Mobile devices’ hardware and software development has been astounding lately. Heated and tough competition between Apple iPhone and iPad, Google’s Android and Microsoft Windows Phone shows how large the market presently stands. The amount of people browsing the internet using mobile devices are increasing daily, and there appears to be no sign of slowing down. This indicates that websites and blogs these days should be optimized not just for desktop users but for mobile device internet users as well.

WordPress aptly addresses this need and offers a variety of themes that can help you create mobile friendly websites easily. In this article, we present to you 8 excellent, high-quality free WordPress themes compatible with mobile devices. We know that there will be more free mobile compatible WordPress themes that will come around as mobile technology prospers and demand for these mobile friendly themes grows. If you know any recently released free mobile themes that should make it on the list, please feel free to holler us in your comments.

1. iPhonsta

iPhonsta has a fluid layout that fits most mobile screens not just for iPhones but works on most smartphones and it adjusts the font size automatically. It is also compatible with WordPress 3.0+.

2. Möbius

Möbius is free WordPress theme optimized for a variety of mobile devices and desktop browsers as well. Aside from extensive compatibility with mobile and desktop browsers, features also include three skins, widget functionality, social network sharing, jQuery scripting and many more.

3. jQuery Mobile Theme

jQuery Mobile Theme is optimized for various mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android, Blackberries, etc. Use it on your own blog, along with a plugin like IWPhone, which can automatically detect a mobile device and switch from your regular theme to a mobile theme.

4. News Press Mobile Theme

News Press theme is a simple yet elegant solution for creating an mobile-friendly news, blog, and other text-centric WordPress sites. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog customization features.

5. WPtouch

WPtouch is another simple straightforward mobile WordPress theme that automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices. It also offers visitors the option to switch between WPtouch view and your site’s regular theme.

6. WordPress Mobile Theme

Another minimalistic mobile WordPress theme that will look great on any mobile device. This lightweight mobile WordPress theme has key features like the ability to choose color theme, custom width and auto-generation of thumbs for your posts.

7. WordPress Mobile Pack

WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit that includes a standard mobile theme, mobile switcher, desktop and mobile admin panel, plus a whole lot more.

8. Carrington Mobile

Carrington Mobile is an elegant mobile theme that is compatible with most advanced mobile touch browsers like iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Palm Pre and is also backward compatible with older mobile devices.

It’s time to make rounds and share with you some of the best free WordPress themes for mid-year 2011. We know that there are a lot of free WordPress themes out there but not all free themes are good. And most of them were already outdated for the latest WordPress 3+ upgrade versions. So we selected 15 free and fresh WordPress themes made this year. Premium looking themes that we think will enhance the presentation of your blogs utilizing the latest WordPress 3+ upgrade features. Browse down and click either the title or the preview image to go to the web link of each free WordPress themes to view more info, demo and download. Enjoy!

1. Free WordPress 3.1 Theme: Splendio (With PSD Sources)

This free beautiful theme was designed by Vlad and Elena Scanteie of DesignDisease exclusively for Smashing Magazine. The theme is free to use in both private and commercial projects. The theme is based upon the Twenty Ten WordPress theme and requires WordPress 3.0 to run.

2. Free Magazine Style WP Theme – Agency

Agency is a magazine style theme complete with subtle page elements that is sure to add elegance to your pages. This theme is compatible with the latest WordPress release 3.0 and up, taking advantage of some its newer features. Features include custom slideshow, 2 widgetized sidebars, custom gallery styles with lightbox and built-in contact form.

3. Free Magazine/Personal Style WordPress Theme – Lucky Guess

Lucky Guess is a semi-magazine / semi-personal blog styled WordPress theme packed with some nifty features that you will find useful, especially for new blogs. This theme supports WordPress 3.0 featues. It comes with  custom jQuery Tabbed Container in the sidebar and custom styled photo galleries with a built in lightbox functionality. CSS3 and Google fonts were also implemented in this theme making it load faster as was tested to work on work in IE 7, 8, Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

4. Nyke Premium Theme

Nyke is a stylish WordPress 3 ready premium theme from fabseries. This is an ideal theme for personal blog, magazine site, etc. Designed with a blue, red and white color combination. The theme has nivo slider enabled on it, which gives you an option to enable or disable it.

