Themes are essential components of good-looking website design. A unique and relevant WordPress theme can often maintain existent visitors as well as attracting new comers to read your content. However, in most instances, good themes come with a high price, which drive many webmasters back. But this is not always the case. There are also some worth-trying themes that are free WordPress Theme to use while the only problem is that you need to spend effort to look for them with patience.
Best free Themes for WordPress
In this case, we have summed up the best free WordPress themes for writers in below to help you easily beautify your blogs and personal websites. All of them are free of charge, simple coded, customizable, and well-designed.
Clean Retina
http://www.themehorse.com/themes/clean-retina/
Looking at the name, you can clearly know that this is a very simple and clean WordPress theme. More importantly, it is valid for desktop as well as mobile devices. It comes with many highlights, such as 9 homepage layouts multiple layouts for posts, social icons, webmaster apps, and customizable background design, and may more.
Users can freely change the layouts of the homepage and posts by choosing from different layout options, and design the background as they want. Besides, it is fully compatible with a child theme that users can make their own child theme without editing the parent theme code and don’t worry to losing the changes on update. Overall, it is very suitable for bloggers, companies and businesses.
Custom Community
http://themekraft.com/custom-community/
Custom Community is a professional and standing customizable WordPress theme. The developer only designs the framework, and anything of the website appearance is under users’ control. With it, users can responsively designed it with few clicks, and freely customize it for their unique websites with their own ideas. Overall, it’s a nice choice for the blog and shop websites.
Responsive
The name reflects its characteristics very much, flexible and responsive, adapting the websites to mobiles and tablets or any other devices. It features with multiple page templates, widgets,layouts, and menus, etc. It’s a simple theme option with rich features for webmasters to achieve different purposes.
Graphene
Graphene is a theme with a lot of powerful features to meet all the needs of users. It is coming with featured slider, custom colors, Google Analytics and social sharing buttons. Besides, it is backed with a large community for support, which available in over 30 languages for customers all over the world. Sincerely, it’s easy to use for beginners and newbies.
Twenty Ten
The Twenty Ten theme is the first “default ” theme which users can see upon WordPress installation. It’s along with the header images, and users can even change to different header images of each page using a Thumbnail Image when publishing a new post. It also includes custom back ground, widgets galore, drop-down menus, and many more features. Maybe it’s not unique in layout but it is highly reliable.
Weaver II
Weaver II is a WordPress theme gives users the easiest way to customize their websites. With full control to decide the website layout, users can design websites with the imaginations and ideas. With the useful administrative dashboard, it is easy for users to change colors layouts and any other things.
iFeature 5 Free
iFeature 5 Free is a touch friendly WordPress theme allowing users to set up responsive websites with ease. Log into the responsive WordPress theme options, users can simple drag and drop the slider and start the website within minutes with the full control.
Portfolio Press
This theme is a perfect WordPress theme for displaying. The ePanel included is used for uploading and customization. It also supports for multiple post formats and is a good option for both artists and bloggers.
Pixel
This theme features columns layout and useful menu options. Users can customize all the things on the top right of the whole page via the ePanel with no messy code needed.
Discover
Discover is a responsive WordPress theme free of charge. It is coming with widget ready bars, drop down system, and theme options panel. It is also compatible with all the online browsers. Honestly, it is a good choice for both bloggers and photo takers.
Portfolio WordPress Theme
Website: http://www.wpexplorer.com/portafolio-wordpress-theme/
Portfolio is a free and responsive theme for WordPress. It is designed for portfolio websites in mind but also applies for business websites and blogging websites. The homepage is wonderful, created with the Slides custom post type so that users can easily create new slides and set featured images to highlight some posts. Besides, users can add anything they like on the below blocks by using the original WordPress post editor.
The Portfolio theme is along with a custom post type for the portfolio so users can simply add portfolio items. It also comes with a custom image gallery manager which makes it fairly easy to add and remove images from the portfolio galleries. With the full blog section that supports the regular WordPress post, you can start write on your own site quite easily.
Slash
Website: http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes/33134.html
Slash is a blogging WordPress theme designed by Elegant Themes. It is totally free, coming with elegantly styled, clean and simple navigation, rounded social icons, and plus with a cute tumble effect on the date when you hover over an entry. Besides, it also includes unlimited color options, WordPress 3.6+ compatibility, a widgetized footer, comment support, and more.
In addition to the well-designed style, the most highlighted part of Slash theme is in the posts. This theme supports article, audio, gallery, link, quote and video posts. In this way, you can insert all kinds of medias into your posts and convey your ideas in various styles.
Adapt
Website: http://www.wpexplorer.com/adapt-free-responsive-wordpress-theme/
Adapt is a free blogging theme available at Authentic Themes. Designed for WordPress only, it is perfect for sharing your ideas, opinions, thoughts, original works and anything else to your friends, fans, and the world.
