7 Stunningly Creative WordPress Themes for 2012

1. Creative Skeleton Responsive WordPress Theme

Attention Creatives! Looking for a colorful and creative theme to match your sense of creativity? If you are, then take a look at Creative Skeleton, a responsive portfolio style theme that will satisfy your colorful and artistic side. Creative Skeleton gives you several portfolio layout styles and two unique single portfolio layouts (Pile and HoverScroll) to choose from. Pile stacks your images on top of each other and brings each one to the forefront once you click on it while HoverScroll works like a carousel of images that scroll left or right when you hover on the directional arrows. All these layout configurations give you maximum flexibility to create the look and style of your online portfolio just the way you want.

Creative Skeleton Theme: $35 | Demo & Download

2. Melrose Responsive Portfolio WordPress Theme

Dramatic in white and even more dramatic in black – with a myriad of accent colors to choose from – that’s Melrose Premium WordPress Theme for you. Melrose is an impressive and professional looking WordPress theme for the serious creative agency. It’s the perfect backdrop to house an equally impressive portfolio. The design elements are amazingly well-thought out and the features included will surely make you feel like you’ve bought everything in a candy store. This easy to work with, beautiful and flexible theme will definitely create a lasting impact on your visitors and eventually on your site’s conversion statistics.

Melrose Theme: $50 | Demo & Download

3. Vitrux Responsive Fullscreen Portfolio WP Theme

Creative Agencies and Multimedia Professionals will love Vitrux Premium WordPress Theme. Many portfolio themes include full screen portfolios on the homepage but not all of them offer full screen sliders with audio and full-screen videos as alternatives. This is what sets this portfolio style theme apart from the rest. Not only that, you also have a variety of Gallery presentation options to choose from. If you’ve amassed a large body of creative work in different multimedia formats and you want to give each project the exposure that each portfolio item deserves, check out Vitrux Premium WordPress Theme. It just might be the portfolio theme you need.

Vitrux Theme: $45 | Demo & Download

4. Fashionista Responsive WordPress Blog Theme

Tired of your boring blog layout and want something fresh? Why not check out Fashionista Premium WordPress Theme, a blog style WordPress theme that’s meant for bloggers but can also be used for other purposes. Pinterest-styled themes are the latest trends today and their popularity is still on the rise. Fashionista is not strictly Pinterest but uses an Isotope Masonry plugin that mimics the Pinterest look. What is interesting about this layout style is that every post is accessible and available to the visitor. This means that posts and articles are not buried in the archives where they may be forgotten – out of sight, out of mind. For bloggers, this ensures that every post gets equal exposure and importance on the homepage. Check out Fashionista Premium WordPress Theme and bring your blog style up to date today.

Fashionista Theme: $40 | Demo & Download

5. Point Break Responsive Agency Theme

Point Break Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive portfolio theme and the sixth of the Super Skeleton Themes released by Epicera. This theme is more than just a WordPress theme because it also functions as a comprehensive HTML5 framework and a templating system as well. It’s an innovative way to creating and customizing themes and it’s primarily designed “for users, not geeks.” It’s innovative and definitely worth looking at especially if you want something that will be flexible enough to withstand the next WordPress update.

Point Break Theme: $45 | Demo & Download

6. Unique: Customizable WordPress Magazine Theme

What’s so unique about Unique? We included Unique Premium WordPress Theme in our list because of the guy behind it – Justin Tadlock. This premium magazine-style WordPress theme is Justin’s first foray into ThemeForest and is part of his experiment to “improve” ThemeForest from within, with the goal of getting as many authors to adhere to WordPress coding standards and practices. Unique may not stand out as far as “looks” are concerned but its creativity lies under the hood. It’s back to good old code and just enough cool features without going overboard with the bells and whistles. Check out Unique today.

Unique Theme: $40 | Demo & Download

7. Creative Portfolio Business WordPress Theme by Gavick

You have to see Creative Portfolio Premium WordPress Theme by Gavick in action to see what it does. This uniquely creative premium WordPress theme with parallax scrolling effect is surely going to catch the attention of your visitors and create a lasting impression. If you want to start your website with a bang or re-launch an old site with an ultra new look, then you need to check out Creative Premium WordPress Theme by Gavick. The experience will definitely be unforgettable.