5. Mentor Free WordPress Theme

Mentor is a 2 column free premium wordpress theme. This theme has green, brown, cream and white color scheme. This theme is very ideal for magazine and personal blogs. This WordPress 3 theme has custom menu features, thumbs for featured posts, tabbed content area, customizable banner ads, plus many more.

6. Iris WordPress Theme

Another cool Fabseries WordPress theme from Web2Feel. The design of this theme is very stylish modern with a minimalistic touch. This stylish theme is a 3 column WordPress theme that also features editable header text, widgetized sidebar, customizable menu, plus many more including latest WordPress 3 features.

7. WordPress Theme: Gadoliniument

Gadoliniument WP theme is a great theme for any blogger niche. It has cool features like welcome widget section, horizontal jQuery Accordion image slider, custom front page widgets and custom typography. It also has a clean and well-structured code for easy customization for your special needs and a .pot file for easy translation to your preferred language. Moreover, this WordPress 3+ ready theme is tried and tested to work in a multisite environment (WordPress MU).

8. Praseodymiumic WordPress theme

Praseodymiumic WordPress theme is a minimalist portfolio theme despite its hard to pronounce name. This theme comes with muted color palette, custom typography, custom front page widgets and testimonial widget. A testimonial section is also in place so that you can feature your previous client’s feedback for future references. This is also a WordPress 3+ and WordPress MU compatible theme. Praseodymiumic 1.1 upgrade is also available from Padd Solutions.

9. WordPress Theme: Ceriumoid

Ceriumoid is a three (3) column layout to accommodate more widgets and content. The built-in Facebook Like Box feature will help you gain more Facebook fans with an easy click like button.Ceriumoid also has built-in Facebook Like Box feature will help you gain more Facebook fans with an easy click like button. This theme is WordPress 3.1 and WordPress MU compatible.

10. MusicSense WordPress theme

MusicSense is a free WordPress theme with featured content option and supports the post thumbnails. Suitable for any niche. Theme features include post thumbnails, featured post, square and header banners, widgets ready, SEO optimized, plus many more. Logo and PSD files included.

11. Tendency Free WordPress theme

Tendency is a free WordPress theme with featured posts option that is suitable for any niche. This WordPress 3.0 ready theme offers features like custom menus, custom background, banners, widgets, SEO opmitized, gravatars, etc. Logo and PSD files included.

12. Mahasoli Tribune

This 2-column free WordPress theme features content slider, banner ads, widgets, post thumbnails, gravatars, etc. This WordPress 3.0 ready theme is also compatible with many popular browsers.

13. Leptocaros Magazine

This free theme is ideal not only for magazine type of blogs but for a lot of different WordPress blogs as well. It shows a clean and soft colored design with content slider built in. It also offers banner ad slots, different theme options, widgets, post thumbnails, WordPress 3 menu support and cross browser compatibility. Logo and PSD files are included in the download.

14. Habanera Magazine

This free magazine type theme has very stylish and cool content slider. It resonates bold and striking design with black and red colors. Content are well organized and it features a lot of theme features like banner ad slots, social bookmarking widgets, post thumbnails, page navigations plus many more. It is also WordPress 3 ready and compatible with many popular browsers. Logo and PSD files are also included in the package.

15. Kalixo Magazine

Kalixo is another free magazine wordpress theme from simplewpthemes.com. It comes in with natural woodeden background with content slider and gallery built in, adjustable theme options. This theme has fixed witdth, right sidebars, automatic image resizing, options for RSS/subscriptions, spots for banners, page navigation built in, WordPress 3.0 and google analytics ready.

The year is almost over. It’s time to gather once again some of the best free stuff we’ve had for this year. And once a year we do a quick roundup of the best free WordPress themes that we came across this year including a few noteable ones that came late last year.

WordPress has indeed come of age with its thirteenth major release of its version 3.0 (3.0.1 latest) bundled with big features like new APIs, new default theme, MU and WordPress merger, lighter interface, bug fixes and a whole lot more. New and fresh WordPress themes were also released to take advantage of these new features. Although there are hundreds or even thousands of premium WordPress themes around that you can purchase online, there are evidently more free high-quality and professionally written WordPress themes available today gaining popularity among the design and development community.

