Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes
smashingmagazine.com — High-quality WordPress themes always come in handy. Whether you are looking for some design inspiration or professional coding solutions — in both cases you can learn a lot, you can apply them and you can build customized designs upon them without reinventing the wheel all the time.
- 1602 diggs
- digg it
- waluum, on 01/08/2008, -4/+23Without a doubt one of the best, and most extensive, lists I've seen of quality WordPress themes.
- serverdown, on 01/08/2008, -23/+9too bad wordpress dies every time it makes the front page
- LegalSatire, on 01/08/2008, -6/+18Why does this misconception prevail? It's not Wordpress that's dying, it's the crappy webhosts that are hosting the content. Now, it may be the ease of setting up a Worpress site that encourages people to set up their blog on their own crappy servers, but Wordpress doesn't make pages die. Period.
- whalesalad, on 01/08/2008, -3/+20Yeah. I am sick of all the people making fun of WP when it's people like HostGator and Dreamhost who can't keep up.
- TheKorn2, on 01/09/2008, -2/+16wordpress doesn't die -- everybody is just using the "WORDPRESS CANNOT CONNECT TO YOUR DATABASE" theme!
- LessThanDan, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Wordpress users who are smart will also utilize some kind of plugin that caches the pages during high-traffic, rather than having to regenerate them for every visit.
- Damien79, on 01/09/2008, -0/+4serverdown, yeah that's what happens when you pay $15 per month for hosting. If you had a ***** clue your name would be uptime98.54%.
- zongamin, on 01/09/2008, -2/+3People do not start blogs with the intention of hitting the front page of digg you idiot. Please die.
- LegalSatire, on 01/08/2008, -6/+18Why does this misconception prevail? It's not Wordpress that's dying, it's the crappy webhosts that are hosting the content. Now, it may be the ease of setting up a Worpress site that encourages people to set up their blog on their own crappy servers, but Wordpress doesn't make pages die. Period.
- MillionsLivio, on 01/08/2008, -1/+9Fantastic list, I set up wordpress for friends or clients that want to start blogging and it's always good to have a surplus of good themes around.
- zongamin, on 01/09/2008, -5/+1"I set up wordpress for friends or clients" - these people are obviously idiots if they can't manage it themselves.
- Mike89, on 01/09/2008, -0/+5Ever taken your car to a mechanic? Yourself to a doctor/dentist? "Hah, a filling? I could do that with my eyes closed!"
- zongamin, on 01/09/2008, -5/+1"I set up wordpress for friends or clients" - these people are obviously idiots if they can't manage it themselves.
- vladin, on 01/08/2008, -29/+8Buried for title. Excellent and WordPress in a sentence.
- rexona, on 01/08/2008, -1/+3Thanks for sharing, there's some cool themes there
- tnoy, on 01/08/2008, -10/+9100 themes that 100 people will see before the WordPress site dies.
- cr125er, on 01/08/2008, -17/+36Too bad the only theme we ever see is the "WordPress Error" theme.
It does load fast though, so they get points for failing with grace.- xaxxon, on 01/08/2008, -8/+2I was coming here to post exactly the same thing. Thanks for saving me the time :)
- BlaenkDenum, on 01/09/2008, -1/+10WP-Super Cache
- bluvapor, on 01/08/2008, -22/+4Ron Paul.
- dadm110, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Not funny anymore.
- Alix7, on 01/08/2008, -10/+2My main problem with WordPress and blogging overall is that I am to much of a perfectionist. Something as little as the wrong background color really annoys me and therefore I don't want to start a blog unless I find or make the perfect template.
- Blueshrike, on 01/08/2008, -3/+2That's a good rationalization.
- ttamshadbolt, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2in that case create your own theme
- enginyazilan, on 01/08/2008, -3/+4wordpress is also free... i love free stuffs.. :)
- vibrokatana, on 01/08/2008, -3/+6So is drupal which rocks AND has built in caching so you don't get owned by sites like digg.
- cyberwiz01, on 01/09/2008, -0/+4Although not built-in, wp-cache is a very good caching system for wordpress.
- vibrokatana, on 01/08/2008, -3/+6So is drupal which rocks AND has built in caching so you don't get owned by sites like digg.
- papavb, on 01/08/2008, -1/+2Great list organized into nice categories, Yoghourt and Lust are my personal faves.
- vibrokatana, on 01/08/2008, -3/+5In other words: 100 themes that spam links back so I get false pagerank
- lazyfisherman, on 01/08/2008, -7/+0www.s9y.org
- KingLeo, on 01/08/2008, -3/+33"too bad wordpress dies every time it makes the front page"
This is such an ignorant comment. Wordpress has nothing to do with servers going down due to traffic. Each WP blogger installs it on their own server, so it's their server that dies and not WP. Do a little research before commenting because that just makes you look extremely ignorant.
