50+ New WordPress Themes: March 2011

A few things can be learned from this latest roundup of new WordPress themes, all released within the past five months or so.

First of all, there’s a definite trend toward more premium themes, with fewer high-quality free themes available.

Minimalist and simple, clean themes are definitely the favorite of designers at the moment, representing the vast majority of the themes in this roundup.

There’s also been an increase in jQuery integration in themes, though this has been a growing trend for awhile now.

A large percentage of themes in this list have at least some jQuery integration built-in, and some have quite a lot.

Free Themes

High quality free themes are getting rarer. Sure, there are still plenty of great options out there, but it seems like fewer free themes are being released at all, and finding the high-quality ones is even harder. Below are more than twenty high-quality free themes released in the past five months or so.

Imbalance

Imbalance is a minimalist, grid-based theme. It’s jQuery-powered, and is perfectly suited for a blog, magazine, or portfolio site.

Blogum

Blogum is simple and minimalist, with a grid-based layout. It includes a jQuery image preloader, built-in support for social bookmarking, and clean typography.

Studio Dessign

Studio Dessign, from Dessign, is another modern, grid-based theme. It has a black and white color scheme, valid code, and simple typography.

Big Square

Big Square is a clean, minimalist theme that focuses on big images, and is perfect for any blog or site that uses a lot of images in their posts.

Placeholder

Placeholder, from WooThemes is a new “coming soon” style theme. It includes a countdown timer, e-mail opt-in, and social buttons to so your visitors can stay updated and share your site with their network.

Skeptical

Skeptical is another free WooThemes theme, with custom typography and an alternative sidebar option. It also supports Google Fonts, and has four alternative color styles, as well as options for a custom background color or image and link color.

Portfolium

Portfolium is a dark portfolio theme, ideal for artists, photographers, designers, and other creatives. It also includes a blog page template, for more text-based content.

Suburbia

Suburbia is a clean and elegant magazine-style theme, with a grid-based layout and two featured posts on the home page. It’s widget-ready and includes a logo uploader.

Sight

Sight is a more traditional magazine-style blog theme. It includes a jQuery featured post carousel, custom widgets, custom logo upload, and two pagination types.

Style Dessign

Style Dessign is a clean, black, white and gray, grid-based design. It puts the emphasis on images for each post, and has a very modern feel.

iTheme2

iTheme2 is a Mac OSX-styles theme. It auto-adjusts the theme layout using media queries, has a customizable feature slider, and two theme skins.

Spectacular

Spectacular is a great free theme released by Smashing Magazine. It’s been released in both HTML5 and HTML4.01. The design has a vintage feel, with tons of textures and a fantastic retro color scheme.

Jenzoo

Jenzoo is a professional theme that includes a number of individual page templates (front page, portfolio page, blog page). It also includes a functional contact form, drop-down menus, Google Analytics integration, and a logo uploader.

JournalCrunch

JournalCrunch, designed by Site5 and released by Smashing Magazine, offers a grid-based layout and theme options page. It includes nine shortcodes, a built-in Latest Tweets widget, jQuery-based drop-down menus, PrettyPhoto lightbox, and forms, and a custom homepage template.

Video

Video is a dark, clean theme aimed at video bloggers or others with a lot of video content. It includes custom taxonomy, as well as custom pages for video details, video listings, and other specialized content.

Cenutis Magazine

Cenutis Magazine is a very simple magazine theme with a content slider, six banner ad slots on the home page, and a social bookmark widget. It also includes post thumbnails, a PSD logo file, and a featured news section.

Woody Magazine

Woody Magazine is a dark magazine theme, with a built-in content slider and Mygallery, as well as featured news. It includes five banner ad slots, theme options, and a social bookmark widget.

Latest Tribune

Latest Tribune is a black, white, and red news theme, with multiple featured content sections on the home page. It has two top navigation bars, a content slider, and space for banner ads.

Numberto Magazine

Numerto Magazine is a streamlined, minimalist magazine theme, with a muted color scheme. It includes two columns and five widgetized sidebars, as well as threaded comments, and post thumbnails.

Computis Magazine

Computis Magazine is a dark magazine theme, with a built-in content slider and two columns. There are five sidebars, five banner ad slots (that can be turned off), and threaded comments.

Kalixo Magazine

Kalixo Magazine is a magazine-style theme with a woodgrain background and a grid layout. It has two columns and two sidebars, a PSD logo file, and threaded comments.

Yellow Magazine

Yellow Magazine is a clean, streamlined magazine layout with a gold color scheme. It includes a content slider, two columns, two sidebars, and social bookmarks.

Gamelison Magazine

Gameliso Magazine is a gray and red theme with a unique content slider. It includes admin page options, two columns, two sidebars, and is widget-ready.

Natolinis Mag

Natolinis Mag is a clean, black and white theme with red accents. It includes plenty of banner ad slots (all of which can be turned off), a built-in content slider, and two columns.

Premium Themes

There are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of new premium themes being released on a monthly basis now. Designers and developers are experimenting more with the capabilities of WordPress not only as a blogging platform, but also as a CMS (and even as a specialized CMS). Below are more than thirty great, quality premium themes, ranging in price from around $20 to more than $100.

Newsy – $39

Newsy is a three-column news theme, with eleven layout options and ten color variant skins. It has two sidebars, a header slider, and supports Google Fonts.

Rezo – $39

Rezo is a premium theme designed specifically for restaurants, bars, and cafes. It includes a homepage feature slider, various layouts for a menu page, a lightbox gallery, and Google Map shortcode functionality.

