It’s shockingly amazing how time has flyed by and 2007 is coming to a close, throughout this year there were many great looking WordPress Themes designed for the community, there was also a sharp increase in “Premium Themes” with the likes of Brian Gardner, Adrian Pienaar, Small Potato and more leading the way.
Here’s a list of 20 themes that i think have turned heads and got peoples attention this year, themes that are designed well and are well supported by their authors.Premium Themes (paid) are ommited from this list as i think it’s a little unfair to pit them against free themes, however i do have a list of premium themes coming up on my next post.
WP Premium (free not paid theme)
R Bhavesh has released a beautiful theme, he is the author of the WP Remix Premium Theme, but this time aound he is releasing the “WP Premium” for absolutely FREE, the theme comes with 3 color-scheme options – Brown, Black and Soft Red
——————————————————————————————-
Dark Theme by ilemoned.com
Visit & Download
The theme has been tested on WordPress 2.1.3 with Firefox and Safari, may play well with IE6/7 too. It validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0, and supports the following plugins:
* flickrRSS
* Gravatar
* Ultimate Tag Warrior
* WP-PageNavi
——————————————————————————————-
Illacrimo by Design Disease
Live Demo | Visit & Download
Illacrimo is the first on this list by Design Disease, there’s another two below. What can i say except that Elena of Design Disease keeps churning out beautiful themes!.
——————————————————————————————-
Rainbow Feather by Julian Klewes
Live Demo | Visit & Download
——————————————————————————————-
iTheme by ndesign-studio.com
——————————————————————————————-
THE MORNING AFTER by Arun Kale
The Morning After is a magazine-style theme for WordPress created by Arun Kale. The theme was created based on a brief survey on the WordPress forums about what people would want to see in a unique magazine-style theme.
——————————————————————————————-
FFF (Lemon Lime) by farfromfearless.com
This was really a unique theme and most people didn’t know about the existence of this theme for quite some time, the author has also included the original Photoshop (.psd) file!
——————————————————————————————-
Dilectio by Design Disease
Live Demo | Visit & Download
Dilectio comes from the Latin Language and it means “love, solicitude, esteem”.The unique thing about this theme is it’s “Flickr Photostream” section on the sidebar, definitely not the usual photostream we’re used to seeing.
——————————————————————————————-
Jello Wala Mello by WPdesigner.com
Visit & Download
Jello-Wala-Mello is a news / magazine-styled WordPress theme created for multi-media sites. It requires WordPress 2.3 to work properly.
——————————————————————————————-
Hello by HelloWiki
The theme’s page is in chinese so it will be hard to understand everything but this was a theme that should make it to the list, Babel fish or Google Translate should be of help.
——————————————————————————————-
Here are something i looked at while creating this list:
- Coded and compliant with standards and works on all majot browsers.
- Support, did the author provide support for the theme? This is not an easy thing but it’s great if the author did provide some support.
- Easy to modify – was the theme easy enough for users to edit and tweak to their hearts content.
- Upgrades - when the year began WordPress was in version 2.1, did the authors provide upgrade to the latest version 2.3?, that was my question.
- Special features – domtabs and other misc thing that made the theme special
——————————————————————————————-
Blog Oh Blog
BlogOhBlog has contributed many themes even after the change of owner, but i think this theme stands out the most, it’s multi column and widget ready. Simple, clean and easy for you to modify.
——————————————————————————————-
ProSense by Dosh Dosh and The Wrong Advices
Here are some of the theme features:
* Separate and Distinct Ad Blocks.
* Multiple Ad Display Options.
* Hassle-free convenience and ease of use.
* Integrated Ad placement on the homepage.
* Highly Optimized Ad units on post pages.
* Pre-blended Adsense unit colors.
* Search Engine Optimized site structure.
* Compatible with WordPress 2.0+.
* Widget-Ready
——————————————————————————————-
CopyBlogger Theme by Chris Pearson
The Copyblogger Theme for WordPress is the second fully-developed theme from Chris Pearson, the same guy who developed (and later sold) the Cutline Theme for WordPress.It was used on the CopyBlogger.com site before the new design was implemented.
——————————————————————————————-
Simplus
Live Demo | Visit & Download
Simplus is a 1 column theme, it’s simple with rounded corners, Ajax comments and XHTML and CSS valid.
If content is your thing and you dont need space for adverts and buttons and stuff than Simplus is the theme for you.
——————————————————————————————-
Insense by Design Disease
Yet another theme by Design Disease, it’s 2 column, clean and easy to tweak, it’s been receiving rave reviews through the year.
——————————————————————————————-
Gluttony by WPdesigner.com
WPdesigner or Small Potato as you might know him is one of my favourite designers, his themes are always neat and properly organized, trust me when i say it’s frustrating to even begin editing a theme when the php theme files are poorly organized, but that’s not the case with this Gluttony theme, the current latest theme release by Small Potato
——————————————————————————————-
The Blogging Pro Theme
This three column theme is WordPress 2.1 ready and should work just fine in WordPress 2.0.x. It has been tested on a variety of browsers, it’s the same theme that is being used on BloggingPro.com.
——————————————————————————————-
Skittlish
Skittlish is a fun, candy colored theme with seven color options. In addition, it has options for fluid or fixed widths. It is hatom supported and I put in some styling for an OpenID login form
——————————————————————————————-
News Theme by Performancing.com
Live Demo | Visit & Download
News Theme is a two-column theme with a horizontal navigation bar at the header, and space for details and links at the footer. This gives the site a clean look and feel, with a wide fixed-width main body and a sidebar wide enough to accommodate long link text or banners. The space on the header can also be used for horizontal banners.
——————————————————————————————-
Mezzo by Moses Francis ( yes my theme)
Among all the themes i have created i think Mezzo was/is the current most downloaded theme and looking at the links through Technorati, I’m pleased that many have tweaked it and made it better.
——————————————————————————————-
Special Mentions:
I’m sure everyone will have their own taste and preferences of WordPress Themes, what was your favourite theme of 2007? Are you using any of the themes on this list?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Related posts:
December 29th, 2007 at 7:03 am
glad you like rainbow feather, I am just in the process of translating it to other languages in order to be more locally responsive.
good luck in 2008!
December 29th, 2007 at 7:18 am
No Problemo jez!, all the best with the translation process.
December 29th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Moses: thanks for including Mimbo in your list. Next month I’m working on more improvements for the free version, then hopefully putting out a much slicker paid version. Have a good new year!
December 29th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Great list here -)
Thanks !
December 29th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Congratulations to all the designers of themes included in this post. Most of these designs are included on my site, and readers can vote for their favorite theme.
Moses, you were right to include your own theme. It has a strong, professional style, and is one of my personal favorites.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
the theme that i currently using also nice, and i feel that deserve to listed here ;Þ
December 30th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Amazing list of amazing themes. Stumbled!
December 30th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Great list. I’m looking forward to your post about premium themes!
December 30th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
@ Darren - Cool, can’t wait to see the paid version, Happy New Year to you too!.
@Ehab & skarld & Ruchi – Thanks
@iCalvyn - There were sooo many themes to choose from! LOL
@Elite By Design – Thanks, Premium Themes post is now live.
December 31st, 2007 at 4:27 am
you could have added slayer’s themes( located at http://www.thaslayer.com/category/templates/ ): Styleicious and Chameleon, they are great themes in my opinion(better than a few from the list)
December 31st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
You forgot this one, BlackMaster – a sexy wordpress theme powered js/ajax. Very cool, but it’s not free.
http://demo.blackmastertheme.com/