WordPress is the most used and popular blogging platform around the web. Its flexibility, usability and customizability are the main reasons people regard WordPress so high. Another reason is the huge array of themes available for WordPress – you can create almost anything, from online magazines to advanced e-commerce businesses. You can either get themes for free or pay for them. Of course, you get what you pay for — yet don’t be too eager to spend your money on something you might not even need. If you’re just starting out with WordPress I suggest reading Choosing a WordPress Theme: Free or Premium? After that you might consider whether you really want to pay for that premium theme. If the answer is no, continue reading and check out these 80 professional, beautiful and free WordPress themes from 2012 — the best free themes that can be found!
News/Magazine/General blogging
1. Live Wire
Live Wire is about rocking your blogging. It was designed with a mobile first attitude, it supports post formats, gravity forms and hybrid tabs plugins (CSS included).
2. silverOrchid
silverOrchid WordPress theme by gazpo.com offers a wide range of customization possibilities with the theme options, and is extremely simple to get up and running.
3. Yasmin
Yasmin is a responsive WordPress theme based on the skeleton framework. This theme is also powered with features like custom post type, taxonomies, custom menu, featured thumbnails and more.
4. Canyon
Canyon is a powerful, premium quality theme with features like custom menu, custom widgets, featured thumbnails and a featured slider.
5. Rolex
Rolex is a premium quality free theme that will give your WordPress site a professional look and has a beautiful jQuery slider on top. There is a widgetized section on the home page to list your services or products in style.
6. Nomad
Nomad is a clean, elegant WordPress theme that has a two column design with a jQuery featured image slider.
7. Blaskan
Blaskan is a forever free high quality theme focused on what WordPress does best: blogging.
8. Learner
Learner is a simple and clean WordPress theme, easily customized through theme options and custom widgets.
9. Accentbox
Accentbox is a free theme although its features and design can put any premium theme to shame. With its elegant design and powerful features, Accentbox will top the downloading charts. This HTML5 theme is fully responsive to make sure your blog looks awesome in any case.
10. PureLine
PureLine is a professional, clean, yet amazing WordPress theme for enthusiasts of simplicity and flexibility.
11. Prospect
Prospect is a classy, sophisticated, and modern WordPress theme for business. all the features of a premium theme, without the premium price.
12. Danko
Danko WordPress theme is ideal for charity organizations. It’s focused on raising funds for your charity. Use this free theme to do as much good as possible.
13. Newzeo
Newzeo is a lean, dynamic 2 or 3 column theme with a light or dark color scheme.
14. Jezz
Jezz is a premium like WordPress theme with powerful CMS tools, responsive design and beginner friendly admin panel.
15. GreenPrime
GreenPrime theme is a business WordPress theme with a responsive design, elegance, flexibility, and awesomeness.
16. EduBLOG
eduBLOG is a free theme built with dozens of amazing features, as well as several custom TutsPress widgets that will allow you to shape the site in many ways.
17. Delicacy
Delicacy is a culinary WordPress theme created with food blogs in mind. Delicacy is also a perfect choice and can be easily adapted for personal blog.
18. Putte
Putte is a clean and beautiful theme with great features for WordPress 3.3+. The theme supports WordPress custom header and custom menu.
19. Respo
Respo is an amazing WordPress theme with a clean, sleek and customizable design. The theme is suitable for personal blogs and/or online magazines.
20. Azsimple
Az simple is a plain and simple theme without many graphic effects, shadows or gradients, but still beautiful.
21. NewsDepo
NewsDepo is a free WordPress magazine theme.
22. Western
Western is a premium like WordPress theme for tutorial sites.
23. Cascade
Cascade magazine portfolio theme helps to make your talent the focal point of your portfolio – the way it should be. Present your work in a professional manner with a timeless design.
24. Pioneer
Pioneer magazine theme is a clean, modern and powerful professional WordPress theme suitable for any kind of news/magazine/corporate/business website. It comes with an impressive jQuery homepage slider with unlimited possibilities and options.
Personal
1. Launch
Launch is a sweet little theme for the personal blogger who likes to blog in style. Provides support for your own self-hosted video, audio, images, galleries, asides, links, quotes and of course good old standard posts.