So today, we present to you some of the best free high-quality WordPress themes released in 2010 (some late 2009) for each major theme categories as follows:

1. Artsy Fancy Blogger WordPress Themes – Some of the most creatively done blogger WordPress themes catering to almost all type of blogger niche.
2. Minimalist WordPress Themes – Themes that are clean and lean, focusing more on functionality.
3. Portfolio and Gallery Type WordPress Themes – Themes for artists, photographers, or anyone who wants to showcase their sample of works online.
4. Magazine and News Style WordPress Themes – WordPress themes which can be used for sites with magazine or news based content.
5. E-Commerce WordPress Themes – Themes that uses WordPress as a platform for setting up an online store covering a variety of niche markets.
6. Pre-launch and Domain Parking WordPress Themes – Themes that offer pre-launch landing pages to temporarily show early visitors of under-construction sites.

Artsy Fancy Blogger WordPress Themes

1. Boldy

Demo
Download

2. Katana

Demo
Download

3. Peacekeeper

Demo
Download

4. Monte Cristo

Demo
Download

5. Kubrick on Crack

Demo
Download

6. DesignPile

Demo
Download

7. MyDiario Paper

Demo
Download

8. TopzGlow Sparkling WordPress Theme

Demo
Download

9. Praven

Demo
Download

10. Daisy

Demo
Download

Minimalist WordPress Themes

1. DailyNotes

Demo
Download

2. Brave Zeenat

Demo
Download

3. Skeptical

Demo
Download

4. Simplymalis

Demo
Download

5. Ulap WordPress Theme

Demo
Download

6. Simplo

Demo
Download

7. Side Blog

Demo
Download

8. SimpleFolio

Demo
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9. Smooth

Demo
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10. Modernist

Demo
Download

Portfolio and Gallery Type WordPress Themes

1. Fotofolio Landscape

Demo
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2. Big Square

Demo
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3. Auto Focus

Demo
Download

4. Work-a-holic

Demo
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5. Gallery WordPress Theme

Demo
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6. Mansion

Demo
Download

7. BlueBubble

Demo
Download

8. Artwork WordPress Theme

Demo
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9. Modfolio WordPress Theme

Demo
Download

10. Viewport

Demo
Download

Magazine and News Style WordPress Themes

1. Maxon Theme

Demo
Download

2. Magnezium Theme

Demo
Download

3. Cozy Colin

Demo
Download

4. Diversity

Demo
Download

5. Abis

Demo
Download

6. DeStyle WordPress Theme

Demo
Download

7. Zada News WordPress Theme

Demo
Download

8. Newspress Page

Demo
Download

9. Aparatus Theme

Demo
Download

10. WPlane WordPress Theme

Demo
Download

E-Commerce WordPress Themes

1. DangDoot E-Commerce Theme

Demo
Download

2. Kelontong WordPress E-Commerce Theme

Demo
Download

3. Ikonik

Demo
Download

4. Vanilla Cart

Demo
Download

5. AppCloud

Demo
Download

Pre-launch & Domain Parking WordPress Themes

1. Ready2Launch

Demo
Download

2. Beback WP

Demo
Download

3. Ice Breaker

Demo
Download

4. WP Blueprint

Demo
Download

5. Free “Site Under Construction” Template

Demo
Download

Time to hunt for some fresh and free WordPress themes once again. Especially now that WordPress 3.0 came out last June. There have been a lot of WordPress theme updates that are taking advantage of this new version’s features like custom post type, better menu management, editor style and many more. In this particular WordPress theme collection, I have gathered 15 free high-quality or premium like new themes that were made mid-2010 (June to August) and are WordPress 3.0 compatible. Scroll down, select, download and enjoy.

1. Malina theme from New WordPress Themes

Live Demo
Download

2. Revize WordPress Theme from New WordPress Themes

Live Demo
Download

3. Antares WordPress Theme from WordPress Corner

Live Demo
Download

4. Obscure Theme from WPCrunchy

Live Demo
Download

5. Cerestheme from WPCorner

Live Demo
Download

6. Marangal Theme from Padd Solutions

Live Demo
Theme Details

7. Nitrogenate from Padd Solutions

Live Demo
Theme Details

8. Magaling Reloaded from Padd Solutions

Live Demo
Theme Details

9. Hydrogenize Theme from Padd Solutions

Live Demo
Theme Details

10. The Morning After from Woo Themes

Live Demo
Download

11. Dimenzion WordPress Theme from Simply WP

Live Demo
Download

12. Boldy WordPress Theme from Site5.com

Live Demo
Download

13. Newspress Page from WPCrunchy

Live Demo
Download

14. Bright Sky from Kreative Themes

Live Demo
Download

15. Daily Note Theme from Design Disease

Live Demo
Download

It’s been a while since we rounded up last year our “2009 Year-end Free Quality WordPress Themes“. And barely two months this 2010, quite a number of nice and free WordPress themes already came out. So here we are again sharing with you our first set of a dozen best picks of the freshest free WordPress themes this 2010.

