Where To Find The Best WordPress Themes

In an earlier post, we provide new WordPress users with a comprehensive overview of WordPress Themes.

If you would like to know more about WordPress themes and what makes themes so revolutionary in terms of web design, then go here to read the post: Understanding WP Themes – A Guide For Website Owners

In this blog post, we explain where to look for free and paid themes for your website or blog. You will also learn about the different types of WordPress theme resources and get tips on how to ensure that you get the right themes for your needs and avoid dealing with problems like lack of product support and poorly-coded themes.

As we’ve explained in our previously-mentioned article, a WordPress theme is a special type of web design template used on WordPress-driven sites and designed specifically with the WP content management system in mind.

Many website designers and website development houses create themes for WordPress. Consequently, WordPress users can access thousands of excellent themes covering a wide-range of uses.

Where To Find Great Responsive Themes For WordPress: Your Time-Saving Guide

Let’s say you were to launch Google and type something like the following:

• best WP themes
• best free WordPress themes
• best paid WordPress themes for blogs (or whatever your business, area of interest or blog is about)

Chances are that you are going to get an overwhelming amount of information to sort through in your search results.

So, to help you save time and make your life easier, let’s just cut through the clutter and make the process of finding great WP themes simple.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org Themes

Before we get started, you should know that WordPress offers both a hosted and a self-hosted version. We’ll cover these differences in a separate post. To keep things simple, let’s just cover 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 your web design.

Free vs Paid WP Themes

Next, it’s important to know that there are both Free and Paid WP themes made available. Free WP themes are generally distributed as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be made available to users as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.

Theme Marketplaces And Directories Commercial And Independent WordPress Theme Vendors

There are mostly two types of places where you can find WP themes. The first type of place is in theme marketplaces and theme directories. The second place are the commercial and independent theme vendors.

WordPress theme marketplaces and theme directories are large aggregators of themes. theme developers (both commercial and independent) list their themes (both free and paid) in the marketplace or directory and customers find these just like they would if they were shopping for apps on an app store or software directory.

Some of the larger marketplaces 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 shops typically will create both free and commercial themes, and can vary in size, from an individual theme designer or a small team of developer, to large web and theme design and development companies.

Many commercial or independent theme companies 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 directories .

Let’s now show you where to search for the best themes for your website.

Where To Find The Best Responsive Themes For Your Website Or Blog

WordPress.org

(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)

The official WordPress.org theme directory is the largest and best place to search for free WordPress themes. In fact, it’s probably the only free WordPress theme directory you should use when looking for free WP themes. The reason why, is because –as some free software users have discovered– downloading free software, add-ons, apps, templates or themes from untrustworthy places can place your computer, digital presence … even your entire business at risk.

The WordPress.org directory is not only a trustworthy and reputable place to download themes for your WordPress site, but it also uses a theme review team to review and ensure that each theme in the directory meets their quality and security standards.

To browse thousands of excellent FREE WordPress themes from the official 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 directory and not only find a great theme for your website or blog, but also easily install and start using it directly from within your WordPress admin panel with only a couple of 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 a blue color design, with a 4-column layout and a full-width template, or themes that support custom menus, etc.

Note: in another article where we discuss the importance of choosing “responsive” themes, we explained how responsive themes allow your site to be viewed correctly on all devices (e.g. the PCs, smartphones and tablets used by visitors to browse your site) …

You should use responsive themes, and the WordPress theme filter lets you do just that …

… and display only WP themes that use “responsive” design standards …

Pros & Cons Of Using Free Themes

The obvious “pro” to using free WordPress themes is that it’s free to download and use the theme on your site. An added plus, is that many free themes are professionally designed and provide a number of built-in customizable features, giving you great flexibility and choice in how you configure all of its various layout elements.

The downside to using free WP themes are that your themes may not get updated as often with new features and bug fixes, and you shouldn’t expect the theme developer to provide urgent support, especially if they are not getting paid. Most freely distributed themes will ask you for a donation to help cover costs of providing support.

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 made, then you should think carefully about using it, as WordPress is frequently updated and new features can result in conflicts or errors with older code.

If you’re just getting started and your website or blog is still quite new, it’s a good idea to start with a free theme until you have a better idea of the kind of site design that would work best for your site before spending any money on premium themes. Who knows, the free theme you’ve downloaded may just be the thing that works for your site and helps to convert your site visitors into customers.

Now that we’ve seen how to find free themes in the WordPress.org theme directory and how to filter your search for themes that meet specific criteria, let’s turn our attention to premium themes.

Paid WordPress Themes

If you are looking for themes with stunning web design, or professional quality yet highly affordable WordPress web design themes with a distinctive look, unique customizable options and ongoing support, you can search through the WordPress theme galleries of the “Premium” theme design agencies listed below:

WordPress Theme Directories

ThemeForest

ThemeForest is one of the largest and most popular WP theme directories online.