2. Esplanade
Esplanade is a modern and stylish theme featuring a responsive layout with a slick and streamlined design but powered by a powerful code base and a flexible options page offering lots of featured and control.
3. Ascetica
Ascetica is a spacious and elegant portfolio/blog theme with responsive layout. Best suited for bloggers who want to showcase their work alongside their posts, photobloggers, designers, and photographers.
4. Prototype
Prototype is a specialized parent theme with multiple nav menus, several widget areas, and per-post layouts, allowing anyone from designers to users to quickly create beautiful sites.
5. Hybrid
Hybrid is a user-friendly, search-engine optimized parent theme, featuring several custom page templates and multiple widget-ready areas, allowing you to create any type of site you want.
6. Basic
Basic is a free responsive WordPress theme. The purpose of the Basic theme is to give you a starter theme so you can be your own designer. It only contains the basic layout styling so you can customize the theme with your own preferences.
7. Flexible
Flexible is a WordPress child theme of the robust Twenty Ten. Flexible optimizes and presents content in different screen sizes. It gives readers a seamless experience regardless of device or platform.
8. Themolio
Themolio is a free and responsive WordPress blog theme with elegant, grid-based design.
9. TrulyMinimal
TrulyMinimal is a free highly customizable minimalistic theme fully focused on typography. Powered by a powerful back end, TrulyMinimal can be easily personalized.
10. Lugada
Lugada is a simple minimalist responsive two column theme with built in slider.
11. Tint
Tint is a colorful theme that opens up some cool possibilities, its layout is simple and professional and it’s able to transform every element to predefined colors, or any color of your desire.
12. Best
Built from the ground up with valid HTML5 and utilizing the latest CSS3 techniques, Best is a forward-thinking template that is designed to last.
13. Zenon Lite
Zenon Lite is an all in one WordPress theme with 3 awesome fonts, slider, background image easy to use theme option panel.
14. Casual
Casual is a free WordPress theme with tumblog features.
15. Meeta
Meeta is a simple blogging theme, but packed with many premium features like unique widgets and custom templates.
16. Bello
Bello is a simple and elegant WordPress theme. It’s designed to showcase beautiful imagery in a clean and open space.
17. Skirmish
Skirmish is an elegant, two column WordPress theme. Perfect for personal blogs.
18. Yaminth
YAMINTH (Yet Another Minimal Theme),is a free WordPress theme and, as you may notice from the name, it has a very minimal look. YAMINTH comes with light colors, dark footer, Google Web Fonts and jQuery fade in/fade out of images.
19. Stumblr
Stumblr ir a free Tumblr style WordPress theme ideal for microblogging photos & video.
20. kw.po
kw.po (english – toad) is a beautiful grid-based portfolio/personal blog theme, fully customizable.
21. Responsive
Responsive WordPress theme for your business or personal site.
22. Silesia
Silesia is an elegant HTML5 powered theme. Silesia is a free premium WordPress theme powered by NattyWP Framework.
23. Align
Align is a minimal and responsive WordPress theme designed for the content and thus the typography itself.
24. BeFree
BeFree theme is for anyone who prefers a simple, minimal, yet stylish WordPress theme. The theme supports automatic thumbnail resizing, custom colors of header and background, and offers numerous of Google Fonts selection.
25. Buttercream
Buttercream is a sweet treat for your blog or website. This theme supports all post formats, an optional responsive design for smaller screens, custom backgrounds, a custom pop-up menu and three widget-ready sidebars in the footer.
26. SuperSlick
Modern and stylish, simple yet sharp, SuperSlick is designed with a timeless grid layout. Features include an editable feature home section, centered book style content layout and funky left side headers and meta.
27. Codium Extend
Codium Extend is a very simple WordPress theme with all the new features in WordPress 3.4: personalized menus, choosing a color for the background, ready for translation, custom header image etc. This theme is ideal for anyone seeking simplicity with the full articles on the homepage.
28. Constellation
Constellation Theme is an assemblage of awesome resources, put together to form an extremely flexible WordPress foundation. It gives you the flexibility to provide bespoke styles for different devices, totally up-to-date HTML5 code which is fantastic for SEO, a flexible grid system on top of all the other goodness bundled in to the HTML5 boiler plate.
