UPDATE: This theme appears to no longer be available.

The Hello 2007 Wordpress theme is grey, white and blue all over and screams Web 2.0.

Don’t be frightened off by the Japanese (I think it’s Japanese) on the theme’s homepage. The theme itself is ready to use in English, though some hand tweaking of the header and footer is necessary.

Pros:

• Clean lines, very legible text
• Puts the focus on the content of your posts

Cons:

• You’ll need to jump into the code in order to add your own header image and to tweak the navigation bar. Also, the footer includes old coding to add tags, so you’ll need to jump in there and clean that up. Nothing too complicated though.

Demo and download:

Demo
Download

The Minyx 2.0 Lite theme has contemporary stylings and a gorgeous implementation of horizontal page navigation and a wide sidebar that could easily accommodate some advertising if that’s what you’re looking for.

The free Lite version of this theme doesn’t support Widgets or other extras, but there is a pro version for sale ($60) that rolls in Widget, Flickr, del.icio.us and Adsense integration, as well as a control panel for playing with the theme.

Pros:

• Very modern, stylish Wordpress theme

Cons:

• At first glance at the author’s site, the theme will look like it’s all in Spanish. But the good news is there’s really very little work to make the theme work in English.
• The free version lacks support for Widgets etc. which is a shame.

Demo and download:

Demo
Download

The Salmon Wordpress theme by Justin Shattock has pro written all over it, from the blue-and-pink colour scheme to the Web 2.0-ish layout.

All the small details are covered and it’s a very attractive theme.

Pros:

• Professional look with rounded corners and a Web 2.0 feel
• Unique colour palette makes the design sing

Cons:

• You’ll need to do some tweaking by hand, as Justin says himself, to get your own content in instead of Justin’s. This means editing the sidebar.php and header.php files.

Demo and download:

Demo
Download

Chris Pearson has given the Wordpress world two great themes and this is one of them. It’s practical, smooth and two columns out of the box, but the code is also well set out and commented, meaning it’s easy to make customisations.

The custom stylesheets, killer comments and search engine-friendly code make this one of the best themes doing the rounds.

Pros:

• Clean, commented code makes customisation easy
• A custom CSS option allows you to make over the colour scheme without risking messing everything up
• A bunch of classes are defined to make your images etc. look good
• Widget-ready
• Tutorials available to make using the theme easier
• Also available as a three-column theme

Cons:

• It’s almost become a little too popular, in a Kubrick sort of way: Your site won’t be unique

Demo and download:

Demo
Download

By default, Day Dream is a blue-and-white, one-column Wordpress theme with a large header. However, it doesn’t have to be blue. It has a neat admin screen where you can choose from four colours, among some other customisation options. There’s a page navigation bar above the fold and weblog categories and archives at the bottom of the template.

Pros:

• Very clean, minimalist design
• Easily customisable through a built-in options page
• Neat typography and easy to read
• Widget-ready
• Built-in support for Asides
• Built-in support for Gravatars

Cons:

• Search bar appears only at the bottom of the page.

Demo and download:

Demo
Download

Flirtatia bills itself as sassy, understated and, of course, flirtatious. It’s all of those, plus simple and effective.

The colours are largely white-and-grey but like any good flirt has a splash of red. It’s a one-column Wordpress theme with blog navigation and archives appearing at the bottom of the template.

Pros:

• Very clean, minimalist design
• Effective header image that should also be simple to change
• Beautiful typography
• Very effective and appealing line separators between stories on the front page

Cons:

• Default install doesn’t include Widgets.

Demo and download:

Demo
Download

The name says it all. When it comes to Wordpress themes, it really doesn’t get much simpler than Simplr, one of a number of excellent themes designed by Scott Allan Wallick of Plaintxt.org.

The front page of this Wordpress template is elegant in its simplicity: it displays just a single post.

Pros:

• Very clean, minimalist design
• Built-in options menu allows simple control over typography and layout
• Standards compliant
• Robust stylesheet and separate print stylesheet
• Widget ready

Cons:

• I’m not a big fan of the default typography settings, though these are easily changed via the Wordpress options menu

Download:

Download