This is timely for some of you planning to change their WordPress theme this 2010. These are also perfect for new WordPress bloggers because these are easy to use, highly customizeable themes loaded with many useful features.

Preview and download your choice theme below. Please check out carefully each theme’s usage policy before you use them. Enjoy!

1. Piano Black by Mono-lab

Dark and clean, cutting-edge two-column design.

Theme Preview
Download

2. Comment Central by ThemeBuilder

High quality WordPress theme by ThemeBuilder. Very colorful grungy theme in two columns with left sidebar dropdown menu and widget-ready.

Theme Preview
Download

3. Sparkler from TopWPThemes

A cool WordPress theme that has built-in ajax gallery, widget, twitter and social bookmarks.

Theme Preview
Download

4. Tutorialicious from TopWPThemes

A beautiful two-column theme with newsletter feature, ajax and widget ready.

Theme Preview
Download

5. Wood3 WP Theme from Skinpress

Theme Preview
Download

6. Tauri WordPress Theme from Skinpress

A clean, no-fuss, straighforward wordpress theme. Great for any blog niche.

Theme Preview
Download

7. Blacko WordPress Theme from Skinpress

A premium looking free WordPress theme complete with all features you need for your blog. Another great WordPress theme for any blog niche.

Theme Preview
Download

8. Recipy WordPress theme from Skinpress

Another great free WordPress theme from Skinpress. A cool and grungy theme perfect for any food, recipe or cooking related blog.

Theme Preview
Download

9. SimpleFolio from Slimmity

This well organized clean looking free WordPress theme has 2 different widget areas, threaded and paged comments, and some advance settings that you can play with.

Theme Preview
Download

10. Choco from New WordPress Themes

This free WordPress theme is as tempting as chocolate loaded with great features like featured content and video, banner ads, social bookmarks, and many more.

Theme Preview
Download

11. Stratie from New WordPress Themes

This very cutting edge looking WordPress theme suits any blog niche. It is also loaded with many great features like banner ads, featured content, social bookmarks, widgets and gravatars. It is also compatible with the latest WP versions.

Theme Preview
Download

12. Blue News from New WordPress Themes

Another great premium looking free WordPress theme from newwpthemes. This theme can be suitable for any niche and not just for news or journalism blogs.

Theme Preview
Download

Obviously, most of you regular readers will notice that Graphic Design Free Resources is now sporting a new look. I’ve been itching to change theme since third quarter this year but I kept holding back and wanted to change it in time for the new year. So here it is, Designfreebies 2010, new year, new theme, new look.

I wanted to have a new theme that looks different from the old one but would like to retain a similar layout and structure so I will have an easy time migrating all contents. Though I had an easy time changing theme, I still wanted to add and change a few things. So expect some small changes here and there occasionally.

For those of you not familiar with how the old Designfreebies theme looks like, here’s a snap. Sorry if this is somewhat small, this is the only screenshot I have. I forgot to snap one before I tore it down.

You will notice that we have a darker site design this time compared to the bright one we previously have. But it’s not totally dark as only the background is dark (and not totally dark black, it’s dark bluish gray) but the contents are still contained in a light grayish box making it easier to read and doesn’t give off too much bright light and strain on the eyes. I hope most of you feels the same way.

So how do you change your WordPress theme smoothly without major glitches? Here are some of the steps I have taken to ensure a goof-proof WordPress theme change.

1. Try it offline first

We don’t normally wear anything and just take off, or wear something for the first time on the event itself only to find out it that doesn’t look right. We usually shop around and fit it first before we decide that its the right outfit that we will wear for some big event. Similarly, you can shop around for WordPress themes and try them on offline first before going live.

