Top Ten List: Top 10 Free Premium Theme Resources

Blogging Resource Review #1: Free WordPress Themes

A common thread among many website owners and bloggers is the use of a content management system. For many people around the world this CMS is the infamous WordPress.

WordPress, which just celebrated its birthday a few weeks ago, is a full-featured script that bridged the gap between bulky CMS systems and simple blogging like the now defunct Greymatter or the exploitable Cutenews. It’s taken something that, in my time, was reserved for the nerdy crazies such as myself and made it happily available to the world – blogging.

Thanks to WordPress blogging is easily accessible to just about everyone with access to the internet, and has made the chore of running a website a relative breeze by allowing for everything from dynamic widgetized sidebars and an amazing array of plugins, to the simple ability to make pages as easily as you would a blog post. Something people now take for granted, but before WordPress running and updating a website could be labor intensive!

One of the great aspects about WordPress is the gift of simple customization. It’s easy for anyone with a little time and patience to make a great looking blog or website in no time!

Huh? What’s that you say? It’s not easy? Well, if you can’t create your own theme (and don’t be shy if you can’t, there’s nothing wrong with that!) there are a myriad of amazing free themes available for people of all tastes. The problem is finding them.

Well, that’s where I come in – here are my favorite place to find free but premium looking WordPress themes for your blog!

Top 10 Free Premium Theme Resources

10. Web2Feel: Web2Feel is an awful name but they do house a nice selection of themes, including the somewhat new but very versatile and free Fab Series. Some of what they house is your everyday awful theme, but it just takes some looking to find a good one. These are more suited to magazines, communities and fansites rather than blogs, I’m afraid.

09. Padd Solutions: Padd is one of the first places I look when I’m starting a new project because all of their themes are so easy to use and look so professional. These are great if you have to barn-raise a website in no time. More oriented to businesses and news sites.

08. Gisele Jaquenod: Now this is your spot for free WordPress themes that have a cutesy, warm and bloggy look to them. They tend to be a bit on the earthy side, and many feature an adorable yellow birdie!

07. Site5: This one doesn’t have many themes, but they do have themes for many occasions including one for tutorial websites and another for bloggers. The ones not mentioned are mostly suited to say a magazine or entertainment website and not necessarily for your casual blogger.

06. Site Editor: A fairly vast collection of gorgeous freebies for almost anything you could want to blog about. Everything from food bloggers to photo bloggers will love the array of different looks and functions. Suitable for almost every kind of site.

05. WPCrunchy: Another awful name for a good site. They only have a small handful of freebies littered among their premiums but what they do have is gorgeous and easy to use. I’d say these are fine for bloggers who post a lot of photos and anyone with an ezine.

04. NewWPThemes: This one is fairly new but it’s absolutely huge. They post a brand new premium-style free theme almost every day. They almost all have a featured content slider, which is annoying but if you run a magazine, review site, graphics site, fansite, etc. this would be the place to get your new theme! I’ve tested some of their themes out and I’m extremely impressed with them. Easy to use right out of the box.

03. Tokokoo: One of my absolute favorites. This isn’t a theme archive suitable for blogs, this is a huge archive of gorgeous themes for those of us who run online stores! They’re gorgeous, they work straight away and they’re meant for WordPress. If you sell things online or would like to, Tokokoo might be your new best friend!

02. WooThemes: One of the more infamous free theme websites is WooThemes. They have pay themes in their majority, but the free themes they do have are pretty, neat and clean and work without too much fuss. Suitable for business, blogging and personal sites.

01. Smashing Magazine: If you’ve never heard of Smashing Magazine, consider this your entry into the world of everything a designer could want – most of it for free! Vectors, tips and tricks, tutorials and other freebies. Of course, what we’re really there for are the themes. They only have a very few that are SM exclusive but they put together the most amazing and comprehensive lists of all the newest, latest and best themes for every website and blog niche you can think of. This one gets triple thumbs up from me! Yes I have three thumbs, you want to fight about it?

Well, that’s all from the first in what I hope turn out to be a series of blog resource reviews. I hope you found this useful, and if you’d like me to review any particular subject please do let me know. I’m always up for a challenge!

More From Beautiful Sin Webmaster Resources

• The Dark Side of Photoshop
• Top Twelve List: FREE Domain Name Registrars
• 10 Questions With ME

Beautiful Sin Webmaster Resources Recommends

• Cool WP Themes & Plugins – Pssssst… They’re FREE!  (WinsonYeung)
• Social Bookmarking, The Top 10  (Chad Nicely)

Ask Beautiful Sin Webmaster Resources To Recommend Your Posts

BEFORE YOU COMMENT: Please understand that, though I'm all for free speech, I'm also busy and downright mean. Because of this I will not tolerate offensive, inappropriate or hateful comments. I'll warn you and delete the offensive part, but if you repeat the offense I'll probably ban you from the domain. I'm sorry, but I just don't have time for spam, racism, and so on and so on. Just to note: What I find offensive? Is what we'll call offensive, this being my blog and all. ;)