ThemeForest allows many professional WP theme designers to showcase their designs through their online marketplace. There are well over 15,000 premium WordPress themes to choose from (some starting from as little as $3) …

(click on the above images to browse all ThemeForest themes)

If you visit the ThemeForest theme directory, you will be able to browse for specific themes in various categories, such as:

• Blog/Magazine – themes for personal blogs and green living blogs, etc.
• Corporate – themes suitable for corporate sites or advertising purposes.
• Creative – themes for video galleries, galleries, etc.
• Directory Listings – themes ideal for sites about travel, classifieds, community resources, etc.
• eCommerce – themes for e-commerce, membership sites, etc.
• Education – themes that suit sites related to teaching, etc.
• Entertainment – themes for fashion blogs, cafes, etc.
• Mobile – e.g. responsive themes.
• NonProfit – themes for nonprofit organizations, charities, etc.
• Real Estate – themes for real estate and real estate listings (e.g. rentals, etc.)
• Retail – themes for stores, trades or professionals (electricians, engineering, etc.)
• Technology – themes related to technology, affiliate marketing, seo, product reviews, direct sales, etc.
• Wedding – e.g. themes for wedding sites and wedding advice blogs
• Miscellaneous – themes suitable for topics related to activism, parenting 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 emails you theme update notifications)

Browse lots of great themes in the ThemeForest marketplace here:

• ThemeForest

Creative Market

(click on the images above to view more Creative Market themes)

Creative Market is another leading WP theme marketplace where you can search through thousands of quality premium 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 go through all of their themes for WordPress and narrow your search using theme categories using their dropdown “Themes” menu …

Browse through hundreds of great themes crafted by independent WordPress theme developers in the Creative Market themes directory here:

• Creative Market

Mojo Themes

(click on the images above to see all themes at Mojo)

Mojo is a marketplace for premium 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 browse hundreds of themes for WordPress and search through their theme categories (e.g. Responsive or Photography themes and theme frameworks, etc.) by choosing the dropdown “WordPress Themes” menu …

Visit the site to find quality premium themes in the Mojo directory here:

• Mojo

Now that we have looked at WP theme marketplaces, let’s take a look at commercial and independent WordPress theme design companies.

Commercial And Independent WP Theme Developers

SoloStream

SoloStream provides WordPress users with a great selection of high quality premium themes and the option of accessing all themes through a WordPress theme membership.

(click on images above to browse all SoloStream themes)

Woo Themes

Woo Themes creates eye-catching themes and offers a membership option that allows members to access their entire theme collection.

(click on the images above to view all themes from WooThemes)

StoreFront

StoreFront Themes specializes in creating WordPress themes for e-commerce. StoreFront themes also integrate well with some of the most powerful e-commerce platforms and plugins available.

(click on the above images to browse all themes from StoreFront)

StudioPress

StudioPress develops WordPress themes based on a framework (called the “Genesis” framework) that allows users to quickly and easily build a professional and search optimized WordPress website, and provides a self-updating design architecture, turn-key site designs with beautiful frames for the content and unprecedented control of the framework.

Many website developers prefer using the Genesis framework not only because it’s well-coded and well-supported (the development team at StudioPress keeps this framework consistently updated to reflect best coding practices and to make sure that it always remains 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 StudioPress themes use something called “child themes,” which are like a paint job that sits on top of the framework and gives your site its unique look and feel.

If this all sounds too technical, there’s no need to feel concerned about it. StudioPress themes are easy to work with, just like all other WordPress themes. The great thing about choosing StudioPress themes is that one low price entitles 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 view all StudioPress themes)

Theme-Checking Tools

Here are a few more useful WP theme-related tools worth knowing about:

What WP Theme Is That? – WordPress Theme Checker

What WordPress Theme Is That? is a free WP theme and plugin-checking tool that lets you easily detect what WordPress theme a website or blog is using (including parent and child themes).

This is a great resource if you have come across a WordPress site that you like and would like to know what theme the website or blog is using.

Tip: If you don’t know if a site was built using WordPress or not, we have posted a a great tutorial that helps you tell whether or not a website was built using WordPress: Is It A WordPress Web Site?

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 the site was built using the WP CMS platform, but it will also list the WP theme being used and list any WP plugins it detects.

• To use this online tool go here: What WordPress Theme Is That?
• To learn more about this tool go here: Does My Web Site Run On WordPress?

Theme Authenticity Checker - Plugin

A word of warning: If you decide to use FREE themes for your WordPress site, we recommend sticking with the themes listed in the official WordPress theme repository.

A method that is commonly used by a number of hackers and networks that engage in cyber criminal activities is to put up sites offering “Free” WordPress themes all over the web and distribute modified themes and plugins that contain malicious code. In fact, some of these sites even come up on Google for key phrases like “free WordPress themes“, “best free WordPress themes”” etc. It’s safer, therefore, to only download free themes from the official WordPress repository, or use well-known and reputable theme download sites.

If you have any doubts about whether a WordPress theme installed on your blog may contain potentially malicious or unwanted code, you can use a free WordPress plugin like Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) to run a scan of your theme files. This plugin scans the source files of every installed theme on your site for signs of injected code and then outputs a report with the results …

(TAC Report Page – Source: Plugin, WordPress.org)

We hope that you have found the information on how to find the best WP free and commercial themes useful.

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