Best Online Resources: WordPress Themes

Teresa Conner
With the 2009 release of WordPress 2.7 (an award-winning CMS which allows you to build and maintain websites, blogs and more), WordPress fever is wildly growing and growing. Below are ten resources for finding the right look for your website and/or blog.

01. Free WP Themes - http://www.freewpthemes.net/
Spanning over nineteen pages, Free WP Themes contains 178 efficiently designed layouts for your perusal. All designs are tableless (meaning they are CSS driven) and fully standards compliant. They also only use royalty-free, public domain stock photos from PDPhoto.org in their image-ready designs.

02. Developer's Toolbox / Smashing Magazine - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
In January 2008, Smashing Magazine published a listing of 100 free, high-quality WordPress themes available for download by their respective designers. You get to see previews and are offered links to their download locations. Some truly gorgeous and innovative work here. They also published another similar article in January 2009, here.

03. Free WordPress Themes - http://www.wpskins.org
Currently hosting somewhere around 900 themes, WP Skins is user-friendly, tag linked and contains a blog.

04. Kate's Theme Viewer - http://themes.rock-kitty.net/
Kate's Theme Viewer is a place where WordPress layout creators can upload their creations for free download to users. This website is accessible and very well designed itself. Themes range from elegant to grungy and minimalist to graphic-heavy.

05. EZwpthemes- http://www.ezwpthemes.com/
Ezwpthemes.com contains six pages of original high-quality, AdSense ready, and widget ready themes for your WordPress needs. The site is easy to navigate and very user-friendly. Their themes have been tested with the latest WordPress release and are compliant with web standards.

06. WordPress Themes Base - http://wordpressthemesbase.com/
Featuring eighty-six pages of first-rate templates, WordPress Themes Base is well organized, comprehensible, original and fresh.

07. Top WordPress Themes - http://www.topwpthemes.com/
TopWPThemes contains hundreds professionally designed layouts. The site includes a neat little quick info box for each theme available which lists data on the design (i.e., Newspaper style) which helps you see right off the bat if it is something you'd like. I would have liked to see those as linked tags to aid searching, but it is a great site nonetheless.

08. Free Themes Directory - http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
Including 798 different themes, the Free Themes Directory is officially ran by the WordPress creators. With linked tags making it super easy to navigate the website and locate a template, this is the best place out there and should be a first stop for everyone.

09. Theme Lab - http://www.themelab.com/
Theme Lab is collection free original WordPress themes for your blog with live demos and direct download links. What makes this site special and innovative is that is also includes a section of tutorials, articles and resources for creating your own themes.

10. Skin Press - http://www.skinpress.com/category/wordpress/
Skin Press contains gorgeously professional WP themes. They are ad-ready, tableless and best of all, free!

Published by Teresa Conner

Teresa, 28, is a freelance web designer, book blogger, aspiring author, poet, and environmentalist.  View profile

To comment, please sign in to your Yahoo! account, or sign up for a new account.