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.
Check out our full list of the best of the best WordPress themes.
21 Responses to “The Best WordPress Themes of 2008”
Susan
This is an awesome list of themes!
24. December 2008 at 07:12
Víctor
Hi, I’m Víctor García, a web designer and a Wordpress fan, like you. I have created a Portfolio Theme powered by Wordpress. It may be helpful for those who want to create your own portfolio. You can see the demo at http://demo.wpesp.com/portfolio/ or the tutorial at http://wpesp.com.
I hope it can help some of you.
24. December 2008 at 22:57
charles
quite a lot of woothemes on here -
personally, glad I have my developer membership account :)
25. December 2008 at 02:20
Farrhad A
Great list :)
Many new ones for me.
25. December 2008 at 20:03
kovshenin
Great, thank you. I might as well translate a couple of those to russian, they’ll be popular! :)
29. December 2008 at 16:02
Steven-Sanders
Alot of them are very good, but some seem like they shouldn’t even be in this list.
30. December 2008 at 05:02
Revenue Robot
great list very useful when it comes to ideas for a new theme… thanks!
30. December 2008 at 05:05
Adam
Twittering about this list as we speak!
30. December 2008 at 05:07
Patricia Kaehler
Are these the FREE WP Themes — or is there a cost for each of these ??
Who has a link to the FREE Ones — thtat are considered
to be the HOT 100 Free WP Themes… ??
Thanks for this list…
there are some super looking ones in this batch…
~Patricia Kaehler
.
30. December 2008 at 05:09
Shinil Payamal
Hi,
Thanks for the pretty comprehensive list of featuring the Top WordPress themes of the year. Really interesting and lot of variety too. One of the most difficult things of putting up a WordPress blog is finding the right theme. You sure have made things easy for us. :-)
Wishing you a belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Best Wishes,
Shinil.
@shinils on Twitter – http://twitter.com/shinils
30. December 2008 at 05:17
KyNam Doan
Thanks for the list. Must have taken a while for you to put together. I’m definitely going to be trying some of these :) Happy new years!
30. December 2008 at 07:28
Lucian E. Marin
Thanks for mentioning Andrea. I’m working on a new version of it.
30. December 2008 at 11:09
Theme Reviewer
very good list. be sure to check out mine at: http://themereviewer.net
30. December 2008 at 14:54
BlogBuzz January 3, 2009
[...] The Best WordPress Themes of 2008 [...]
3. January 2009 at 21:02
Mitch
Definitely a great list – I’m really feeling Thesis at the moment though. I’ve just posted my thoughts on it here if you want to check it out.
27. January 2009 at 12:04
kelly
Does anyone know a great vendor to BUY WP themes. I’d like a custom design, but an out of the box solution.
I’d also like a vendor who can provide some support for questions.
11. February 2009 at 02:19
Internet Marketing IQ
I’m looking for a 980 pixel wide wordpress template with:
Layout Approximately:
200 px left column
480 px center column
300 px right column
Tabbed horizontal Navigation
Widget Friendly
WP 2.7 Compatible
Email me if you have a source; thanks
11. February 2009 at 11:23
Janan
I am always Thankful to Authors for posting such nice collection of Best wordpress themes, found almost 60% of them new. i like the design of “our community” Theme
25. February 2009 at 16:13
cmsdev
I really like them all. Great looking themes, but I guess Grid Focus is much more older then 2008
6. March 2009 at 19:11
Sandy Saini
thanks, very informative will try soon.i really want to design my own magazine theme for wordpress!
8. July 2009 at 22:25
Alex
wonderful collection, very nice!
14. July 2009 at 04:09