P.s. Nice themes, btw.- xaxxon, on 01/08/2008, -7/+5Actually, the hardware is perfectly responsive. It says gives the error messages very quickly as another poster said. WordPress seems to be very poorly written software when it comes to being able serve a large number of connections. Either that or there's some HUGE coincidence that wordpress gets installed on really crappy software and the others systems don't.
Personally, I'd tend to blame the software. - lazyfisherman, on 01/08/2008, -1/+6Wordpress can handle heavy loads. Not that I recommend going there and continuing to make Perez rich but look at Perezhilton .com. Millions of visitors. Wordpress.
- BlaenkDenum, on 01/09/2008, -0/+7Use WP-Super Cache: http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/
- Bamborzled, on 01/09/2008, -0/+4We know that WordPress isn't the entire problem, but it isn't exactly the most resource-conscious webapp in the world. The main culprit is, however, shared hosting. Really, anything can handle heavy loads, if you have the servers - just look at Ruby on Rails! (Kidding, kidding... or am I?)
- xaxxon, on 01/08/2008, -7/+5Actually, the hardware is perfectly responsive. It says gives the error messages very quickly as another poster said. WordPress seems to be very poorly written software when it comes to being able serve a large number of connections. Either that or there's some HUGE coincidence that wordpress gets installed on really crappy software and the others systems don't.
- snakes89son, on 01/08/2008, -8/+1i dont know what the hell thats about...
but i like to comment so
here i am .. HI :P - garionw, on 01/08/2008, -8/+2http://garion.gwplus.net
anyone want mine?
/lame attempt at publicity- RKilla, on 01/09/2008, -1/+0No, it sucks.
- Eryin, on 01/08/2008, -3/+1***** is my fave
- spyrochaete, on 01/09/2008, -1/+2Props to the author of the linked page (smashedmagazine.com) for the good page design. I appreciated being able to see screenshots and often previews of all 100 themes. Thumbs up for convenience and usability.
- LFTravel, on 01/09/2008, -1/+2not again
- TheKorn2, on 01/09/2008, -4/+1(waiting for it... it's on the front page, its wordpress... any minute now...)
Damn I hate ADHD! - eyeonthewinner, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1Useful even for non-bloggers. Visual ideas from this can be taken into account for any website design. added to favorites
- WhoDoneIt, on 01/09/2008, -5/+0I'd hate to see the ***** Word Press themes if those are the good ones.
- ThantiK, on 01/09/2008, -4/+1My fav, and the one I've come to use personally is iTheme - you can see it on my blog @ tkwired.com (god only knows wordpress will probably crash if more than 2 people visit at a time though, lol)
- joshuaer, on 01/09/2008, -2/+1Now your website can look good 30 min before you get a wordpress error
- mrzack, on 01/09/2008, -3/+1Excellent!! Just what I need for my Ron PaL fan website. !!!
- schmons, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1so thats what wordpress looks like
- eyegraphix, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1I'd really like to make my own theme, but it seems pretty intensive. Anyone know of any good tutorials, besides just the wordpress site?
- jjk7288, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1This might sound bad, but the easiest way is to take a similar theme (or even the default Wordpress theme) and just modify it until it fits what you want. That way you know all the necessary code is there to make it work.
- evilish, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Heyyy,
I've got a couple tutorial links in my del.icio.us collection - http://del.icio.us/evilish/wordpress .
I've done one of the tutorials in there. It's not too hard just need some basic PHP knowledge. The basic idea is to come up with the design, put it into CSS, slice the CSS into header, body, footer, sidebar and insert a bunch of php functions. For example The name of the post is < WP function post_title_blah > .
Anyways mate, good luck!
- Evilish
- PersianCowboy, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1I've been using #27 on my blog for a while and its great.
- opengiga, on 01/09/2008, -0/+0great and like it
- kinggimped, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1Great resource!
- saturnx8, on 01/09/2008, -3/+1wordpress sucks, why is it the first thing to crumble when dugg?
- katemag, on 01/10/2008, -0/+1Great title, 100 excellent wordpress themes. But i would like SM Editor do not exaggerate about number, because only half of the number are smashing.
- mesarah, on 01/10/2008, -0/+0Great list. Thanks for sharing it with us.
- baloot, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1this is the most cool wordpress template i'd ever seen
- shahidsidd, on 01/31/2008, -0/+0gr8 list
- bloggcom, on 02/19/2008, -0/+0very nice themes!
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our