In a separate post, we provide a comprehensive overview of WordPress Themes.
If you would like to learn more about themes and what makes WordPress themes unique, then make sure to check out this post: A Basic Guide To WP Themes
In this article, we will show you where you can browse hundreds of free and paid themes for your website or blog. You will also learn about the different types of WP theme resources and get tips on how to make sure that you get the right themes for your needs and avoid dealing with problems like lack of product support and poor coding.
As explained in another post, a theme is a special type of web template used on WordPress-driven sites and designed specifically with WordPress in mind.
Many skilled website designers and website design houses create themes for WordPress. Consequently, members of the WordPress community can access thousands of professional WordPress themes covering an extensive range of applications.
Finding Great Themes For WordPress: Too Much Information … Where To Begin?
If you were to launch Google and search for the following:
- best free WP themes
- WordPress themes free
- best free WordPress themes for blogs (enter whatever your business, search topic or blog is about)
Chances are that you are going to get an overwhelming amount of disorganized information to sort through in the search listings.
So, to help you save time and make things easier, we’ll just cut through the clutter and make the process of finding great WP themes really simple.
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org Themes
Before we get started, you should know that WordPress offers users both a hosted and a self-hosted version. We’ll explain these differences in a separate article. In this post, let’s just be covering themes for the self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org) in this article, as these give you more freedom, more options and more control over the design aspects of your blog.
Free vs Paid WP Themes
Next, it’s useful to know that there are both Free and Paid themes made available. Free themes are generally distributed as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they will be listed as Premium (paid) themes.
WordPress Theme Marketplaces Commercial And Independent Theme Vendors
There are two types of places where you can find themes. The first is in theme marketplaces and WordPress theme directories. The second place are the commercial and independent theme developers.
Theme marketplaces and WP theme directories are large aggregators of themes. WordPress theme developers (both commercial and independent) list their themes (both free and paid) in the marketplace or directory and customers search for these just like they would if they were shopping for apps on an app store or software directory.
Some of the larger theme stores don’t just sell WordPress themes. They can also sell WordPress plugins and templates for other web applications (e.g. Joomla, Drupal, etc.)
Commercial and independent theme agencies can also create both free and premium themes, and can vary in size, from an individual developer or a small team of theme designer, to large web and theme development companies.
As you will see, many commercial or independent theme developers sell their themes exclusively on their own web sites, but some will also list their themes in marketplaces and directories, or even create a free or “lite” version of their themes for free WP theme directories .
Let’s now show you where to find the best themes for your website.
Where To Find WordPress Themes For Your Website Or Blog
WordPress.org
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
The official WordPress.org theme directory is the largest and best place to find free WP themes. In fact, it’s probably the only free directory you should use when looking for free WP themes. The reason why, is because –as many free software users have discovered– downloading free software, add-ons, apps, templates or themes from untrustworthy places can put your computer, digital presence and even your entire business at risk.
The WordPress.org directory is not only a trustworthy and reputable place to download themes for your site, but it also uses a team of theme reviewers to review and make sure that each theme uploaded to the directory meets high quality and security standards.
To browse thousands of great-looking FREE WordPress themes from the official WordPress Themes Directory, go here:
http://www.wordpress.org/extend/themes
You Don’t Even Have To Leave Your WP Dashboard
Useful Tip: You can easily browse through every theme in the WordPress.org theme directory and not only find what you are looking for, but also easily install and start using it directly from within your WordPress dashboard with just a couple of mouse clicks.
Use WP Theme Filtering
WordPress provides a filtering function inside the dashboard area that lets you narrow down your search for themes based on criteria like Colours, Layout and Features …
This makes it easy to find what you are looking for. For example, you could search for themes with predominantly orange colour design, with a two-column layout and a full-width template, or themes that support custom menus, etc.