Adapt is clean and neat, coming with a lot of features such as Authentic Shortcodes support, and a full-width page template. What’s more, since it’s free, you can download any of the updates for free as well.
Safari
Website: https://smthemes.com/safari/
Safari is a simple and clean WordPress theme designed for bloggers. It features with a fully responsive designed, so that is can scale gracefully on all the mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. In addition, it also comes with a lot of features including retina ready, all post format support, gallery, video, and audio support, 2 custom widgets, custom archive page, contact form, etc.
DW Minion
Website: http://www.designwall.com/wordpress/themes/dw-minion/
DW Minion is a simple WordPress theme aiming at a minimal and simple blog while showing off the most of your content. It is free and clean, responsive for all sized devices so that you can blog anytime and anywhere you want. As social sharing is increasingly important for blogs, DW Minion integrates with social medias well and makes it easy to share the blog to friends.
Besides, this theme supports various post formats and is compatible WordPress 3.5+, all major search browsers including IE 8+, Firefox 14+, Chrome 19+, Safari 5.1+, Opera 12+, and so on.
Pitch
Website: http://wordpress.org/themes/pitch
Pitch is a free WordPress theme that is along with a clean and simple design. With custom post types, it makes the thing is easy to add content in your site. Moreover, it features with a blog bold slider on the homepage to put your work front and highlighted.
Slider Responsive Theme
Website: http://dessign.net/slider-responsive-theme-free-2013/
Slider is a responsive WordPress theme that is free of charge. It has custom background which is perfect for displaying your portfolio. With fully responsive design, it automatically adjusts the site layout based on the screen size of visitor devices. Besides, it is also search engine optimized and 100% compatible with Chrome, Safari, IE9, and other browsers.
inFocus – Powerful Professional WordPress Theme
Website: http://themeforest.net/item/infocus-powerful-professional-wordpress-theme/85486
inFocus is a 2-column WordPress theme with 8 premium slider staging effects. It is stylish, coming with Jquery sliders & Nivo slider to highlight your important factors on the homepage. Besides, it offers 100+ custom shortcodes, 30+ skins & built-in skinning system, unlimited portfolios in 7 layouts, Contact Form builder, massive backend options, 7 custom widgets, and much more. All these premium features benefit customers to beautify a WordPress site and manage the site with ease.
Sahifa – Responsive WordPress News, Magazine, Blog
Website: http://themeforest.net/item/sahifa-responsive-wordpress-newsmagazineblog/2819356
Sahifa is a clean and responsive WordPress theme that targets for news, magazines and blog websites. Its layout adjusts on various screens no matter the device is a desktop, iPad, iPhone, or any other smartphones. Especially, it is friendly for Apple, including options to add iPhone and iPad app home screen icons to the website.
In addition, the theme is fully ready for Retina so that you can your visitors can enjoy your site on retina screen machines without losing any details. With bbPress and BuddyPress compatibility and great customizable options, it turns your WordPress into unlimited possible presentations.
For the Cause
Website: http://www.woothemes.com/products/for-the-cause/
For the Cause is a flexible WordPress theme that comes with multiple slideshows including both 3D and 2D designs. It comes with a lot of options that allow you to modify layout, styling, colors and fonts directly within the backend. With clean and 100% responsive design, this theme is also fully compatible with WordPress 3.9, including accordion slider, social icons, magazine styles, and many more customizations. As a result, it is an ideal choice for business websites, e-commerce websites, and users who expect to showcase their work on a portfolio site.
vFlex
Website: http://www.vibethemes.com/theme/vflex-theme/
vFlex is extremely simple and clean, which is designed for bloggers mainly. It combines dark colors with light colors to create simple but artistic visual effect. After downloading it, you can have a custom featured area, and get custom setting import or export.
Apart from these remarkable features, it can be installed to WordPress of all the versions. It operates perfectly on many browsers such as Chrome Firefox and IE.
Oxygen
Website: http://alienwp.com/themes/oxygen/
It is a clean child theme creating for professional magazines. The whole style looks refreshing and logical with catalogs on the left, covers on the top, and content following on by one. Of course, there is a calendar on the right to show the date of your magazine.
Oxygen also gives you power and flexibility to change and modify it yourself, according to your wish. It comes with well-structured layout, mutiple menus and widgets, and useful slider,etc.
Wootique
Website: http://www.woothemes.com/products/wootique/
Wootique is a fully responsive WordPress theme, suitable for eCommerce websites. The highlight of this theme lies in that it is completely customizable with all the practical and amazing features you ever imagine. Thus, no matter what kind of website you are running on, try this one to experience magical journey.
The homepage features a powerful slider that rotates around your contents. You can put as many products into the slider as you wish. Besides, there is an archive of your recent articles and widget sidebar offered to modify your theme.
