really help the visitor navigate the site
enough content to fill it. Hopefully in the near future they'll put in the extra work to make this theme responsive.
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Blue Bubble
Download and demo: www.flexible7.com/
bluebubble-wordpress-theme Category: Blog, Portfolio Responsive: No
This theme uses the left-hand sidebar well; we like the navigation alongside the blog posts. One thing to be aware of is the use of featured images. If not every one of your posts comes with a featured image you may lose the effect of the proportionate
and balanced layout. If you're a web designer you should be able to convert this free WordPress theme to a responsive layout relatively easily.
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Big Square
Download and demo: wordspop.com/themes/big-square
Category: Photography, portfolio Responsive: No
This free WordPress theme gives you the feeling you're reading about a painting hanging on the wall at your local contemporary art museum. It
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designates a lot of space to the image or photograph so if you're trying to showcase your work you Big Square will do nicely for you.
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EBUY
Download and demo: www.freethemeswp.org/
wp-ebuy
Category: Ecommerce Responsive: No
It's only a matter of time before WordPress is seen as a viable option for ecommerce sites of all types.
Free WordPress themes like EBUY continue to push the envelope and get us ever closer to that goal. This theme is well laid out and offers a great deal of features to help you share and sell your products.
Busby is a really nice free theme. Its use of bold colours and well planned fonts makes it stand out.
We love the styling and emphasis on post dates.
However, if you aren't posting often, a proud and boldly stated date may make your theme look stale and outdated. Frequent bloggers looking to keep visitors on their site for long periods of time will benefit from this theme greatly.
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Blog-o-folio
Download and demo: www.noupe.com/freebie/
blog-o-folio-wordpress-theme-version-1-0.html
Category: Blog, portfolio Responsive: No
Saying that Blog-O-Folio uses bold contrasting colours would be an understatement. The layout is really nicely put together and the entire theme is very functional. The dedication of real estate to blog posts and sidebar make this free WordPress theme very blogger friendly.
Skeleton has a lot going for it. Firstly, it's very minimal so if you know what you're doing it will be very easy for you to layer your own flavour of style and colour on it. Secondly, it's responsive, so it's ready for any and all devices. The added bonus that it's BBPress ready just increases its value. Lots of widget and featured areas makes this a very versatile WordPress theme.
Shuttershot is another great free WordPress theme that lets the content speak for itself. If you have less than stellar photographs or graphics you may want to use a different theme, though. Allocating the entire homepage to a single image will pressure you to highlight your best work. Make sure your content can
support this really well-made theme before you move forward with it.
The aptly named Spectacular theme is really well designed and laid out and generally looks fantastic.
The colours are subtle but really help the visitor navigate the site. While this free WordPress theme does appear to be very blog-centric it would certainly be easy enough to convert this to a small business, event or product website. One thing to do with this theme is make sure that the logo or featured graphic at the top is designed to fit the theme. A black and lime green race car logo will not do this theme justice.
Sometimes "Plain Jane" themes such as this one – Meeta – get overlooked. However, themes like this are easily converted and modified to fit your site and content – so can be extremely useful. With two navigations, a featured graphic and a responsive layout, this free WordPress theme will act as a great foundation for your site or blog. However you will need to dedicate the time to customise it a bit.
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Showcase 40 free themes
What WPCoda does well is easy navigation of pages without moving off the homepage. All the pages in the tabbed navigation below the tagline are served to the visitor without reloading the page, functionality that is usually reserved for custom builds. We have to be honest, we're not really sold on the colour scheme of WP Coda, but that is easily adaptable to your needs.
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Splendio
Splendio has done a great job of balancing the featured content of the page with additional added value content. You want to promote the other pages and posts on your site (to increase traction and time on site) without taking away from the reason the visitor is there in the first place. This is a difficult task that the designers and developers of Splendio have done well. The details and colours really help to make this a great blog theme.
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Polar Media
Download and demo: bizzthemes.com/themes/
polarmedia Category: Blog, news
Responsive: No
We like the content used to demo PolarMedia because it speaks to exactly how this theme should be used. It's great for a blog featuring news and up-to-the-minute updates.