Creative Theme: $99 | Demo & Download

Best WordPress Themes 2021

UPDATED April 12, 2021: 2021 is sure to be another great year for WordPress Theme development. Like the millions and millions of people using WordPress, we eagerly await the Themes and Plugins to be released this year, and you can …

WordPress Music Themes April 2014

Music fan sites are a great way to bring together people who have a common interest in a specific musician, a music genre, bands, etc. If you are thinking of putting up a website for that type of audience, here are some of the latest music themes you can check out:

Dubstep – Premium Music WordPress Theme

Dubstep is a WordPress theme for bands, musicians, DJs, clubs and everyone involved in the music or entertainment business. This theme supports every post type that a music & entertainment theme would need such as: intuitive Events Management (ability to set date, time, venue, location, and map coordinates; provision for normal and recurring events, tickets support); Discography Management (ability to share your music with fans using either self hosted audio files using the powerful soundManager2 or embedded sounds from SoundCloud); Artists Management (display an infinite number of favorite artists, colleagues, or band members (their albums, tracks, or playlists) and categorize them easily; Media Management (share videos either self-hosted or from services like Youtube, Vimeo etc. and create endless interactive custom photo galleries from your events using templates or sliders).

SoundBlast – Music Band WordPress Theme

Sound Blast Premium WordPress Theme is a WooCommerce ready theme especially designed for bands and music websites. This easy to modify theme features include: Album + Track Management (options include Now Playing, Download, Play Only, and Buy Now), Slider Management, Event Management, Gallery Management, Sidebar Management, Powerful Theme Options + Page Builder, 2 pre-made color variations.

MusicVent – Premium Music & Event WordPress Theme

MUSICVENT Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, responsive, and a well-thought out HTML5 WordPress Theme for Music & Event related Personalities/Studios. The theme’s clean Lines & minimal design approach truly highlights the artist(s) and the work(s) showcased. Its unique design and streamlined navigation makes it easy for fans, music aficionados, potential producers, talent scouts, etc., to go through the website get the information needed and take the necessary action after. The 6 built-in page templates (Albums, Artists, Events, Gallery, Bloglist, Contact) are organized and give you or users everything that is needed. Transition and animation effects like black and white photos display their full colors when hovered over. It also includes 2 homepage layout options (fullscreen image slider and fullscreen video background) to choose from according to the audience you are targeting.

RockOn – Multipurpose Music WP Theme

RockOn! Premium WordPress Theme is a WooCommerce ready multipurpose music theme for singers, artists, music bands or musical events created using Twitter Bootstrap, with a responsive design which makes it a perfect fit for all devices. This theme includes features such as: Event Management using one of the best event management plugins – WP Event Manager, 100% responsive 3D Layer Slider, Sidebar Managerusing CrunchPress “CP” framework, WooCommerce Shop Catalog Grid OR Full Layout also Masonry (Filterable), and so many other features.

NOISE – Onepage DJs & Band WordPress Theme

NOISE Premium WordPress Theme is a cool, creative and modern theme perfect for musicians, DJs, bands and other music related professionals or businesses. Built with smooth and sleek CSS3 and AJAX animations including a unique spectrum analyzer to help you visualize music automatically on every single track. You can easily manage and display your artists, albums, audios, images, videos, events dates and sell your items (tickets etc.), allow users to rate music, and share instantly on their social networks. It also comes with 2 different players (SimplePlayer widget and Extended Player) to give users control over every single track played.

Music Club – Music/Band/Club/Party WordPress Theme

Music Club Premium WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for music, club, party, radio station, bands or even entertainment magazine. It comes with great features for music such as: a floating music player at the bottom of the page, a traditional boxed player for those who prefer something familiar, an Event post type that come with a ticket button with 5 tickets status, a Music Album feature which when clicked, automatically fetches all songs in an album to the floating player. Other outstanding features include a Page Builder, Revolution Slider, GoodLayers Importer, and other great music tools, to help you build a power music website users will truly enjoy.

One Page WordPress Themes April 2014

One Page WordPress themes are quite popular nowadays. Some like it for its low maintenance qualities, others like it for the speed, the fast-loading time and SEO benefits, while others enjoy it for the ease of use and the simplified navigation for both website owner and users as well.

Here are some of the latest One-Page WordPress themes in the market that might match the features and functions you need to create your own One-Page wonder website.