VibeLivre
Website: http://www.vibethemes.com/theme/vibelivre-theme/
Rely on its flexibility and cleanness, the theme is suitable for many site managers to present their excellent works. It is suitable for designers, bloggers, and even creative media agencies. VibeLivre comes with responsive design that ensures it looking good on browser windows, tables, and mobile devices.
What’s more, its clean and limited settings make creating and customizing a perfect theme easy and time-saving. When you encounter problems with this theme, don’t worry, there are reliable forum supports waiting for you. You can find almost all the solution on it.
Florence
Website: http://alienwp.com/themes/florence/
Florence is popular among business owners and freelancers for its elegant design, content slider, post format templates, as well as responsive layout. You have three choices to present your posts: standard, image, and quote, which make content format versatile and refreshing. Besides, There is an amazing section for client testimonials containing in custom widget.
Proxima
Website: http://alienwp.com/themes/proxima/
Proxima is famous for its simplicity and focusing on the key point. With main content on the left side, a sidebar on the right, it is easy for visitors to notice what is new on your website. It is featured with HTML5, responsive slider, flexible widget, post formats, and so on.
Mystile
Website: http://www.woothemes.com/products/mystile/
You can easily create a wonderful design matching for your website with Mystile. There are more than ten colors you can choose from, two shortcodes to highlight a message or add scale banner to inform visitors when you are offering worth-noticing things.
You can also use the custom homepage to present important contact methods, newly published article, and main products. However, this is not the end of the story. The theme is extremely responsive, which looks comfortable on any screen, from desktop to mobile devices.
Classica
Website: http://www.themezilla.com/themes/classica/
My Blog
Website: http://scyllalite.towfiqi.com/
Hayden
Website: http://themetrust.com/themes/hayden/
Realty
Website: http://themetrail.com/themes/realty/
Yasmin
Website: http://demo.fabthemes.com/yasmin/
Orion
Website: http://jinsonathemes.com/fabs/?themedemo=Orion
Edivos
Website: http://demo.fabthemes.com/edivos/
Arckitekt
Website: http://www.dessign.net/architekttheme/
Elegantia
Website: http://demos.wplegion.com/elegantia/
Mono
Website: http://www.curtziegler.com/sitedemo/mono/
Business Websites: Why Not Free WordPress Themes?
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems welcomed for the free of charge. For saving money, many people think it’s a perfect choice to use free WordPress themes. However, there is no free lunch in the real world. For business websites, we suggest you never utilize free WordPress themes as they always comes with security issues, forced links and advertisements, and no technical support.
In below WordPress Tutorials, we explain the main reasons why you should not use free WordPress themes for business websites. At the end of this post, you can learn about the truth behind free, and understand that actually the free one is the most expensive one.
Security Issues
WordPress theme plays an important role in website security. However, security issues are the top concern of free WordPress themes. Among them, the malicious code and bundled plug-ins are always the greatest threats.
The free WordPress theme providers know that there is a certain segment of customers that cannot resist “free things”, so they are free to add malicious code to bind plugins with the free themes. Once you download and use the free theme, you have to install their plugins or share some of your personal information to them.
This is very dangerous because too many plugins slow down your websites, and malicious code may break down your server. However, for business websites, you know that a mere 1-second delay in your site’s page load speed can cause a 7% decrease in your conversion rate, 16% decrease in visitor satisfaction and 11% fewer page views. As a result, this will cause your business a terrible effect.
Forced Links and Advertisements
Do you think free WordPress theme is really for free? A common money making scheme for theme designers or developers is to sell image ads or links in the header or footer of free themes. Besides, many times these links are protected by code so if you remove them will destroy the integrity of your theme.
For business websites, you always need to promote your products or services on the striking position. Instead of buying advertising position on other sites, you can take fully use of your website, or you can just sell ads to make money. However, these good wishes cannot be realized with free WordPress themes.
Cost Much Time to Manage
The free WordPress themes always come with general designs and layouts. But if you want to change it to suitable for a specific website, it may cost you much time to configure and customize. Running a business, time is money.
Instead of spending a lot of time to customize your website theme, we sincerely suggest you purchasing a premium WordPress theme which includes all features and design you desire, and then devoting the rest time to your business. We believe that you can earn much more money than the cost of a theme.
No Technical Support
In most cases, the free WordPress theme providers don’t offer any technical support. They just devote to get as many installs as possible, and then they move to the next. So you may take a long time to download a theme that looks good but cannot install it properly on your website. That’s really exasperating and time-wasting.
Sometimes, if you want to get helps from a developer or support staff, you need to pay for the premium support or upgrade to the premium plan which is charged even more expensive than common themes. However, all the troubles wouldn’t happen if you purchase a premium theme or find someone to design a custom work for your website at the beginning.
Conclusion
Considering the potential threats above, we suggest you never utilize a free WordPress theme for a business website. By comparison, we recommend you purchasing a premium WordPress theme from reliable providers.