WordPress.Org is amazing open source blogging software. Because it’s open source, it’s free to install. The fact that it’s open source has also led to the creation of thousands of free WordPress.Org plugins and themes. To make sense of the chaotic world of free WordPress themes, I’ve aggregated what I believe to be the top 10 places on the web to locate free WordPress themes. Do you have a favorite I haven’t included?
- WordPress.Org’s Free Themes Directory — The behemoth of themes, at the time this post was written, WordPress.Org had over 1,300 free themes. That’s a whole lot to choose from.
- FreeWordpressThemes.com — This is a great resource for free themes with hundreds to choose from. Go to the “top rated” tab for quick browsing.
- WpRex.com — These themes are well-categorized by their most important attributes. You can easily isolate just the themes that have one column, two columns, four columns, etc. You can also filter the themes by other design attributes like rounded corners.
- WordPressThemesBase.com — This site does two things particularly well: It makes it possible to find the most downloaded themes, which is a great way to cut through the huge array of free themes available online. It also allows you to sort by categories. Whereas other sites do a great job of allowing you to sort by themes’ design attributes like rounded corners, this website allows you to search for thematic elements like “restaurant” or “computer” imagery.
- FreeWpBlogThemes.com — This free WordPress themes website has one of the longest lists of categories of any of the sites on this list. It even features some really unique categories like “125×125 Ads Ready.”
- SmashingMagazine.com — This isn’t a website devoted exclusively to free WordPress themes. Instead, it’s a wonderful blog post by SmashingMagazine’s Paul Andrew. It lists 100 free high quality WordPress themes.
- Themes2Wp.com — It’s not the prettiest site ever, but with +800,000 WordPress theme downloads, it is functional. They have a lot to choose from and even provide a great features summary for each theme in their database.
- Themes.Rock-Kitty.net — I really like Rock Kitty because it’s easy to navigate through their massive database. You can sort by most popular, by design attributes including color and by a number of other ways.
- WpExplorer.com — WpExplorer.com has an extensive page of free WordPress themes. What’s interesting about this site is that it lists a number of theme categories that aren’t directly related to blogging. For instance, it has a category for eCommerce themes. While many regard WordPress as blogging software, it is an extremely flexible content management system (CMS) and this free WordPress themes page allows you to explore some of its non-blogging applications.
- FreeWpThemes.net — This site (at the time this post was written) contained +300 free WordPress themes. What’s interesting about this site is not only the sizable quantity of free themes to choose from, but the fact that many of them were previously free CSS templates that the owner of the site converted into WordPress themes. The owner is offering them up for free. According to the creator of FreeWpThemes.net, all of them contain only royalty-free stock images.
Good post Randall
I specially like the ones at SmashingMagazine.com, even if they weren’t free, I would pay for them!
great collection i tried many themes but always liked simple themes i even tried thesis them and i didn’t like it. i prefer simple free themes.
thanks for nice post
Few days back, I discovered wprex and have become a great fan of all themes developed by them. Nice to see Wprex added to the list. Will check out remaining sites too. Great list. Thanks.
smashingmagazine has great lists… I’d strongly recommend just buying a premium theme… they are so cheap and for sure SEO optimized. my two cents….