Photobox – $39

Photobox is a gallery theme, aimed specifically at sites with a ton of images. It includes custom header and footer menus, and multiple layout options (4-column, 3-column, and 2-column).

Edmin – $39

Edmin is an elegant, unconventional theme, with a unique layout. It includes a homepage slider, custom fields, and threaded comments, among other features.

Polar Media – $49-$69

Polar Media is a grid-based theme with an emphasis on images. It’s aimed at news sites and personal blogs, though, rather than photo blogs or similar sites.

Restaurant Pro – $49-$69

Restaurant Pro is a theme designed specifically for restaurants, with flexible options for things like your menu page, advanced design control, and fast setup.

Me’gusta $49-$69

Me’gusta is a simple, green and white theme, aimed at green businesses. It includes advanced design control, support for multiple sliders, portfolios, and blogs on a single page, and 21 advanced widgets.

Memoir – $39 (for all themes)

Memoir is a beautiful premium theme with a photo background, and four unique color schemes. It includes shortcodes, complete localization, page templates, and ePanel theme options.

Magnificent – $39 (for all themes)

Magnificent is a flexible theme with seven unique color schemes, automated thumbnail resizing, and advertising management. It also includes ePanel theme options, a shortcodes collection, page templates, and more.

Supreme – $25

Supreme is a new theme from Natty WP, designed for news, magazine, personal, or community sites. It includes 28 different jQuery staging effects for the layout, as well as six custom page templates.

Elefolio – $70-$150

Elefolio, from WooThemes, offers a custom homepage and portfolio section, as well as custom typography. It includes nine custom color styles, custom widgets, and tumblog functionality, too.

Auld – $70-$150

Auld is a tumblog theme for WordPress, from WooThemes. It includes ten alternative color styles, custom typography and widgets, and jQuery post alignment.

BrestLite – $19.50

BrestLite is a magazine-style theme with four color schemes, a featured Coin slider, and WP 3.0 custom background and menu options. It also includes some CSS3 features and a customizable layout.

Jai – $35

Jai is a clean style portfolio template, aimed at photographers. It has an extensive admin panel, a built-in color picker for unlimited color schemes, seven homepage slider styles, three header fonts, and a lot more.

Anolox – $35

Anolox is a premium portfolio theme with three homepage layout options and five color variations. It also includes five custom widgets and an ajax contact form.

Through the Lens – $30

Through the Lens is a versatile theme that’s suitable for a blog, photography site, portfolio, and more. It includes seven different color schemes, and CSS3 styling.

WikiBase – $65-$99

WikiBase is a specialized WP theme for creating a knowledgebase or wiki site. It has a customizable homepage, page templates, and a theme options page where you can change the color scheme, logo, Favicon, and more.

Events – $65-$99

Events is a special WP theme for creating event websites. It includes a customizable homepage, a featured events function, custom taxonomy, and bulk uploads.

Hand Crafted – $35

Hand Crafted is a beautiful, clean theme with three color variations. It’s 100% valid HTML5, integrates Google Fonts, and includes a Flickr widget, Twitter integration, and built-in pagination.

Clearly Modern – $35

Clearly Modern is a flexible, 12-column-grid-based theme. It includes sliders, galleries, custom shortcodes, multi-level drop down navigation, and more.

Duotive 2WO – $35

Duotive 2WO is a very versatile theme that includes 17 color schemes and 274 background images. It also has 8 portfolio styles, 5 blog styles, and 10 gallery styles, and WPML support.

Origami – $35

Origami is a highly-customizable theme, with one-click Cufon font replacement, three slider options, and more than fifty shortcodes. It’s built on the 960 Grid System, and include 12 custom widgets, 18 color pricing and other grids, and three button sizes with 18 color options.

Blogue – $29-$49

Blogue is a simple, minimalist theme that puts the focus squarely on your blog’s content. It includes a theme options page, jQuery slideshow to display featured posts, and four color schemes, among other features.

Space – $35

Space is a clean theme with nine color schemes, three slider options, and more than twenty shortcodes. It also includes four portfolio layout options, two blog layout options, and six custom widgets.

Sniper

Sniper is a corporate WordPress theme with eight custom widgets and four widget areas. It also includes nine portfolio/gallery templates, and a custom blog template.

Grounded – $35

Grounded offers 24 Cufon fonts, 2 navigation style options, and 3 sliders. It also includes twelve page templates, eight image frame options, and nine widgets.

Seso – $35

Seso is a clean, minimalist theme with a widgetized front page and jQuery effects. Included are both an HTML and an HTML5 version, dynamic sidebars, and custom widgets.

Widezine – $35

Widezine is a fluid layout theme with a fully-widgetized homepage and nine custom widgets. It includes two skins (light and dark), a custom admin panel, and full documentation.

Sophis – $30

Sophis is a vintage-style theme, with five premade skins. It includes a color-picker for the background, shortcodes, and a Nivo Slider.

FreshStart – $35

FreshStart is a clean theme with multiple templates and nine custom widgets. It includes a simple slider for your portfolio, shortcodes, and five color schemes.

Child Care Creative – $40

Child Care Creative is a specialized theme aimed at child care or similar businesses. It has a kid-friendly design, two different homepage layouts, header options, and more.

Layover – $35

Layover is a minimalist theme that can be used as a foundation for a custom design, or as it is. It includes shortcodes, slider options, pricing grids, and more.

Compiled exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Know of a great new theme released since last fall that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

WDD Staff

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