutorial on how to set it up.
Customizing these kind of themes is rather easy since the majority comes with a theme options admin panel.
You can even get the source PSD file used for the design, and this way you may do serious customization of the design in order to render it unique.The bad:
Usually it requires much work to set up then a classic free theme; you can still find websites looking like your on the internet, but the number is much smaller compared to using a free theme. - Custom WordPress Themes
These themes are made on demand by WordPress professionals (freelancers or web design agencies). They can be rather expensive, from $200 to thousands of dollars, depending on your requirements.The good about Custom Themes:
Your website design will be 100% unique on the internet!
The theme can be updated anytime you want a new feature (be sure to arrange with your developer to provide you basic updates free of charge for a period of time)The bad:
They are expensive, documentation may not be complete, if you stop working with the original developer customization or troubleshooting may be difficult and expensive.
What type of WordPress Theme to choose?
At this point is clear that Premium WordPress Themes are the best solution if you are serious about your website.
My favorite source for premium themes is ThemeForest.net – here you can get great themes for $20 – $50, themes that are very easy to customize.
But what if you have $0 budget, or don’t want to invest in a WordPress Theme at this moment?
AllTuts – Free Premium WordPress Theme from Site 5 – see demo
Well, as I said in the beginning, there are professional WordPress developers that offer free themes in order to promote themselfs. Most of the time they will only ask you for your email address or to create a free acount with them in order to let you download a theme.
Here is a list of my favorites:
WooThemes: http://www.woothemes.com/themes/free/
Site 5: http://www.site5.com/wordpress-themes/
WPZoom: http://www.wpzoom.com/free-wordpress-themes/
FearlessFlyer: http://fearlessflyer.com/themes/
WPBusinessBundle: http://wpbusinessbundle.com/themes/
DynamicWP: http://www.dynamicwp.net/category/free-themes/
GraphPaperPress: http://graphpaperpress.com
WPShower: http://wpshower.com/themes/
SmashingMagazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/wordpress/
Templatic: http://templatic.com/freethemes/
Theme Junkie: http://www.theme-junkie.com/theme-types/free-themes/
Do you know any other good resources for free premium themes? If so, please leave a comment bellow!
About the Author
Hi Sorina,
You have some great resources here, just what I needed, free themes!
I picked up Meeta from WPZOOM, installed on my blog but how do I change the image on top? Can you help me?
Erwin,
In your WordPress admin area you just need to go to Appearance (left side menu bar) ->Header.
There you will find options to upload your own image – it must be 1060px × 326px in order to display exactly as it is.
That was easy! THANKS ALOT!
There is a problem on your website – I subscribed to the comments but didn’t receive anything. Not is spam folder either.
Oh no… sorry about that… you are right, the comments subscription page is not working, I’ll try to fix that asp
Hey Sorina,
Wow… those are definitely very cool free themes.
There’s a company that has a LOT of free themes and they are very, very high quality but I can’t recall the company right now.
I’ll just check out a friend’s site that I’m 100% sure he’s using that company and will let you know.
Sergio
PS. Your site looks beautiful!
That would be great Sergio, let me know and I’ll add it to the list!
PS: Thank you so much!
Sorina, this was the company that I was talking about.
Has some OK themes but there’s a few gems here and there.
http://www.fabthemes.com/
Hope it passes the quality standard!
Sergio
PS. There are some links that are not working though.
Sergio Felix recently posted..Who The Heck Is Sergio Felix?
Hi Sergio, the themes on this website look great, but I can’t put the website in my category, since from what I see it collects free themes from many sources.
These kind of websites should probably have a category of their own, “Themes Gallery Websites” or something like that.
I will update the post with this soon.
Oh I didn’t know that, thanks for the feedback though!
Sergio
Sergio Felix recently posted..Lead Generation With Opt-In Email Marketing And Aweber
Hi Sorina,
You have a very informative site. I love working with new themes in wordpress but must admit that with every new theme comes a bit of a learning curve. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure it all out.
Thanks for sharing this information.
Shawn
You are right Shawn, every theme has is settings, tricks to be learned. But as you gain experience with them the learning curve becomes smaller.
That’s why I recommend starting with these Professional Free Themes, because they are complex, and prepare you for the “real deal” even if setting up takes a little effort.
Hi Sorina
I use flexibility theme which is around £30 I think. I have heard that many free themes put hidden links in the footer which is a dirty trick. I shall check out the ones you recommend.
The theme you are using is really nice and professional looking. It is from the forest theme site?
Kay
Kay Franklin recently posted..I Should Be So Lucky!
Key, there are developers who encrypt their links in the footer of free themes, so that way you can’t remove it easily.