So how do you run an offline blog server where you can play around with your themes? You can get XAMPP, install it in your machine and you’re off running your own internal Apache server. You can download XAMMP for Windows from Apache Friends. You can also read a lot of tutorials and guides on how to install XAMMP and WordPress virtually on your PC similar to this wonderful tutorial on XAMMP and WordPress installation.

2. Backup

This is important before you start changing your WordPress theme. You will need to backup up two things, your database and your old theme folder, just in case something went wrong with your new installation and you have to revert back to your old theme. You will be doing database backup first because you will also need it to run a copy of your blog on your PC with XAMMP. There are several WordPress backup plugins that you can use but I prefer either of the two popular backup plugins, “WordPress Backup” or “WP-DB-Backup“.  Then after you have decided which theme you’re going to use and before changing your theme, backup your old theme folder first.

3. Disable all active WordPress plug-ins

Some people reported to have encountered white screen of death after changing their WordPress theme. This is primarily due to incompatible plug-ins with the new theme. So it is better to disable everything first before you change your theme. Then just enable them after. It will be better if you enable them one at a time so you can easily track conflicting plug-ins.

You will also have to re-evaluate your plug-ins as some of them will be redundant with your current theme. Previously, I was using a WordPress plug-in called “Home Excerpt” to make my home page display only excerpts and not full stories. After installing the new theme, I had trouble displaying thumb images on my home page primarily due to the “Home Excerpt” plug-in conflict which I don’t need anymore since my new theme has built-in home excerpt feature. I remove that plug-in and everything works well.

4. Take note of the all settings and changes you made from your old theme files

Aside from backing-up your old theme files, you must also remember which files (php) you made changes to, like places where you added your adsense codes and other ad network codes, a few hacks you did, tracking codes, etc. Take note of them or make a detailed list about all of them.

5. Upload your new theme files and fire away

After carefully doing steps 1 to 4 and uploading all theme files to your server, it’s now time to hit the “activate” new theme button. I would assume that you have already made some customization with your new theme while testing and playing with it offline, like changing your header logo, colors, etc. It would be better if you have done that before you upload and change theme. That is also one main reason why I advise testing your new theme offline first so you can configure and prepare it beforehand before going live. That way, you’ll have seamless transition and avoid warding off visitors while your site changes theme.

6. Configure theme options, customize and optimize it further

You will still need some minor adjustments if you have done customizing it offline because most of the time there are still differences between viewing it offline and online. You will also need to restore your ad codes, site tracking codes, RSS feeds, etc.

At this point, you will also need to check a few things like broken links, possible security loopholes, missing pages or category listings. Further down, you will also need to check if all your plug-ins are properly configured and working. And lastly, see if you can still optimize your blog further like replacing or deleting unnecessary PHP codes, removal of unused plug-ins and themes, removal of unnecessary JavaScripts, etc.

You might also want to read this fine article from Digital Inspiration about “Things that you can do after installing a WordPress theme”.

Well that’s it. I hope these WordPress theme changing tips serves you well and that you’ll have a trouble-free new WordPress theme for your blog this coming new year. I wish everyone a blessed and prosperous 2010. Thank you for such a wonderful 2009 and for your continued support and contribution to Graphic Design Free Resources. Happy new year everyone!

Free high-quality WordPress themes are getting harder to find these past few months, primarily due to two main reasons, a lot of new platforms are being developed and introduced lately and many theme designers these days would rather sell premium themes than develope free ones. But inspite of the free WordPress theme deficit, we were able to gather a few more high-quality premium looking free WordPress themes before the year ends, topping off our previous “10 of the Best Mid-2009 Free WordPress Themes” post.

So if you’re planning to re-design your entire blog during the holidays and in time for the new year, this is the best time to search around for some nice looking free WordPress themes. Browse below from 15 of the freshest free WordPress themes around, download and try them out and see how it would nicely fit your site.

1. Obscure – Free Community Based WordPress Theme

Obscure is a premium dark magazine wordpress theme from wpcrunchy which is suitable for any site niche but would best fit community based sites. It has a lot of features like built-in theme ad blocks, content gallery, twitter integration, social bookmarks and many more.

2. Monkeypr theme

Monkeypr theme is a stylish looking theme that is amusing and fun to look at.

3. Inuit WordPress Theme

This is one nice looking minimalist WordPress theme. It makes use of a lot of whitespace effectively and preview images for each post on the homepage. The theme also comes integrated with Twitter and Flickr.