This free WordPress theme does a great job of showcasing content in a new format. Whether you're reporting on red carpet grand events or political disputes or international catastrophes, it will do you and your visitors proud.
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Zenith
Download and demo: devpress.com/
themes/zenith/
Category: Blog, Magazine Responsive: Yes
Zenith is a responsive theme with a rich, magazine-style layout that features space for large images. The theme has built-in support for Gravity Forms, and ships with multiple layout options.
Support for custom templates and menus also comes as part of the package.
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Sensitive
Download and demo: wordpress.org/
themes/sensitive
Category: Portfolio, website Responsive: Yes
Sensitive is a fully responsive theme built using Twitter’s Bootstrap framework with Metro Styled Accent. It ships with three different page templates, support for custom backgrounds and menus. It’s a great option if you’re looking for clean and modern, without a lot of fussy code.
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Strap Slider Lite
Download and demo: wordpress.org/
themes/sensitive
Category: Portfolio, website Responsive: Yes
Slider Lite is a clean, modern and responsive theme that showcases a large, full-width sliding panel at the top of the page. Each post featured within the slider supports an image and caption, as well as the content itself. As with some of the other themes featured here, Twitter’s Bootstrap is used to provide the functionality within the theme, making it easily extensible.
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vFlex
Download and demo: vibethemes.com/
vflex-free-responsive Category: Blog, portfolio Responsive: Yes
Designed specially with bloggers and designers in mind, vFlex is a stylish, free, responsive WordPress theme. Its main features include a built-in FlexSlider so you can simply select featured images and an integrated VibeOptions panel, which supports logo upload, import and export settings and many other features. vFlex's responsive layout also means the theme looks great on iPad, iPhones, and other devices.
Showcase 40 free themes
If you want to showcase images in all their glory, free WordPress theme Panoramica may be just what you're after. Its design heavily emphasises the use of images, with its appearance fully
customisable through an extensive options panel.
Panoramica also features a full-width slideshow on the homepage, perfect for grabbing prospective client's and employer's attention.
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Appliance
Download and demo: wordpress.org/
themes/appliance
Category: Blog, magazine, portfolio Responsive: Yes
Appliance is a super-clean and minimalist theme
that presents posts in a series of panels across the page instead of as a simple list. It's very code-light, making it quick to load, and has a pleasingly clean look that's ideal for magazine-style content where each post will feature a strong image.
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Noteworthy
Download and demo: wp-themes.com/
noteworthy/
Category: Magazine Responsive: Yes
Noteworthy is a bold theme that, according to its author, is modelled on the USA Today website. The colour scheme is modern and clean, while bordering on brash, but the stand-out feature of this theme is the showcase area for the most recent post.
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Origin
Download and demo: inspectelement.com/
wordpress-themes Category: Blog, website Responsive: Yes
Origin is a premium, fully-responsive WordPress blog theme with a minimal, clean design that enables visitors to focus on content. Origin lite is the only free version of this theme, which features
a fixed two-column layout, responsive gallery and custom widgets for categories and social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
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Folder
Download: luiszuno.com/blog/downloads/folder-wordpress-theme/
Category: Portfolio, website Responsive: Yes
Folder is a free WordPress theme with a slight retro feel to it. With a design dominated by images, this
responsive theme is perfect for displaying projects and products. Features include custom project posts and admin panel, five different widgets included (video, latest work, contact form, twitter feed, recent posts) and more.
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YAMINTH
Download: azmind.com/2012/03/04/free-wordpress-theme-yaminth/
Category: Portfolio, photography Responsive: No
There's no shortage of modern and minimal WordPress themes available online. But YAMINTH (Yet Another Minimal Theme) and its unusual image layout caught our eye. The free theme comes with light colours, dark footer, Google Web Fonts and jQuery fade in, fade out of images. It also has an options page for easy customisation and is free for use in both personal and commercial online projects.
With an unlimited selection of colour themes this theme would be appropriate for any blogger.
Another feature, which has been cropping up on some of the newer WordPress themes, is the Translation-ready abilities, reaching new audiences in a foreign languages. l
Words: Jesse Friedman, Aaron Kitney and Sam Hampton-Smith