2010 has been a big year for WordPress. The release of WordPress 3 proved to be a huge success with over 11 million downloads in 42 days.
In the last year there has also been an increase in the number of premium themes from WordPress theme stores. However there has also been a lot of great free theme designs released this year. Today I would like to show you 10 of my favourite free WordPress themes from 2010.
I hope you enjoy the list 
Free WordPress Themes From 2010
1. Aparatus
A fantastic blogging theme from FearlessFlyer boasts a great navigation menu in the header, a huge Twitter follow button, a slideshow featured post area on the home page and advertisement integration.
The theme comes with it’s own options area where you can change ad settings, determine how the slideshow is displayed and choose one of 4 colour stylesheets.
2. 2010 Weaver
Twenty Ten was released near the start of the year as the new default WordPress theme. It’s versatile, clean and easy to modify.
2010 Weaver extends this great theme by allowing you to change the colours of fonts. You can also quickly hide the title and description via the main options menu. Customisations can be saved and then restored at a later date too.
2010 Weaver also comes with 15 different styles which is useful for those of you who are not sure about what colour scheme to use. Essentially 2010 Weaver is the natural heir to Twenty Tens throne!
3. Designpile
Designed by Site5 for Smashing Magazine, DesignPile is a dark theme with a white main content area. It comes with it’s own options page where you can choose from 3 colour styles (green,pink/red,blue).
4. iGadgets
A good looking tech theme which uses the post thumbnail feature. The theme has it’s own options page where you can enter your Twitter information, change the logo, enter tracking codes and much more. The psd file for the logo is included in the zip file too.
5. Enkelt
A clean corporate theme which has a lot of great built-in features. Colours and typography can easily be changed in the options area and the layout can be amended too.
It also has it’s own contact form widget and has a built-in PrettPhoto script which pops out images and videos.
6. ALogo
A good looking grey and blue blogging theme which has a left sidebar, drop down menu for categories and and a domtab for the latest posts and comments.
7. Zexee
A bright and colourful theme from Six Revisions which just oozes style. Would be ideal for a lot of different niches.
8. Typominima
A beautiful typography based theme from Blogsessive. It’s minimal design will suit those who want to put an emphasis on content.
It comes with it’s own options area where you can customise what is displayed in posts or pages and has support for WordPress 3.0+ custom menus too.
9. Voidy
A minimal theme from Diovo which is perfect for those who want something simple.
It boasts support for WordPress 3.0+ custom menus and has it’s own options page where you can enter Twitter & RSS information and and change your logo and favicon.
10. SimplyBiz
A beautiful corporate design which has a portfolio slider on the home page, a beautiful social media section in the blog page and it’s own options page in the admin section of WordPress.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Please let me know your favourite WordPress themes from 2010 in the comment area
Kevin
Kevin Muldoon is a webmaster and blogger who lives in Central Scotland. His latest project is WordPress Mods; a blog which focuses on WordPress Themes, Plugins, Tutorials, News and Modifications.
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{ 59 comments }
Wow those themes look awesome!
Definitely premium quality at the best price, FREE!
This is going to be bookmarked.
I agree with you, though I don’t like them all.
Well I prefer aparatus theme. It is the best theme amongst all the free theme.
I personally like the gadget theme.
The gadget theme s pretty good. I fail to see many 3 column themes though. There are very few of them.
my fave is theme that not to complecated, just simple one like Voidy .. nice share John ..
That’s a great list, thanks!
WooThemes has some nice free ones too:
http://www.woothemes.com/themes/free/
I used one of their premium themes until I decided to go with Thesis so I could do more customization, but was very happy with it.
also Elements of SEO, if you like the simple look with lots of white space:
http://elementsofseo.com/
I hate thesis for tricking me into believing it was completely customizable. You have to be a wizard coder to make it look web 2.0/3.0 status.
On the other hand, the SEO benefits are wonderful.
I find that most themes aren’t easy to customize unless you are familiar wit CSS and other things which most people aren’t.
Also if you like simple, Elements of SEO is very nice.
Thank for the great list!
Aparatus really rocks, I can’t believe it’s free
I agree, Aparatus is the best one, I also can’t believe it’s free, it looks too premium style!
Ya, I think I decide to use Aparatus for my future site. Thanks for sharing!