4. Cardio Minimal

Another minimalist WordPress theme that made it on our list. A clean three-column theme with plenty of white spacse and gray text.

5. Berita Business WordPress Theme

I’m feeling light these days so another minimalist theme made it. Berita is a free business WordPress theme that will suit every company that wants to display its corporate image clearly and professionally. It has some cool features like front page slider, custom language translations, breadcrumbs navigation, SEO options, custom widgets like Twitter and subscription widgets, plus many more.

6. Rockstar Theme from WooThemes

Rockstar theme has simple layout with clean colour palette. It is highly customizeable and neatly coded theme with integrated banner ad management, widgetized sidebar, and 6 different colour schemes to choose from.

7. Mainstream from WooThemes

Another one from WooThemes. Mainstream is a vibrant personal blog theme with five colorful selection of styles, built-in WooThemes flexible theme framework, boasting a selection of theme options. Thumbnails are automatically generated and the sidebar is widgetized.

8. Imprezz from ProductiveDreams

Imprezz is a 3 column WordPress theme with a 3-dimensional second column. This theme supports wordpress 2.7.1 up and works well with the zdcomments widget (a widget that is used to display the top commenters).

9. The Clam Shell from Fearless Flyer

The Clam Shell is a two-column WordPress theme with well organized structure and clean cut design. This straightforward theme has large large icons with CSS sprites, static sidebar with customizable graphics, socialize buttons and many more.

10. Imagination from CSS Jockey

Imagination is a highly customizable WordPress Theme that comes pre-loaded with 9 different site-wide styles to choose from. These styles are great when you want to customize your site according to your mood, occasion or preferences.

11. FreeStyle from Digital Visions

FreeStyle is a three-column WordPress theme built for WordPress 2.8+. FreeStyle has built-in support for sidebar widgets, comments, custom default avatars. Layout & Logo PSD files are also included for easy customization.

12. BlackPower Theme

The latest theme from SkinPress is widget ready with Twitter “follow me” button that also embed your latest tweet in the header. This 2-column theme with black wood effect is completely cross browser tested.

13. Zherald WordPress Theme

Zherald is a hard to resist magazine style WordPress theme. The theme is equipped with an image slider, featured post section, featured video, custom banner ads, adsense integration and many more. Another great thing about this theme is that all required plugins are supplied along with it.

14. Chronicle

Chronicle is a news style WordPress theme developed by Jinsona. This theme has jquery featured news slider, news highlight section, featured video, tabbed content, and news previews with thumbnails.

15. Jungleland

Last to make it on our list is Jungleland WordPress theme from Themelab. This theme has six widgetized areas, including a widgetized footer, as well as a custom widget included with the theme. It also has threaded comments, where WordPress 2.7+ is required.

I don’t mean scrapbooking per se, but rather WordPress themes that has those scrapbook style type of designs. Although some of these free themes are really meant for scrapbook blogs, but all of these can be used for a wide variety of blog types, most suitably for personal blogs, design blogs, diary blogs, travel blogs, and a lot more.

Scrapbooking has been a continuing and evolving hobby, and with the advent of electronic and digital devices, we are seeing more of it referred to as  “digital scrapbooking” or “computer scrapbooks”. Although as a design style, it hasn’t been officially recognized yet in mainstream graphic design, but yet we can claim that it sprouted from one main graphic design style which is the Arts and Crafts Movement of late 19th to early 20th century. And most recently, with the popularity of the grunge design style, we’ve been seeing more websites adopting this kind of scrapbook style grunge mix of design.

Scrapbook style is somewhat related or similar to grunge style, in such a way that both of them are natural, more personal, sentimental and down to earth. They also share similar design elements like hand-written text, torn notes, notepads, sticky notes, random photos, paper clips, adhesive tapes, paper textures, fabrics, and other objects that conveys something personal about its subject. In as much as grunge design doesn’t have to be always deathmetal dark and dirty, a good mix of grunge and scrapbook can help keep things in balance.

So here are 10 free WordPress themes with scrapbook style and a bit of grungy mix that I have gathered so far. Although there aren’t many, I hope a lot of WordPress theme developers would develop and throw more free themes like these. I also saw some good premium scrapbook style themes around in case you’re really dead serious about this type of design and doesn’t mind shelling out a few bucks for a theme.

