Expressivo (Center) is a free WordPress theme – based on Expressivo – a three-column layout, but with the blog post content centered. It’s got the same feature list – a jQuery dropdown pages menu, Cufon embedded fonts for post titles, a custom header image and threaded and paged comments.

Version 1.1 has been tested on Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 6 & 7 and Opera 9.

Features

• Add your own header image or logo
• jQuery dropdown menu for pages – exclude and configure the item order
• Cufon Embedded fonts
• Custom link and hover colors

Demo: Expressivo (Center) demonstration

Download: Expressivo (Center) WordPress Theme v1.1 – expressivo-center.zip Compatible with WP > version 2.8

This theme is released under the terms of the GPL licence v2.

Our free themes are supplied “as is” – sorry, but we don’t have the resources to offer support for email enquiries or comments about individual installation/customisation.

Mistral is a free WordPress theme – a two-column layout, with a righthand sidebar. Plus a static pages menu, Cufon embedded fonts for widget headings, a replaceable logo area and paged- and threaded- comments.

Version 1.1 has been tested on Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Google Chrome and Opera 9.

Features

• Replace blog info header with your own logo / design
• Cufon embedded fonts for widget headings
• Customized link and hover colors

Demo: Mistral demonstration

Download: Mistral WordPress Theme v1.1 – mistral.zip Compatible with WP > version 2.9

This theme is released under the terms of the GPL licence, v2.

Our free themes are supplied “as is” – sorry, but we don’t have the resources to offer support for email enquiries or comments about individual installation/customisation.

Expressivo is a free WordPress theme, three-column with two righthand sidebars – going to a single sidebar on single posts and pages. With Cufon embedded fonts for post titles, threaded and paged comments – you can also replace the header completely with your own image.

Version 1.1 has been tested on Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Google Chrome, Opera 9.

Features

• Custom link and hover colors
• jQuery dropdown menu for static pages – exclude pages and configure item order
• Add your own header image / logo
• Embedded fonts
• Translation ready

Demo: Expressivo demo

Download: Expressivo WordPress Theme v1.1 – expressivo.zip Compatible with WP > version2.8

This theme is released under the terms of the GPL licence.

Our free themes are supplied “as is” – sorry, but we don’t have the resources to offer support for email enquiries or comments about individual installation/customisation. You’re free to use and modify them as you wish, but we would ask you to retain the credit link in the footer.

Intrepid is a free WordPress theme, two-column with a right sidebar, compatible with WordPress version 2.8 upwards, with threaded and paged comments. 3 styles of pastel shades to choose from – blue-green, green-brown and purple-gray as default… You can also replace the header completely with your own image.

Version 1.1 has been tested on Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Google Chrome, Opera 9.

Features

• jQuery dropdown pages menu – configure the item order and exclude pages
• Add your own logo in the header
• 3 pre-defined color schemes (so far…)

Demo: Intrepid demo

Download: Intrepid WordPress Theme v1.1 – intrepid.zip (Compatible with WP > version2.8)

This theme is released under the terms of the GPL licence.

Our free themes are supplied “as is” – sorry, but we don’t have the resources to offer support for email enquiries or comments about individual installation/customisation. You’re free to use and modify them as you wish, but we would ask you to retain the credit link in the footer.

Since the arrival of WordPress 2.7, the true framework is based on the concept of parent/child WordPress themes.

A child theme is dependent on its parent – here, the framework – for its template files and functions, it’s not going work without it – ‘parasite’ might be a better name.

When you install a WordPress framework theme, it doesn’t look very impressive to start with – black and white – but that’s not the point. The basic idea is to cover all the fundamentals in the parent framework, the stuff every good theme needs, and keep separate the fancy styling, add-ons etc. in the child theme.

The art of a good framework is how it lets in the customization. Much like PHP frameworks, used wisely, they allow flexibility and concise code, quickly applied – used unwisely, they rapidly become a big old mess with far too many moving parts…

Any good WordPress theme developer will have ended up with a core code that does the job the way he or she thinks best – and this is the origin of a framework. Frankly, if you are are more programming-orientated as a theme designer than design-orientated, they may not be for you. Whether you stick with your code, or dip into your first framework child theme, up to you… but here are the current market leaders, as it were, in no particularly significant order.

Thematic
Produced by Ian Stewart, the prime mover in getting parent-child themes off the ground, Thematic has grids, CSS frameworks, and 13 different widget-ready areas. There’s a growing selection of child themes, free and premium, and support forums.

