Best WordPress themes I’ve worked with

As a WordPress designer I’ve worked with lots of themes from different sources, and over the time I could tell which were good ones and where were not.

I will try to cover here some of the best themes I’ve worked with to give you a heads up on where to go when looking for quality themes.

1. Blank or Bare-bones themes:

If you’re a designer like me, you would be looking for themes that have no styling at all to apply your custom work to it, and there are some really good ones for this:

• Blank Theme by Chris Coyier
• Starkers theme by Elliot Jay Stocks
• Thematic by Theme Shaper which uses the principle of Child theme to customize.

2. Quality Free Themes:

One of the greatest thing about WordPress is the availability of thousands of quality free themes for it to make it super easy for you to find any style you’re looking for, and here are some of the best I’ve seen:

• Twenty Ten theme: which is the new default theme for WordPress, it has a lot of cool new features and it’s super easy to use and customize the header, background, menus, etc.. and fully support WordPress 3.0 new features.
• Note Pad theme:One of 4 quality themes presented for free by N.design Studio. Very visually appealing, simple and clean theme to use.

  

• Mystique Theme: by digital nature, a truly wonderful theme for a free theme. It’s brilliantly designed, has tons of options in the Admin options panel and gives you full control over everything from design, to content, navigation, css, SEO, and more. MY FAVOURITE FREE THEME.

  

3. Quality Premium Themes:

There is absolutely no shortage in paid WordPress themes, although not all of them are really good. Here are some of the best I’ve used:

• Thesis Theme:probably one of the most famous on the internet, and offers a great deal of tweaking and customization in very easy steps via an admin screens, however, for deep customizations, I don’t personally prefer it. I find it more suitable for a user than a programmer! it costs $87 for personal license, and $164 for a developer.

  

• Infocus Theme: A wonderful one by themeforest.net. I’ve worked with it and was amazed by the quality of graphics, flexibility and ease of use it offers. It has a built-in gallery and a lot of functionality that’s available for you that you won’t need plugins to extend it. It costs $37 to buy.

  

• Boradwalk Theme: A very colorful and eye pleasing theme, with lots of options. It’s a magazine style one and can work great for some types of sites, although it’s quite hard to change the look completely as it’s built heavily on graphics. Price starts at $29.

  

• Corporate Theme:from StudioPress,  A very visually pleasing and professional theme, with lots of customization options and custom page templates. Home page is very easily modified using Widgets. Price is $79.95.

  

• Optimize Theme by Woo themes: A very nice theme that features lots of 22 color variations, theme admin options and a custom home page layout and lots more. Price is $70.

  

Here is a good resource for Best Premium WP that will give you a more detailed overview of this topic.

For some basic tips about themes, don’t forget to watch the video tutorial on Change the look of your WP site using themes here.

Hope you find this collection of quality themes useful to you and I look forward to your favorite themes and your experiences with them.

Other Resources:

Genesis Pro vs Elementor Pro 2021: Which Is Better for You?