Candy Queen – Responsive One Page Theme

Candy Queen Responsive One Page Theme is a beautiful and clean responsive one page design theme for your candy boutique, florist design studio, or beauty salon. This premium theme is suitable for showcasing your product portfolio in a unique, feminine and playful way. This theme includes 3 ready color schemes (blue, lavender, and pink) that can be easily modified, SASS files, and layered PSD files including PSD files of sprites for easy theme modification.

Nivan – One Page / Multi Page WordPress Theme

Nivan – One Page Multi Page WordPress Theme is a fresh and refreshing portfolio theme for Agencies & Corporate websites, Artists, Creative Agencies, Collectors, or anyone who needs to showcase their work in a beautiful and elegant way. Its dynamic design, eye catching effects and animations, and flexible settings let you to make the most out of your theme and present a different and unique result for yourself or your client. Key features include: SPNOY exclusive gallery, Revolution Slider, Video Background (animation off), Multi-page option.

SimpleFlex – Flat One Page WordPress Theme

Simpleflex is an ultra-responsive, creative, and retina-ready flat-designed WordPress theme, that offers you one page and multi-page layouts with the latest and most powerful features. Its uniquely flat design, beautiful parallax effect and dynamically smooth animations provide you a simple and modern look on all devices. Built on the ThemeLuxe framework, SimpleFlex gives you the cleanest code with an advanced admin panel and an easy-to-use shortcode generator. also Simpleflex includes 2 versions of possible setups (Simple and Modern) no to mention even the PSD files to provide you with all the flexibility of customization you need to create the look that you want for your website.

Bubbles Parallax One Page WordPress Theme

Bubbles Parallax One Page WordPress Theme is a delightful, clean and modern one page parallax theme that can be used for companies, agencies, portfolios, product presentations, landing pages, and so much more. You have a choice of using a video background, a full screen slider background, or the popular Slider Revolution (in full screen or in custom size). This minimalist premium theme features amazing parallax features for that dynamic and animated look without being distracting.

Alpine – WordPress Responsive One Page Parallax

Alpine is a modern, professional, and flexible one page parallax multi-purpose WordPress theme, developed in Bootstrap framework. This responsive theme built with great attention to details can be used for any type of website: business, corporate, portfolio, products, marketing, etc. Modification and customization for: layout, styling, colors, etc., can be done directly and easily from within the admin backend. You have the opportunity to change layout settings for the whole site, for a particular section, or even both. You can also combine any of available elements to build beautiful Main Page, add more pages if needed, or create your own color scheme. Key features include: parallax sections, 4 home section versions, isotope portfolio, ajax project expander, font awesome integration, etc.

Web Design Trends WordPress Users Need To Know

WordPress is the most popular content management system existing today fetching 21.8% of the world’s total internet usage and capturing 60.3% of the market share as per W3tech’s latest market report. It comes as no surprise that the majority of the general web design trends predicted for 2014 are already common features available and/or integrated in most if not all WordPress themes being sold in the marketplace today. It makes you wonder whether WordPress is only a trend follower or it is actually THE trend setter to watch.

WordPress core developers, theme and plugin developers and authors, and the WordPress community in general are some of the most passionate people on the planet. With only ten years tucked into its belt, WordPress has emerged as one the most dynamic and cutting edge platforms today primarily because of the commitment of its community.

In a recent business article on eCommerce design trends for 2014, it lists trends that WordPress users already consider as familiar features. The trend list includes:

  • flat design
  • responsive design
  • less sliders
  • more user friendly navigation
  • more creative use of web fonts

These trends have actually appeared in most WordPress themes as common features in the last year or so. Even Forbes magazine, lists similar web design trends in an article that came out early this year. Although Forbes also adds “storytelling design” characterized by concise, compelling copy coupled with strong imagery as one of the significant web trends that will emerge in 2014. Guess what? A wonderful new WordPress plugin – Aesop Story Engine – in relation to the “storytelling” trend has already been generating a lot of interest lately.

For those who have been following the development path of the latest WordPress version that is to be released (April 16), there are several new features in WordPress 3.9 that could set off new “trends” in the web design world. WordPress 3.9 emphasizes more user friendly features and improved multimedia handling capabilities. A few of these significant features that are worth noting are listed below:

  • New features like live widget previews
  • a new theme installer
  • UI refinements when editing images and when working with media in the editor including the return of some of the advanced display settings for images.
  • audio and video playlists
  • new gallery support
  • The formatting function that turns straight quotes into smart quotes (among other things) underwent some changes to drastically speed it up.