ThemeHybrid
Again, all the usual goodies, ThemeHybrid also comes with a good selection of child themes built up. For enhanced support in developing and customizing your own theme, ThemeHybrid has a paid club membership option (currently US$25).

Buffet
Buffet has a variety of jQuery features – Superfish menus, SuperSleight for png transparency in IE6, jBreadcrumb. It also offers 2 CSS frameworks – 960gs and the Blueprint CSS frameworks – and support for microformats, XOXO, hAtom, hCard…

Sandbox
Sandbox is probably the original – been around for years – a minimalist WordPress Theme, designed for developers to build on and produce workable themes simply using CSS. But it’s fully widget-ready, XHTML valid and released under the GPL.

OnePress
The unique proposition for OnePress is its integration with phpBB, with a unified login and forum messages displayed on the blog – if you’re a jobbing site-builder this is certainly something that comes up as a very common client requirement.

Conclusion

There are other frameworks – many other frameworks – in different states of development. This is a hot topic in WordPress theme design and I’m sure the situation will continue to evolve – much like the arrival of javascript libraries, there’ll be a fair amount of competition before the winner(s) emerge.

Running your own WordPress is a big deal now, lots of people want to get in on the action. We get about 50-80 email requests a week for help with installing and customising free themes (ours and others) – so, simple fact is, if we replied and worked through them all, we wouldn’t have a whole load of time to do anything else, like earning a living etc. And so we just don’t have the resources to offer support for free themes.

The best place to go is the WordPress Support Forum – search first, and if you don’t find a good answer, post your query, they’re a knowledgeable lot there…

Our free themes are provided “as is” – they should work, we’ve tried to make sure of that, but there are different systems around the place (if we could get rid of IIS, we would…), different WordPress plugins may or may not have good code in them – and so that’s why we can’t offer a 100% guarantee.

One other thing – experience shows the #1 most likely answer to a WordPress theme support question = “the image is too wide”…

Sorry, but we don’t guarantee that our themes, free or premium, will work 100% if used in a WordPress multi-user environment.

Why not? Simply because there’s too great a variation in paths, subdomains and subfolders etc. and it just doesn’t seem to be possible to cover all eventualities – at present, anyway. This isn’t particularly the fault of the WordPress multi-user developers – it’s more about how Apache, mod_rewrite and the whims of hosting sysadmins fit together at the moment.

Themes can be made to work – on an individual basis, depending on your installation. But a lot of this will involve editing of paths in the theme functions.php, both for wp-content/ with things like loaded jQuery scripts and also wp-includes/ for including basic scripts, such as jQuery itself, permalinks and even images.

Also, not everyone has access to their server’s http.conf – and there are a number of tricks here, mainly involving AllowOverride, that can be used to get results with multi-user. It’s no good saying do this, and our themes will definitely work, if you can’t get at the actual file…

You might get lucky, if there’s luck in programming, and it will work straight out of the box – but, as I say, no guarantee.

Panorama – the new release has only very minor changes in function (so certainly no need to rush to update) but does have some additions in terms of language mo files, sv_SE Swedish now being an option…

Persephone is a free WordPress theme, two-column, with a right sidebar, compatible with WordPress version 2.7 upwards, and all ready for paged and threaded comments. 3 styles to choose from, good old blue, red, green…

Version 1.1 has been tested on Firefox 2,3, Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Chrome, Opera 9.

Features

• Twitter badge link
• Add your own logo image in header
• Horizontal page menu – configure order and exclude for top-level pages
• Custom RSS links – add your Feedburner url from the admin

Demo: Persephone demo

Download: Persephone WordPress Theme v1.1 – persephone.zip

Our free themes are supplied “as is” – sorry, but we don’t have the resources to offer support for enquiries about individual installation/customisation. You’re free to use and modify them as you wish, but we would ask you to retain the credit link in the footer.

Ringbinder has been updated and improved (hopefully) – a free WordPress theme, two-column, with a right sidebar, it’s now compatible with WordPress version 2.7 upwards, and all set up for threaded comments.

Version 1.3 tested on Firefox 2,3, Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Chrome, Opera 9.

Features

• Horizontal page menu – configure order and exclude pages
• 3 color styles to choose from…

Demo: Ringbinder demo

Download: Ringbinder WordPress Theme v1.4 – ringbinder.zip

Our free themes are supplied “as is” – sorry, but we don’t have the resources to offer support for enquiries about individual installation/customisation. You’re free to use and modify them as you wish, but we would ask you to retain the credit link in the footer.