From that tactic started another one, to put many unrelated links there, to adult and gambling sites (these are the kind of sites that practice a lot of blackhat SEO techniques)
And since linking to a bad site may hurt your own rankings in Google, I definitely not recommend using themes that encrypt their links in the footer. Another reason is you never know what’s in the encrypted code – it may even contain malicious stuff like trojans or adware.
And to answer your question yes, the theme I use is from http://themeforest.net/ it’s called SwagMag and a standard license costed $50
Hello Sorina,
You are sooo right about some of those “Free” themes. Being stupid one day (actually more than one day!) I had used one of those themes.
I have a shared reseller account and have several websites on it. All good hosting companies have some protections in place to prevent a problem.
After I installed the theme I was locked out by my hosting company! After contacting support they told me the theme I installed had some malicious code in it and it got blocked.
I have managed to “decrypt” some of those footer files and was able to see the code. Not nice. In fact when you try and remove links there is other code that renders your theme inoperable.
Not worth it. Just be careful when picking free themes. Look at the footer files with your HTML editor first!
Rob H
Rob H recently posted..Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge
Hey Sorina,
Love this article, great info, especially for newbies like me. Thanks and keep up the good work…
Thanks Munir, I’m glad you find it helpful!
Hi Sorina,
Really good looking blog you’ve got going here and some very nice content your delivering also.
I love the style an layout that you’ve achieved very contemporary and if you get any useful free tools or plugins send them my way.
Well done for taking action and good luck in the QSC
Regards
Phil
Phil recently posted..How to Have Your Image Appear in a Blog Comment
Thanks Phil!
Some free cool stuff will be exposed soon on this website, keep on following it.
I like minimalistic approach to themes, so I have the Standard theme. I don’t remember how much it cost, something like 30 € It has been enough for my needs. If you can do even the rudimentary editing yourself I think though that many free themes are plenty good enough for most people – after all, it’s more about the content. As long as it’s functional, that’s the most important thing.
Jarkko Helenius recently posted..Achieving Consistency
I love the minimalist approach of your theme. A website with a clean theme can become awesome if you simply use great images in your posts.
But I’ve also seen great content ruined by a bad choice in theme design or ugly graphics that don’t fit to the overall aspect of the website.
I guess the keep it simple approach is the best in case design resources are limited.
Sorina, your site is really lovely. The contrasting colors give your site so much eye appeal but without being harsh. And I really enjoyed your post about the different types of WordPress themes; very helpful!
Looking forward to more of your posts about software and plugsin.
All the best in the challenge!
Linda
Thank you Linda!
Dean’s Challenge distracted me from the original idea of this website, but don’t regret it, is awesome so far!
I’ll be posting my reviews soon!
That’s going to make thigns a lot easier from here on out.
I’ve always been using free themes and then customized it.
I used to be themes addict where I kept looking for new themes and changing it… hehehe.
I was very tempted to click the list of link you provide. Noooooo!!!!!! hehehehe.
No more changing theme!
After awhile I realize the simpler the better
Chetz
Chetz Togom recently posted..Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet
Don’t do it Chetz, your current theme looks great! I love very visual themes, that focus on the beauty of images!
Hi Sorina,
When I noticed an ad for car insurance showing up in the footer of the free version of Flexibility we usually use, my computer-whiz partner (and son) said anyone who’s worried about their theme embedding or encrypting malicious links can activate the theme, go to their own site and check the source code (In most browsers that’s View:source or right click view source).
Here’s what else I learned:
To see what sites are linked,just skim through the code looking for urls and if you don’t recognize them then try going to it and see what it is. If it’s spam or porn or something you will need to change your theme. As you say, the free version usually has just an ordinary ad (like the insurance) and the easy way to get rid of it is to upgrade to the paid version.
Being a total non-techie, I didn’t know any of this, but was relieved to find out you do have control over the bad stuff that could be ‘hidden’ on your site.
Thanks so much for the info about free themes – pretty happy with Flexibility, but it’s good to know about other options…
Jackie
Jackie recently posted..A Note About Tools, Training & Help
Jackie, not always is that easy to remove the strange links from themes.
Ok, I don’t mind if the designer/developer of a theme asks to keep a link to his website in the footer, in order to give him credit for his work. I think this is normal. And removing that link will be unethical.
But if the designer decides to put in the themes spammy links to casinos, porn, warezz sites, etc – this is not acceptable. Using one of these themes can give your website NO chance to rank in Google (see latest Penguin update)
I was using free themes in the past but not now. Since I moved to premium themes I read an article on WPMU blog and that was worth reading: all about free themes and malicious code and how to check a WordPress theme for hidden code.
Bottom line: as you say, don’t use free themes from questionable sources.
zimbrul recently posted..Half Day Drifting Experience at Santa Pod Raceway with Driftracing UK
Thanks for your comment. I too have the WPMU blog in my favorites, great resource for anyone working with WordPress!