The Best WordPress Themes of 2008
2008 has been a massive year in the world of WordPress themes, with the emergence of a number of professional design houses selling premium themes, accompanied by a steady stream of quality free theme releases.
The year has seen fevered discussion surrounding the issue of premium themes and how they interact with the GPL licence associated with WordPress.
However, for most users of WordPress the biggest developments have been the improvements to the software’s interface and the release of richer, increasingly professional designs from both free and premium developers.
There’s been a great deal of innovation during the year, much of it coming from the premium space and leaking into free themes over time. For instance, many themes now come with custom administration panels that allow users to customise their theme from within the WordPress menus. Such a facility was basically unheard of at the start of 2008.
Here’s bestwpthemes.com’s selection of the best themes of 2008. There are 45 themes in all, divided between free and premium themes.
The best free WordPress themes of 2008
Typebased
Andrea
Charade
Revolution White Canvas
Revolution Album
Elegant Grunge
Carrington
Sirup
Equilibrium
Blass2
Upstart Blogger Swiss
Vostok
The Morning After
Brightness
Thematic
Monotone
MNML
Ocular Professor
Lightning
Portfolio
Prologue
Thunderbolt
The Unstandard
Olegario
Fontella
Overstand
Depo Skinny
Grid Focus
The best premium WordPress themes of 2008
Sharp
Thesis
Fresh News
Perfection
Mimbo Pro
Perfection Grunge
Vintage
Folio
Our Community
YourFolio
Credit Crunch
Over Easy
Papercut
VibrantCMS
ProudFolio
Travailler
Modularity
Note: There’s a chance not all of the above themes were released in 2008. Some may have been available in late 2007 but only come to my notice in 2008. Nonetheless, I believe they belong among a list of the best themes of 2008, as this is when they came to prominence.
