Best Of 2012: 50 Free WordPress Themes
- By Sufyan bin Uzayr
- Posted in WORDPRESS
- 25 comments
We have come to the end of 2012, and a new year is knocking or has already arrived in some areas of the world. High time for this article. Each year, hundreds of amazing free WordPress themes are released: the good, the bad and the ugly. Naturally, 2012 wasn’t an exception. WordPress lovers received numerous free themes for their blogs and websites.
In this round-up, we enlist 50 awesome free themes for self-hosted WordPress sites.
The Best 50 Free WordPress Themes From 2012
Note: In order to view the Demo and Download URLs for any given theme, click on that particular theme’s screenshot in this gallery.
Description of Theme Features
Salient features of each theme:
| Theme Name | Genre | Responsive | Localization | Custom Elements | USP |
| Ascetica | Portfolio | Yes | Yes | Custom page templates | Hybrid Core framework |
| AzSimple | Blog | No | No | Nil | BxSlider |
| Bello | Blog | No | No | Post types | NA |
| Clean Retina | Blog, Corporate | Yes | Yes | 9 homepage layouts, 5 post layouts, Gallery post type | Retina-ready |
| Best | Magazine | Yes | Yes | Shortcodes, page templates | NA |
| Buttercream | Blog | Yes | Yes | Nil | NA |
| Delicacy | Blog | No | No | Meta boxes, widgets | NA |
| Codium Extend | Blog | Yes | Yes (French and Russian included) | Nil | NA |
| Digifoto | Portfolio | No | No | Custom sliders, widgets, contact forms, portfolio template | Part of WP Business Bundle Free edition |
| Elegant Photography | Portfolio, Photoblog | Yes | Yes | Page templates, photo galleries | NA |
| Glider | Blog | Yes | No | Nil | Uses jQuery’s .load() function, no images |
| Grid | Portfolio | Yes | Yes | Nil | Infinite scroll |
| Gridly | Portfolio | Yes | No | Nil | jQuery masonry |
| Hatch | Portfolio | Yes | Yes | Nil | Hybrid Core framework |
| Launch | Tumblog | No | Yes | Widgets, post formats, page templates | NA |
| Leatherly | Single-page | Yes | Yes | Custom Shortcodes | NA |
| Lugada | Blog | Yes | No | Nil | NA |
| Launcher | Placeholder | Yes | No | Twitter box | NA |
| Meeta | Blog | Yes | Yes | Page templates, widgets | NA |
| Origami | Blog, Portfolio | Yes | No | Nil | NA |
| Nomad | Portfolio | No | No | Nil | NA |
| Origin | Blog | Yes | Yes | Nil | Hybrid Core framework |
| Oxygen | Magazine | Yes | Yes | Custom homepage template | Hybrid Core framework |
| Orion | Portfolio, Magazine | Yes | No | Custom widgets | Skeleton framework |
| Panoramica | Portfolio | Yes | No | Custom page templates | NA |
| Photolistic | Photoblog | No | No | Nil | NA |
| Pilot Fish | Portfolio | Yes | Yes (Japanese and Spanish included) | Portfolio post type | NA |
| Photo | Photoblog | Yes | Yes | Nil | Homepage slider using Soliloquy |
| Responsive | Corporate, Multipurpose | Yes (obviously) | Yes | 9 custom templates | Retina-ready |
| Respo | Blog, Magazine | Yes | Yes | 41 custom fonts, 3 widgets, shortcode generator, page templates | NA |
| Prospect | Corporate | No | No | Custom slider, contact forms | Part of WP Business Bundle Free edition |
| silverOrchid | Magazine | No | No | Custom page templates, widgets | NA |
| Shutterloop | Photoblog | Yes | Yes | Customizable homepage | NA |
| Shortnotes | Tumblog | Yes | Yes | Custom post formats | NA |
| Solio | Single-page | No | No | Portfolio items | NA |
| Simple Grid | Portfolio | Yes | No | Nil | NA |
| SimpleCorp | Portfolio, Corporate | Yes | Yes | Custom post types, page templates | NA |
| Thoughts | Blog | Yes | No | Custom post formats | No sidebar, no footer |
| Tetris | Tumblog | Yes | No | Custom post formats | Homepage slider using Soliloquy |
| Stumblr | Tumblog | No | No | Post formats | NA |
| Unique | Portfolio | Yes | No | Nil | NA |
| Truly Minimal | Blog | Yes | Yes | Custom widgets, page templates, shortcodes | NA |
| Tiara | Portfolio | No | No | Nil | NA |
| VeeCard | vCard | Yes | Yes | Post types, resume uploader, vCard settings | NA |
| Western | Magazine (tutorial sites) | No | No | Custom post types, taxonomy, meta boxes | NA |
| Workality | Portfolio | Yes | Yes | Custom post types, page templates | Paid version also available |
| WordPress Svbtle | Blog | No | No | Nil | NA |
| Zenon Lite | Blog, Magazine | No | No | Custom page templates | NA |
| Yasmin | Portfolio | Yes | No | Custom post types, taxonomies | NA |
| Zenshop | eCommerce | No | No | Custom post types, taxonomies, metaboxes, page templates | Requires Cart66 plugin |
Over to You…
With that, we come to the end of this round-up. What are your thoughts? Any favorite WP theme of 2012 that you think we missed? Have your say in the comments below!