Note: in another article where we discuss the importance of using “responsive” themes, we explained how responsive themes allow your site to be viewed correctly on all devices (e.g. laptops, tablets and smartphones) …
You should use responsive themes, and the WordPress theme filter lets you search across its entire database of free themes …
… and find only WP themes that use “responsive” design standards …
Pros & Cons Of Using Free Themes
The obvious “pro” to using free WP themes is that it costs you nothing to download and use the theme on your site. An added plus, is that many free themes are professionally designed and come with a number of customizable settings, giving you great flexibility and choice in how you configure all of its various layout elements.
The downside of using free WordPress themes are that your themes may not get updated as often with new features and bug fixes, and you shouldn’t expect the developer to provide dedicated support, especially if they are not getting paid. Many free themes will ask you for a donation to help cover their costs of providing support and updates, bug fixes, etc..
When downloading free themes, therefore, check to see when the theme was last updated. If it’s been more than a year since any updates were last made, then you should think twice about downloading it, as WordPress changes quite frequently and this can result in conflicts or errors with older code.
If you’re just getting started and your website or blog is still relatively new, there is nothing wrong with using a free theme until you have a better idea of the kind of site design that would work best for your site before spending money on paid themes or even on custom theme design. Who knows, the theme you downloaded for free could be exactly what works for you and for your business.
Now that we’ve seen how to find free WordPress themes in the WordPress.org theme directory and ways to filter your search for themes that meet specific requirements, it’s time to turn our attention to finding paid themes.
Paid Themes
If you are looking for themes with stunning design, or professional quality yet highly affordable WordPress web design themes with a distinctive look, unique customizable options and great support, you can search through the WordPress theme galleries of the “Premium” theme design agencies listed below:
Theme Marketplaces
ThemeForest
ThemeForest is one of the biggest and well known WordPress theme marketplaces online.
ThemeForest allows many professional WordPress theme designers to showcase their designs through their online marketplace. There are well over 17,000 premium WordPress themes listed (you can find great themes from as little as $3) …
(click on the above images to view more ThemeForest themes)
If you visit the ThemeForest theme marketplace, you will be able to browse for specific themes in various categories, such as:
- Blog/Magazine – themes for bloggers and green living blogs, etc.
- Corporate – themes suitable for legal sites and advertising purposes.
- Creative – themes for design, cv and resume writing, etc.
- Directory Listings – themes suitable for sites about travel, dining out & restaurants, community resources, etc.
- eCommerce – themes for e-commerce, membership sites, etc.
- Education – themes that suit sites related to teaching, etc.
- Entertainment – themes for music and bands blogs, restaurants, etc.
- Mobile – e.g. retina-ready themes.
- NonProfit – themes for nonprofit organizations, churches, etc.
- Real Estate – themes for real estate and real estate listings (e.g. home sales, etc.)
- Retail – themes for stores, trades or professionals (electricians, engineering, etc.)
- Technology – themes related to hosting, newsletters, etc.
- Wedding – e.g. themes for wedding sites and dating advice blogs
- Miscellaneous – themes suitable for writing or discussing environmental issues, green living sites or blogs … even themes you can use if your site is still under-construction!
When you purchase WordPress themes from ThemeForest, you will receive email notifications when a new update is available for your theme …
(ThemeForest sends you theme update notifications)
Browse thousands of great themes in the ThemeForest directory here:
Creative Market
(click on the above images to browse all Creative Market themes)
Creative Market is another leading WP theme directory where you can search through many quality premium WordPress themes from independent theme creators.
As stated on their website …
“Creative Market is a platform for handcrafted, mousemade design content from independent creatives around the world.”
Creative Market doesn’t just sell WP themes in its marketplace, but you can easily browse hundreds of themes for WordPress and narrow your search using theme categories using the site’s dropdown “Themes” menu …
Browse through hundreds of great WordPress themes crafted by independent WP theme designers in the Creative Market marketplace here:
Mojo Themes
(click on the above images to see more themes at Mojo)
Mojo is a marketplace for premium-quality WP themes where theme vendors are strongly encouraged to provide customers with lifetime support and upgrades.
According to their website …
“Mojo is a marketplace where anyone can find, rate and buy quality themes & templates in one trusted place.”
