Many Premium theme developers release quality free WordPress themes from time to time in order to push traffic to their website and promote their premium designs.
If you have been looking for a good free WordPress theme then you will probably have come across websites that release new designs for free on a weekly basis. This page lists websites that have large collections of free WordPress themes. One design from each website has been downloaded and tested to ensure that no spyware or hidden code is included in the template.
Please note that many of designs in large theme collections are incredibly outdated and the majority of designs include 1 or more credit links in the footer. We advise always checking that you are downloading a theme from the correct location too.
Free WordPress Theme Providers
The following websites release free WordPress themes on a regular basis. The WP Mods Themes Archive is also a great place to look if you are looking for a good free design.
- Free WP Themes – A collection of over 300 basic WordPress themes. One credit link is included in the footer though this can be deleted if you wish.
- Top WP Themes – A directory of basic free WordPress themes from random developers. Then theme that we tested was safe and the two included footer links could be deleted however it is advisable to test any theme before applying to a live website as there are so many different developers providing the designs.
- Official WordPress Theme Directory – The largest collection of free WordPresss themes on the web.
- WP Explorer – A beautiful collection of free blogging, magazine and photography WordPress themes.
- WP Themely – A good number of blogging and magazine themes. Each design contains a whopping 4 credit links though you can remove these by editing the footer.php template.
Help us help you: If you find any themes from the above providers forcing you to keep links in the footer, please let us know and we will move them to the hall of shame….
HALL OF SHAME
Unfortunately, there are WordPress theme designers out there who are using somewhat dodgy tactics in order to guarantee a link back to their website. If you remove the credit link the theme stops working. It is very important that you are aware of the websites that are encrypting sponsorship links in their designs therefore we have listed the guilty parties here.
Whether you download a theme from one of these websites is up to you though we strongly strongly encourage you not to use a design from any designer who forces you to include a link back to their website. It’s good karma to keep one credit link back to the designers website of a free design as a way of saying thanks though the decision of whether this link is retained has to be made by the website owner.
Our advice: Don’t download themes from these websites!
- FThemes – Each design contains 4 links to random sponsored websites. If you delete the credit links you receive this message on the live website “All the links in the footer should remain intact. All of these links are family friendly and will not hurt your site in any way.”. NOT RECOMMENDED.
- Moon Themes – Moon Themes do not encrypt their themes so you can delete the sponsorship links and your website will still work. They do however have a very strongly worded license agreement that you must agree to before downloading a theme.
Users must at all pages have the pre-installed our designer Links at the bottom of their web site. User is not allowed to remove those links (Unless the user pays the link removal fee). Keeping WebHostingYes.com and MoonThemes.com links at the bottom of the Theme is compulsory in order to use this Premium WordPress Theme for Free: By violating linking rules you fully be aware of committing Copyright violation, and are in breach of contract. Your web site will be shut down at all costs and unquestionably legal action will be taken against.
NOT RECOMMENDED.
- New WP Themes – 4 credit links are included in the footer. If the links are removed the theme stops working and your website displays the message “All the links in the footer should remain intact. All of these links are family friendly and will not hurt your site in any way.”.NOT RECOMMENDED.
- Padd Solutions – One credit link is included in the footer though if you remove it your website stops working and you are presented with the message “Something wrong”. NOT RECOMMENDED.
- Simple WP Themes – If you remove the single credit link your whole website stops working (live website and admin area) and a message is displayed stating that “This theme is sponsored, all links in the footer should remain intact”. NOT RECOMMENDED.
How To Quickly Check If Your Theme Is Encrypted
The quick and easy way to check if a theme is encrypted is to open up the footer.php template either on your computer or in your WordPress theme editor at http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/theme-editor.php. Usually the theme developer includes a message warning you not to change any code but this doesn’t always occur. The code below is taken from the footer.php template of a theme from New WP Themes.
<div class="span-24">
<div id="footer">Copyright © <a href="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>"><strong><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></strong></a> - <?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php // This theme is released free for use under creative commons licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
// All links in the footer should remain intact.
// These links are all family friendly and will not hurt your site in any way.
// Warning! Your site may stop working if these links are edited or deleted
// You can buy this theme without footer links online at http://newwpthemes.com/buy/ ?>
<div id="footer2">Powered by <a href="http://wordpress.org/"><strong>WordPress</strong></a> | Designed by: <a href="http://mssharepointhosting.com/">SharePoint</a> | Thanks to <a href="http://virtualdesktoponline.com/">Online Desktop</a>, <a href="http://businessemailhosting.com/exchange-hosting/">Exchange Hosting</a> and <a href="http://projectserverhosting.com/">Project Server Hosting</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php
wp_footer();
echo get_theme_option("footer") . "\n";
?>
</body>
</html>4 Sponsorship links is too much for most people however if you remove the credit links your website will stop working and the following message will be displayed:
If the theme developer has used Base64 encoding to encrypt the theme then you won’t see standard HTML. Instead you will just see lines and lines of random numbers and letters.
Bottom line, if a theme stops working because you wan’t to edit it in some way, stop using it!