(dpe)
About the Author
Sufyan bin Uzayr is a freelance writer, graphic artist, programmer and photographer based in India. He writes for several print magazines as well as technology blogs, and has also authored a book named Sufism: A Brief History. His primary areas of interest include open source, mobile development, web CMS and vector art. He is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of an e-journal named Brave New World. You can visit his website, follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook and Google+.
Slim, 31 December 2012
very great collection ; thanks :)
Zhu, 31 December 2012
Ugh, I hate the new gallery setup for articles like these… I don’t want to click all over the place to get the info! Sorry guys :-(
Forrest, 01 January 2013
TOTALLY agree. All the extra clicking is lame.
SGD, 01 January 2013
Seconded: thumbs down on the redesign for this type of article. This new style makes it difficult to quickly move through the collection and take a quick look at potential good finds. The tiny thumbnails aren’t that helpful, and separating the screenshots (all grouped up at the top now) from the details on each theme (jumbled into a not-that-friendly chart at the bottom) is really lacking from an information design perspective.
If we can’t convince you to switch back to the previous layout (which, while taking up more vertical space, was *much* more user-friendly), perhaps you’d consider offering both versions, and let readers swap between them?
Annie1948, 01 January 2013
Wow! The theme on this site is awesome. Wish my garden at home was this pretty!
Steve Kent, 01 January 2013
Agree with Zhu, it looks like tiled wallpaper made up by the same two designs over and over, what this screams is that WordPress designs are painfully same-y and consist entirely of black, grey, grey-green and grey-brown colour options, at least lose the colour killing overlay!
Venkatesh Bashetty, 04 January 2013
Awesome Themes…. Really enjoyed the new layout :)
Fbboy Himu, 05 January 2013
Really Nice Theme.But Where Is The Download Link ?
abouttec, 05 January 2013
Just click on each of the themes Thumbnail and this will take you to a new page. where you will get the Demo and Download link.
thanks.
greg, 05 January 2013
I, too, dislike the small thumbs. At least have them open in a new tab.
abouttec, 05 January 2013
Wow, The Articles Gallery setup look is really cool. Great collection. Thanks.
Lee, 07 January 2013
amazing collection of themes thanks for sharing
Harshad, 10 January 2013
I liked the way you used tables for the description of each theme. Pretty unique style! And, it definitely helps compare all the themes at once. Nice!
kanav kathuria, 14 January 2013
Nice Collection!!!
It will really help me out for making my
clients website.
Thanks a Lot!!
kenneth, 18 January 2013
I love the theme of your site?
Prabhu, 18 January 2013
Great collection. I am going to try this.
scott, 23 January 2013
teach me your ways. your website is awesome. I would love to know what theme you use and/or what themes you would suggest if im going for the exact same type of layout on my website. any info would be greatly appreciated!
Enlaces compartidos, 28 January 2013
[...] Best Of 2012: 50 Free WordPress Themes [...]
Yskan, 30 January 2013
Thanks for sharing the themes.
Julia, 21 February 2013
well I like this style, it is nice and easy to a theme instead of scrolling down. Good work :)
rood, 03 March 2013
Great collection! thanks!
Bill Moore, 04 March 2013
This is really cool collection.
Thanks for another awesome post! I love the tips and tutorial you gave and I’m sure
they are very helpful to your readers who aren’t already taking advantage of this really cool option.
Thank you!
Sam, 19 March 2013
WOW the Nomad one looks amazing. Nice list. Though I wish the pictures of those themes on this post were a bit larger.
Usman, 25 March 2013
Nice themes collection.
But have you seen Mantra theme?. I am using it and have 10 Plugins installed on hostgator’s shared hosting. My website loads very slowly :(. Does theme effects performance or plugins or hosting?. Please tell me the solution for it. As I have also have plugin W3 Total Cache. But now I deactivated all plugins due to speed problem.
KRISHNA, 05 April 2013
Excellent collections of themes, all are very much colouful. Thanks a lot for sharing