1. Floral Day by SimplyWP

SimplyWP has released a two column WordPress theme called Floral Day that would be perfect for scrapbook, sewing and craft related blogs.

Demo
Download

2. RedEvo Scrapbook

A free 2-column, widget ready WordPress theme from Redevolution.

Demo
Download

3. Green Scrapbook Diary from Photomix

Here’s a theme developed by SimplyWP for Photomix. A 3-column, fixed-width with right sidebar WordPress theme.

Demo
Download

4. Scrapbook from ericulous

A single column fixed-width with hidden Ajax sidebar from Smashing Free WordPress Themes.

Demo
Download

5. Livin Grunge

This WordPress theme may not be totally scrapbook looking, but it leans more towards being a trendy grunge type of design. It has three columns, adsense ready with advertising blocks, right sidebar, cross browser compatible with IE, FF, Opera, Flock & Safari, valid XHTML & CSS and widget ready.

Demo
Download

6. Outdoorsy

Beautiful two column theme, quite graphics heavy and dark, but very unique.

Demo
Download

7. Fresh Editorial

A professionally and neat looking WordPress theme  with categories and pages in the header and vertical position.

Demo
Download

8. Notepad Chaos

This theme has been featured a lot of times simply because this theme is absolutely gorgeous.

Demo
Download

9. My Diary from Gecko & Fly

My Diary is a two column WordPress theme with a simple design, stylish hand-written text, and its ability to display image of the specific day automatically according to the date the post is written, thus giving it a hand crafted touch to it. Also included in the download package is the Photoshop (PSD) of the header for easy customization.

Demo
Download

10. Photo Frame from Template Lite

A nicely designed Photo Frame theme where you can replace the picture in the middle frame with a photo of your choice.

Demo
Download

A lot of people are into photography these days. I myself have been recently bitten by the photography bug and would also like to have a photo blog soon. Looking around for some inspiring photo blogs, I came across a dozen free but premium looking photo blog WordPress themes. Which inspired me even more to start a photo blog.

These maybe few but I hope you find something suitable if you are also looking to start your own photo blog or if you just want a new theme for an existing one. If you also happen to know similarly free stunning photo blog WordPress themes that are not included in this list, you are most welcome to share it with us by mentioning about it in your comments. Enjoy!

1. Fotofolio

A very simple and easy to use free wordpress template designed for online portfolios of photographers, visual artists, graphic designers, etc. Fotofolio is created by Pupung Budi Purnama. Fotofolio is released under Creative Common Licence.

Demo
Download Theme
Download PSD Logo

2. Viewport

A simple 1 column WordPress theme by Paulicio at New WP Themes.

Demo
Download theme

3. The Unstandard

Simple yet cutting edge design created by Derek Punsalan of 5ThirtyOne. This WordPress theme has 3 columns and 3 widget zones.

Demo
Download theme

4. Autofocus 1.0.1

A simple yet elegant theme for photo blogs created by Allan Cole.

Demo
Download theme

5. Going Pro Gallery Theme

A gallery theme with clean table like design created by Alexandru Negrea for Going Pro.

Demo
Download theme

6. Photo Blog theme from WPGlamour

An eye-catching photo blog theme with single column from WP Glamour.

Demo
Download theme

7. Aperio

Stylish and pretty photo blog theme created by Robert Ellis of Futurosity.

Demo
Download theme

8. Folio Elements

This is a very basic WordPress theme with a clean and efficient design intended to put your best content forward in a way that is enticing and fun for the user.

Demo
Download link

9. Gallery WordPress Theme by Chris Wallace

Gallery is a beautiful showcase-style WordPress theme created by Chris Wallace, built on the Thematic framework as a child theme.

Demo
Download Gallery 1.2.1
Download Thematic 0.9.5

10. Galleria WordPress Photo Blog Theme

Beautiful grungy looking 2 columns, fixed-width with threaded comments free theme for photo blog or online portfolio.

Demo
Download theme

11. Professor – Free Photo Blog WordPress Theme

Professor may not be designed specifically as a photo blog but this brown-tinged, two-column WordPress theme displays images with such elegance and clarity that probably makes me include it among the top 12 photo blog theme favorites.

Download theme for WordPress 2.3
Download theme for WordPress 2.5

Also Available in Blue Professor variant.