More detailed features can be viewed on the WordPress core development website.

Having said all that, it is interesting to note that the thrust towards being more multimedia savvy while at the same time being more and more user friendly could be a significant WordPress feature that could set off a general web design trend. With WordPress gaining more and more influence over the whole internet population, it is possible that whatever developers, coders, designers, authors, etc. come up with to improve WordPress products and services could eventually be the standard that the web design community will use.

Who knows what WordPress will be like in the next 10 years. The innovations succeeding WordPress iterations will bring and the vast influence it will have in relation to the entire Internet population, mobile, tablet or what not together with the hardcore commitment of its core community will definitely create an impact on the way the world wide web looks and functions. Whatever it is, anything that goes on in WordPress is definitely going to be exciting and worth watching.

Must Have Features in Choosing a WordPress Theme for your Website

WordPress theme trends come and go. Some popular features a while back have faded away while others went mainstream and have become basic and essential features integral to a WordPress theme. A lot of the WordPress themes in the marketplace today are feature-packed and sometimes it gets overwhelming to choose the perfect one. Website owners need to be able to sort through long menu of features, pull out those that are relevant to their own specific website needs and goals, just to make sure they don’t get an over bloated and slow-loading website. Here are some basic features to look for in selecting a WordPress theme to fit your website needs.

Flexibility and Ease of Use

User experience is a key factor in web design. WordPress themes must be flexible enough to adapt to the user’s needs and provide way for customization to be simple and easy. A popular feature nowadays is the drag and drop feature where layouts can be configured and reconfigured by simply dragging and dropping elements into specific areas. WordPress themes that include this feature already have a fan base as it makes customization convenient and friendly even for WordPress beginners.

Responsive (On or Off feature)

The emergence of mobile platforms in internet usage makes its users a population that shouldn’t be ignored. A lot of people think that mobile might eventually displace desktop as the dominant platform for internet access. In light of this, website owners need to consider WordPress themes that are 100% responsive enabling content to be presented efficiently on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile or handheld devices. Themes that include features such as menus especially designed for mobile devices, responsive sliders, and responsive images are also a plus factor. Some also prefer that they have control over whether they want the responsive feature turned on or off which means that WordPress themes that have this option will appeal to this type of web user.

Search Engine Optimization

It would be a pity for a site with amazing content to be left to obscurity because search engines can’t find it. According to Joost de Valk, creator of the popular SEO plugin Yoast,

“Out of the box, WordPress is a pretty well optimized system, and does a far better job at allowing every single page to be indexed than every other CMS I have used. But there are a few things you should do to make it a lot easier still to work with.”

WordPress themes that are built according to best code practices and are integrated with sound SEO measures will do well as far as search engine visibility and ranking are concerned.

Multi Media Handling Capabilities

Gone are the days where people are merely content reading stuff on the web. Today’s generation of internet users seek more interactive and media heavy content. Website users tend to lean towards WordPress themes that are flexible enough to handle all types of media formats (audio, video, images, etc). Support for self-hosted videos, Youtube, Vimeo and SoundCloud, and other third party multi media content hosts is always a plus as internet users today.

Animations, Parallax, Sliders, etc.

Some people detest sliders and other visual eye candy. Some don’t even think that it helps a site at all while some consider these visual effects necessary features in a website. When people get to your site, you want to ensure that they get enough interest to go through your content. The use of all these visual effects can go from cheesy to spectacular depending on how it is presented. Today’s media bombarded user can benefit from well-thought of and creative visual presentations that feed both the eyes and the mind.

Translation or Multi Lingual Ready

WordPress already powers more than 21% of the Internet and will continue to increase even as of this writing. This means that more non-English speaking users will be thrown in the mix of users and will need themes that can be translated into their own languages and with RTL (right to left provision). This segment of WordPress users will be more attracted to themes that are easier to adapt to their local audiences.

These features listed here may or may not be on the top of your list. If you do have some suggestions, feel free to leave us a comment and tell us why you think so. We’d love to hear from you.

