Template Row

89 Free WordPress Themes

admin — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:50:04 +0000

For those who have been following Smashing Magazine’s regular features of free WordPress themes, you’ll be happy to note that a new post (July 5) by Paul Andrew of Speckyboy lists a number of great (and not so great) themes for 2011.

The post, “Free WordPress Themes: 2011 Edition“, is divided into 10 sections, depending on the main feature or overall layout of the themes. Based on our count, there are 89 themes grouped as follows:

* Portfolios, Galleries And Showcases (10)
* Business And Corporate Websites (7)
* Minimalist Themes (26)
* Blogs And Personal Websites (13)
* Shopping/Ecommerce Theme (1)
* Mobile-Optimized Themes (2)
* Magazine-Layout Themes (16)
* “Coming Soon” And Landing Pages (5)
* Theme Development Frameworks And Bare-Bone Themes (8)

plus a ticket tracking theme (1)

The themes cited in the post have previously been featured by Smashing Magazine and we have tested some of them in our WordPress sites like this site using Journal Crunch, Posters Great and Small using Imbalance, and emanila surveys using Suburbia. Some of the themes mentioned in the post are featured here too.

Why not head over to Smashing Magazine and download the themes that you fancy.

Journal Crunch, A Gallery and Portfolio Theme

admin — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:16:23 +0000

Journal Crunch is a gallery and portfolio theme with all of the features one would expect from a premium theme: easy set-up via the options page, plenty of shortcodes, built-in pagination, Twitter widgets, AJAX contact form, JQuery PrettyPhoto Lightbox, Dropdown Menu, and many more.

NOTE: We are currently using Journal Crunch.

Learn more

Snapwire Free Premium Theme – It’s a Snap!

admin — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:08:46 +0000

This is only free theme available (so far!) at Gabfire.

What is the theme about? Here are Gabfire’s blurb:

* Built on HTML5

* SnapWire is a semantic, HTML5 theme built using the latest coding standards.

* Advertisement Module – Category Based Ads

* The theme includes an advertisement module along with a “category based ad” option. With this module you can display different ads for each categories.
Fully Controllable Sliders

* With the various options in the theme control panel, you can disable sliders, enable/disable auto rotation, set number of posts and many other options.

* Media Gallery Template

On the theme control panel, define which category or categories to be displayed in the media gallery mode using our nicely designed media gallery template.

Have we tested Gabfire’s free Snapwire theme? Yes. Head over to a client’s Media Centre and see what we mean. It’s a snap!

WordPress themes for food and drink sites

admin — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:58:48 +0000

If you are looking for a ready-to-use free WordPress theme for your food recipes or drink blog, you may be in for a big disappointment. Whilst we have seen some templates supposedly for food or drink blog, they do not have the functionality of a true food or drink site. They may be displaying food or drink images on their headers, but that is basically what they have.

That is what we experienced when we moved our food site to the WordPress platform about two years ago. It was a struggle looking for a food-themed template.

Updates: We have some very good themes lately at Gabfire – see Restorante theme and Woothemes – see Delicious Magazine theme. We have not tested them yet, but you can head over to those sites and let us know how they fare? NOTE: The themes are not free, but knowing Gabfire and Woothemes, they should be worth the dollars you pay.

A simple photography site

admin — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:24:44 +0000

If what you’re after is a simple and easy to run photography site, then the Birdsite by sysbird is just the right theme for you. We ran a very quick test in our sister website, ShowCasePage.net, and we quite like it. It’s really very easy to use. No need for custom fields and other similar complicated settings. All you need to is to point to an image (after uploading) as being a “featured image” and presto!, you’re done.

An image representation with sizes dependent on your Media settings will display on your index top page.

Another WordPress theme for photoblogging

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:08:18 +0000

Just when we thought we have enough of the best themes in photoblogging, here comes another one. It’s called Sucha by Dannci.

The minute we saw it, we were so impressed that we said, let’s give it a spin.

It’s now adorning our client’s photoblog.

See it in action.

Portfolio and Business WordPress Themes

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:30:50 +0000

If your website is running on WordPress, and what you want is the website look of the past (perhaps, the looks of 5 years ago!), I can recommend you two themes, the Simplefolio by Omar Corrales and the Berita theme by Bizzartic.

Instead of the usual blog style, these two themes can be customised and give your site a corporate look. They are minimal, but effective in directing your readers’ attention to your services.

Simple Folio // Demo

Berita // Demo

Isotherm News, a WordPress news-magazine theme with style

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:52:07 +0000

It seems that our search for a WordPress theme to skin a client’s website, ONLY IN THE PHILIPPINES website is over (at least for now).

What we were looking for was a news magazine WordPress theme which could easily and adequately display the photos, videos and short stories about people, places, events and anything that are uniquely Philippines.

We tried a blog style theme in the past using some of the best WP themes around, but every time we visit our client’s site homepage, we thought something was missing. The themes did not reflect the character of the website which we wanted to project.

Last week, we found a Bizzartic’s WordPress theme called Isotherm News, free WP theme we saw at Smashing Magazine.

Upon activation, the theme definitely looked daunting. But with a little bit of patience, with trial and error setting and re-setting the theme’s options (and there’s quite a bit), we thought customizing it would not be that difficult. We would probably be sticking with the theme for awhile and explore further what it can offer.

With the number of options the theme has, we are just probably more than half-way the finish line. But we’ll get there.

Thanks to Bizzartic for sharing this theme with the community.

*** ONLY IN THE PHILIPPINES is located here.

5 WordPress themes for photoblogging (a case study)

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:03:54 +0000

We had a client recently who wanted us to quickly set up a WordPress blog where he can share his photos. Because of the time frame given us, we quickly checked the WP extend directory and see what themes we can immediately install for immediate use after very little customization.

We found 32 themes under “photoblogging” themes of which we chose two for testing, Ocular Professor and Autofocus. We also searched the archives of Smashing Magazine and found three additional themes for testing. These are PhotoMadness, Snapshot, and iQ.

After testing all five, it was a toss-up between Autofocus and Ocular Professor. At the end, our client decided in favor of Ocular Professor simply because the theme displays an easy to use and clean look.

Here is the result ~ IN PHOTOS ~ customized to include a very simple header logo and a YAPB plugin.

IN PHOTOS INFO (header)

IN PHOTOS INFO (footer)