12. Photography

And last but not the least, a free theme called Photography. It may sound generic but design wise, it looks top-notch elegant and not far from any premium magazine or photo gallery themes around. It is a widget ready theme that can effectively showcase your portfolio or photo gallery.

Demo
Download link

Lately I was thinking of changing my WordPress theme but decided to leave it for a while. While at it, I roam around to see if there are new WordPress themes worth considering should I decide to change mine, or if any WordPress bloggers here would like to ask some recommendations. We came up with 10 of the latest and best looking WordPress themes around. These themes cover a wide variety of needs, layouts and customization.

1. Smashing Magazine’s Paper Wall

Still hot off the press. This WordPress theme rocks! And if I were to change mine, this one will always be on top of my list. This theme, which was designed by Adrian Lazariuc of Indeziner, has a unique colorful design that will perfectly fit for your personal blogs and, if customized, can be a perfect fit for a unique magazine-style-blog.

Link to Smashing Magazine article for theme demo, download and support: Free WordPress Theme: Paper Wall

2. Darktouch from Toptuts

If you like all the sweet little Ajax plug ins that make things slide on your static screen without employing flash ? you are going to love this theme, called dark Touch. Very beautiful and vivid colors combination with sleek icon graphics and Vista-like header image. No plug ins are required to run this theme. Rounded corners are defined in CSS with nested comments enabled.

Theme Demo
Download Link

3. Vic theme from Toptuts

This theme is ready for 125*125 advertisement, Slide in gallery, thumbnails in posts, nested comments and in-built admin panel that allows you to manage featured posts and images in the gallery and more.

Theme Demo
Download Link

4. Shining Glow from Free WordPress Themes (themes2wp.com)

Premium style Free WordPress Theme with two columns, Widgetized sidebar, easy social bookmarking, 125px ad spots and cross browser compliant, recent comments and posts tabs, featured posts slider and auto thumbnail sizing. It could fit multi purpose niches and is provided for free.

Theme Demo
Download Link

5. Flow Theme from Toptuts

You will need the Twitter for WordPress and Limit posts Automatically plug in to make this beautiful theme to work. Thumbnails are working with default Thumbnail custom field. The theme is ready for 200 x 200 advertisement space which can be used for Adsense banner or your own custom banner. This wordpress theme is also ready for all the major social bookmarks both from front page and inner pages. Elegant yet very modern design, pleasant color scheme with wood and ornaments makes this layout suitable for any niche.

Theme Demo
Download Link

6. Travelling Logbook from Fresheezy

Travel theme with beatiful orange notebook style, designed for WordPress 2.7 and older versions. Two columns layout and fixed width. Left sidebar and pretty cool navigation.

Theme Demo
Download Link

7. Gallery version 1.1 by Chris Wallace

With the recent success of Gallery 1.0 Chris Wallace did for Smashing Magazine, he recently released version 1.1, which includes quite a few changes, including a custom write panel (shown below), bugfixes for IE6 (mainly the navigation menu), and other bugfixes. Gallery is a beautiful, free, gallery-style Thematic child theme for WordPress. It is extremely flexible and can be used as a starting point for design galleries and portfolios. You will need to grab and upload both the Gallery and Thematic themes to make it work.

Download Gallery Theme
Download Thematic

8. Grunge Style from TemplateLite.com

Another personal favorite. This theme was designed by Brian of TemplateLite for SmashingApps. This theme will suit best any personal or private blogs.  This theme will work best with WordPress 2.8+. It’s prominent features are Right Sidebar, Fixed Width, 3 Columns, Widget Ready, Valid XHtml, Valid CSS, Cross-Browser Compatible, Optimized for SEO, Sticky Post, Gravatar Enabled, Easy Setup of the theme.

Link to Smashing Apps article for theme demo, download and support: Smashing Release : Grunge Style, A 3-Column Free WordPress Theme

9. Coffee Desk from TemplateLite.com

Another amazing free WordPress theme from Templatelite.com. Coffee Desk theme is widget ready, with 3 columns and right sidebar, complatible with IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, W3C XHTML and CSS compliant.

Theme Demo
Download Link

10. Meta-morphosis from Woothemes.com

Meta-Morphosis is a visually-rich personal blog from Woothemes, with a magazine layout approach. Incorporating some nifty javascript font replacement and javascript widget slider in the footer, Meta-Morphosis should meet all of your personal blogging needs. Best of all its FREE!

Theme Demo
Download Link