Like Envato and Creative Market, Mojo doesn’t focus exclusively on WordPress themes, but you can easily find themes for WordPress and search through their theme categories (e.g. Responsive or eCommerce themes and theme frameworks, etc.) by choosing the site’s dropdown “WordPress Themes” menu …
Visit the site to find great premium themes in the Mojo marketplace here:
Now that we have looked at WP theme aggregators, let’s look at commercial WordPress theme shops.
Commercial And Independent WordPress Theme Design Companies
SoloStream
SoloStream provides WordPress users with a selection of high quality themes and the option of accessing all themes through a WordPress theme membership.
(click on above images to view more SoloStream themes)
Woo Themes
Woo Themes creates functional WP themes that are very popular and highly sought after by website users and also offer a membership option that allows you access to all themes in their growing WP theme portfolio.
(click on the images above to see more themes from WooThemes)
StoreFront
StoreFront Themes specializes in creating e-commerce themes for WordPress. Their themes also integrate well with some of the most powerful e-commerce platforms and plugins available.
(click on the images above to browse all themes from StoreFront)
StudioPress
StudioPress provides WordPress themes based on a framework (called the “Genesis” framework) that lets users quickly and easily build a professional and search optimized WordPress website, and provides an auto-updating design architecture, turn-key site designs with beautiful frames for the content and unprecedented control of the framework.
Many website developers like the Genesis framework not only because it’s well-coded and well-supported (the development team at StudioPress keeps this framework frequently updated to reflect best practices for coding and to ensure that it is always compatible with the latest WordPress version, but because you can update themes built using the Genesis framework without losing any customizations you have made to your theme.
This is because themes built using the Genesis framework use something called “child themes,” which are like “skins” that sit on top of the framework and gives your site its unique design.
If this sounds too technical, there’s no need to feel concerned about it. StudioPress themes are very easy to work with, just like all other WordPress themes. The great thing about choosing StudioPress themes is that one low price allows you to receive unlimited support and updates, and you can install your themes on unlimited domains.
For more details, click here: StudioPress.
(click on the images above to see all themes from StudioPress)
Theme-Checking Tools
Here are a couple of useful WordPress theme-related tools worth knowing about:
What WordPress Theme Is That?
What WordPress Theme Is That? is a free WP theme and plugin-checking tool that lets you easily detect what WP theme a website uses.
This is a great resource if you have come across a WordPress site that you like and would like to know what theme is being used on the website.
Tip: If you don’t know if a site runs on WordPress or not, we have posted a a great tutorial that shows you how to tell if a web site is powered by WordPress: How Can I Check If My Site Was Built Using WordPress?
Using this tool is very simple. Just enter the site’s domain name into the field and click the search icon or hit “Enter.” The tool will then not only confirm whether or not a site is built using WordPress software, but it will also list the theme being used and list any plugins detected.
- To use this tool go here: What WordPress Theme Is That?
- To learn how to use this tool go here: Is My Web Site WordPress?
Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) – WordPress Plugin
We said this before and it’s worth repeating again: If you decide to use FREE themes for your WordPress site, we highly recommend sticking with the approved themes listed in the official WordPress theme repository.
A method that is commonly used by a number of hackers and syndicates that engage in cyber criminal activities is to put up websites offering “Free” WP themes all over the web and then distribute themes with malicious code embedded in their files. In fact, some of these sites even display on Google for key phrases like “free WordPress themes“, “best free themes for WordPress”” etc. It’s best, therefore, to only download free WP themes from the official WordPress directory, or use well-known and reputable theme vendors.
If you are concerned about whether a WordPress theme installed on your site could be infected with potentially malicious or unwanted code, you can use a free WordPress plugin like Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) to scan your WP theme files. The TAC plugin searches the source files of every them you have installed on your site for signs of malicious code and presents you with a report with the results …
(TAC Report Page – Source: Plugin)
I hope that you have found the information on how to find the best free and premium responsive themes for WordPress useful.
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***