Whether for promotion, link-love, or to give back to the WordPress community, many premium theme creators also release high quality free themes from time to time.
WooThemes
Giving away freebies has become a important aspect of WooThemes’ marketing strategy. To date they’ve released 6 free themes which have been downloaded 100,000 times and havemore freebies in the works. They’ve also released a couple of free icon sets.
1. Mainstream
2. Meta-Morphosis
A lovely blog theme with a sliding fat footer.
3. Irresistible
A personal blog theme with lifestreaming features
4. BlogTheme
5. Typebased
6.Snapshot
Snapshot could be used as a photoblog / portfolio, or alternatively as a design gallery with support for linking out to external sites. This theme was inspired by the WooThemes customer showcase.
7. The Original Premium News Theme
R.Bhavesh – PremiumThemes.net
8. Visiting Card
Inspired by Tim Van Damme’s minisite, this theme provides links to an individual’s social profiles with jQuery navigation effects.
9. LiveTwit
This theme provides a continuous stream of tweets using the search term of your choice.
10. WP Premium
This theme has become very popular since its release.
Graph Paper Press
Nearly every premium theme released by Graph Paper Press has a cut-down free equivalent, so if you’d like a portfolio theme without all the bells and whistles, these are worth a look.
11. Work-a-holic
12. Fullscreen
13. Modularity Lite
14. f8 lite
Blog Oh Blog
Jai of Blog Oh Blog has released dozens of free themes; these are my favourites.
15. ClearPress
A 3-column theme with a widgetized pull-down sidebar.
16. DailyPress
17. Firebug
18. Statement
Acosmin
19. TypographyWP
20. AcosminMag
21. Acosmin v3.1
22. Chrome Tweaks
23. Acosmin Tech
Chris Pearson – DIYThemes
The origins of the phenomenal Thesis are evident in the popular Cutline and Neoclassical themes.
24. Cutline
25. Neoclassical
Vast HTML
26. Midnight Mass
27. ClearView
Press75
In addition to a couple of free plugins for the inclusion of videos and thumbnails in themes, Press75 has released a couple of free media-related themes.
28. Folio Elements
A minimalist portfolio theme.
29. Vodpod
A video blogging theme which works seamlessly with the Vodpod video sharing site.
Michael Hutagalung – Colorlabs Project
30. Arthemia Free
31. Linoluna
Shopping Themes
32. Vanilla Cart
33. UnderCon
A cute holding page.
Brian Gardner – StudioPress
34. Shades of Blue
Brian Gardner released several free themes before starting to sell premium themes. A recent freebie is Shades of Blue, a clean blog theme.
RichWP
35. Magazine (Free Version)
A slightly cut-down version of the premium version of this theme; a perfect opportunity to ‘try before you buy’.
StyleWP
36. Wiggle
A Google-clone.
Gorilla Themes
37. AffiliatePress
Make some money with this theme which comes with banner management via the theme options page.
ThemeShift
38. deStyle
Themes Boutique
39. Celadon
Ericulous
40. Food Recipe
A blog theme reminiscent of a restaurant menu.
Billion Studio
41. Crafty Cart
A cute e-commerce theme with support for the WP e-Commerce plugin
Solostream
42. Zeke
WordPrezzie
43. Changing Room
A charming ‘In Construction’ holding page.
Theme Sphere
44. Go Green
UBD
45. Money Theme
SiteMile Web Scripts
46. LemonTheme
Frugal Theme
47. Frugal Basic
DailyWP
48. Brightness
Creative Synthesis
49. Press Box
Shutter Themes
50. Photo Gallery
WordPress Themes Market
51. Purple Fever
One Theme Per Month
52. Journic