Portfolio
1. Fontfolio
Fontfolio is a free WordPress theme with a grid based layout. Designed to showcase your typography portfolio.
2. Unique
Unique & Responsive is a WordPress theme with mobile and tablet responsive design. Great grid like theme for a portfolio showcase and creative blogging.
3. Simple Grid
Simple Grid is a free WordPress theme with mobile and tablet responsive design. Grid like design theme is perfect for any creative agency to showcase their portfolio.
4. Grid
Grid is a free WordPress theme with mobile responsive design, featuring infinite scroll. Grid theme is perfect for any creative to showcase their portfolio.
5. Architekt
Architekt is a free WordPress theme with a clean, simple and unique design to showcase your architectural portfolio.
6. Grid Style
Grid Style is a free WordPress theme with a magazine based layout. Designed to showcase your fashion style portfolio.
7. Orion
Orion is a fully responsive theme with light, clear, minimalistic design and complementing typography. This theme is ideal for a design agency website, designer portfolio etc.
8. Tiara
Tiara is a portfolio theme for photographers or artists to like show off their work in style. The theme has a minimalistic design which helps to focus attention to your content.
9. Adapt
Adapt is a free WordPres theme created by that features a very clean and elegant business/portfolio style design that is also fully responsive.
10. Elegant Photography
Elegant Photography is a free WordPress theme that allows you to showcase your photos and blog posts. The design is stylish without overpowering your photos, which deserve to have the visitor’s attention.
11. Ultima
Ultima as its name says is a powerful and flexible WordPress theme. It has the options to switch colors, background colors or even choose your own background image pattern, the home page can also be controlled. How ever you want your theme to look like you can do it using the control panel or theme options.
12. Senyorita Dark
Senyorita Dark is a clean design that can be used both for personal portfolio or for company portfolio. Make your website look more professional with this senyorita free theme.
13. DigiFoto
DigiFoto is a minimalist photography theme. DigiFoto comes with light and dark color variations. Supports both landscape and portrait images, and video.
14. Panoramica
Panoramica is built with the intent of adapting to as many window sizes as possible. It has a fully fluid layout that gives it tremendous flexibility, allowing you to cater to both large and small screens alike.
15. GridPhoto
GridPhoto is a fully-responsive HTML5 grid-based theme for photographers and photography lovers.
16. Prosume
Prosume is a simple resume and portfolio theme with a clean design.
17. Bunker
Bunker is a free WordPress theme that can be used to show off your work or to start your own magazine site.
18. WidePhoto
WidePhoto is a free HTML5 fullscreen WordPress theme for photographers that want a visually stunning website to show photography.
19. Gridly
Gridly is a free minimal & responsive portfolio theme ideal for graphic designers or photographers.
20. Neptune
Neptune is a free WordPress theme that’s perfect for portfolio, gallery and photography websites to showcase photos.
21. Photolistic
Photolistic is a photography theme that can be used as a portfolio and a blog theme by photographers.
22. ShowPress
ShowPress is a photography and personal blog WordPress theme that will allow you to easily build unlimited galleries to showcase your new projects in style.
23. Bodega
Bodega is a free WordPress theme with a very minimal design that’s perfect for small business and portfolio websites.
24. Workz
Workz is a WordPress theme with a design/function specifically for business and portfolio style websites so you can showcase your work and what your business is all about.
25. Axis
Axis is fullscreen portfolio WordPress theme. This is a premium quality theme with features on par with paid themes.
Other
1. Xenastore
Xenastore is an ecommerce WordPress theme. This theme depends on an e-commerce plugin called Cart66 to function as an e-commerce portal.
2. Launcher
While you are launching a new site, or revamping the old one, it is most important to let the users feel that they are still being thought of. Launcher WordPress Theme lets the site visitors know estimated time remaining in launching the site.
3. Zenshop
Zenshop is an e-commerce theme designed with a minimalistic grid layout to showcase your store. The supports WordPress 3 features like Custom post types, custom taxonomies, Custom metaboxes, etc.
What do you think of these free WP themes? Share with us in comments!
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