The theme is free but please read the bottom of this post. They want you to leave the link on the theme to the authors of it intact.
Glad you all liked the list. I appreciate that you will not all like every theme in the list but I tried to include a range of different themes to accomodate everyone
Hi Kevin,
The post and list is quite long and it looks like you put a lot of work into it. It’s very much appreciated.
Wonderful choices, I especially like Aparatus as an option. It looks professional and can get you sell ads quickly.
Yeah I agree, we have similar taste
Aparatus seems to be the crowd favorite here.
I agree it’s definitely one of the best themes on that list.
It is pretty good and perhaps it’s a crowd favorite because it’s listed as the first theme in the post.
You still like the Gadget one the best don’t you?
Nice share John,
I really like a simple theme myself with out a lot of confusion. I use Iblog3 witch looks and feels like Mac. Take a look when you get a chance.
Craig
why don’t you use free themes?
Because you can.
lol
hehe
John is too good for free themes, now.
Before he used to use them.
However if you do go for the paid theme, it would either be Thesis or one of the new Atomic blog themes..
Aparatus theme is the best of all the theme if you want to feature something for your blog. It is good for product marketing as well. I am using theme like this for 2 of my wordpress blog. But still for now I want to find some plugins for featured post on sidebar.
Hey John, I think you should make post about the best plugins that you prefer to use in 2010.
Shally,
I agree a post about John’s favorite plugins would be awesome and very helpful! Great idea!
Best,
Ian
Not only his favorite plugins but ALL of the plugins he uses. I would like to know the mechanics behind this blog.
I can write a follow up post about my favourite plugin releases this year if there is enough demand for it
That would be great Kevin. Especially if John doesn’t want to write a post about it himself.
ALogo is the best looking one. I love blue and grey combo. Great post by the way
Great themes! My favorite of the bunch is Designpile.
I just bookmarked this page, they are realy nice themes!
Great post John really like your choice of themes. Thought there might be one wootheme in there, they have brought some really nice ones out over the last few months. The problem with all these amazing looking themes is that everytime you see one you need to resist replacing your existing them constantly.
I agree woothemes has some of the best paid and free premium themes on the net.
What a cute and great wp theme! Thanks
I will add this to my option of wp themes on the new site that i am building
Thanks for the recommendation. I am going to look at them.
I like this free theme: SimpleFolio.
You can find it at:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/07/simplefolio-a-free-clean-portfolio-wordpress-theme/
I like this suffusion theme http://www.aquoid.com/news/themes/suffusion/
Aparatus looks cool too.
WOW. Apparatus is awesome and it’s free. Will install this and test it on one of my blogs.
Thanks
John Justice
In the past I have used allot of free themes, but I have started making my own recently. Still, these themes are either good to use or simply good inspiration for creative types out there.
Some of the most awesome themes around
That first one is kinda cool but it has no footer…a blog has got to have a tite footer
Now a free theme which to me beats all these by far is the Rival theme by Zenverse
freebies are not always bad….
now, i have a lot of option for wp theme.thanx again john
Your Message
waoww.. nice themes
i have downloaded all.
thanks
I have certainly bookmarked this post. I can never find a good free theme when I want one. Thanks Kevin for some very useful information.
I Like 2010 Weaver, full of customizable. But, I need to modify it to adding slideshow ‘featured’ post
Some amazing themes might be using some of them for my Get Blogging packages.
Infomative post
There are many themes which are not opening.
Kindly look again on links of all 10 themes.
Hi Kevin,
It has been a while since I popped past I am glad I did. Awesome list of themes. I have been wanting to change my website for ages, have been a little on the slack side.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Kind Regards
Jacinta
I’ve been using Twenty Ten a lot lately. I like it, and it’s easy to tweak. So, the 2010 Weaver is a real help for me. Thanks!
great themes and you have a given a good choice to the bloggers ,thanks for the share .
Personally, I would buy a theme and get it over with. You will eventually do that anyway :0
Excellent list, Kevin, bookmarked! As for my favorite -and free- theme, that would be Atahualpa http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa incredible customizable and you can export the settings in order to apply them fast to new sites you create, SY
Glad you all liked the post. I’ll try and write something again for John soon
I custom code my themes anyway, so I will never settle for the a standard theme even if its a premium one.