WordPress Themes for Photographers – March 2014

Creating an online portfolio is no longer a challenge nowadays. There are hundreds of options for displaying photographs available to photographers today that give you that expensive professional look. Here are some of the latest WordPress photography themes you can use to show off your prized images:

PhotoReactive – Fullscreen Studio for WordPress

PhotoReactive Premium WordPress Theme is a full screen studio theme for WordPress that photographers will love. This premium theme gives photographers tons of creative options for them to showcase images and other multimedia content both on the homepage and also in the portfolio pages. Full screen slideshows options include touch swipe capability, captions (with or without), photo wall, YouTube and Vimeo videos, static image, and the popular Kenburns slideshow (with or without audio). This theme is also equipped with Ajax & normal portfolio showcases, WooCommerce functionality to help you set up your own photography shop and it is also WPML ready (includes .po .mo language files.)

Devendo Photography WordPress Theme

Devendo Premium WordPress Theme is a flat and modern portfolio theme suitable for photographers. This premium theme is built with Bootstrap 3, is 100% responsive and is also available in four color schemes that can be changed in the theme’s options panel. Key features include: smart overlay search function, integrated social sharing, responsive mega menus with Bootstrap grid inside dropdowns, full screen portfolio with direction aware hover effects, smooth scrolling AJAX-powered horizontal blog, among others.

Fidelity – Premium Photography WordPress Theme

Fidelity Premium WordPress Theme is a modern photography theme with a future-oriented design targeted primarily for photographers but can also be used by design agencies, architecture bureaus, etc. This premium theme takes a full advantage of the latest CSS3 hardware-accelerated transitions (with a fallback to jQuery animations) giving users incredible performance on diverse platforms like desktops, tablet PCs and smartphones. Some of the unique features include: the ability to set up narrow or full width page in a few clicks, the ability to show EXIF data in the portfolio posts, and the horizontal masonry style blog layout that gives you that high end magazine feel. You can also display unlimited slideshows and videos for your background.

The Gentleman – Photography & Portfolio Theme

The Gentleman WordPress Theme is a fully responsive multipurpose theme perfect for any photographer, designer, agency, or any business looking to show off their work. There are multiple homepage layouts, tons of portfolio styles to choose from, and a lot of other features allowing you to build your perfect photography/portfolio website. This theme includes features like: Price tables, team members, multiple blog layouts, preset flat and pattern styles, a powerful theme options panel, multiple sliders including the popular Revolution Slider, multiple portfolio options including the Magnific Responsive Lightbox, and so much more.

Camilla – Horizontal Fullscreen Photography Theme

Camilla Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, minimal, full screen horizontal canvas ideal for displaying your photographs the way you intended them to be seen. This theme’s minimalistic design shifts the focus to your work with the use of distraction-free full screen video-ready galleries . Some of this theme’s modern features include: one-page layout, horizontal scroll, vertical scroll sections in horizontal layout, and it is optimized for mobile devices with its swipe navigation feature for smartphones and tablets, etc.

Around the Web: WordPress and Tech News

The year 2014 started with a bang and with lots of interesting stories posted around the web. Here’s what caught our eye so far:

Enjoy!

WordPress Resource : Free Icons

The Internet is a great resource for anything and everything – for free or for a fee – especially if you are into web design. Don’t break the bank just yet if you are just dabbling into web design and it is not a professional thing for you yet. Check out these high quality design elements and incorporate them into your projects:

Metrize Icons

Metrize Icons is a free collection of 300 metro-style icons for designers and developers. The bundle also includes Metrize Font Icons and the necessary scripts for compatibility with IE7 and the complete character map. This icon set is perfect for your apps or web projects. You may use these icons for both commercial and personal projects and customize them any way you like. All Icons, WebFont and Updates are Free.

Dashicons

Dashicons is a new feature that slipped into the admin side of WordPress with the recently-released 3.8. This feature gives plugin developers a nice set of pre-made and pre-loaded icons to use. Using them in your WordPress custom post types is as simple as adding a parameter to your register_post_type() function.

Genericons

Genericons are a free, GPL, flexible vector icons for blogs embedded in a webfont and are designed to be clean and simple keeping with a generic aesthetic. It can be used for instant HiDPI or to easily change colors on the fly. It includes: Social icons(Skype, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Pocket), New generic icons (heart, lock and print), New editing icons (code, bold, italic, image), and New interaction icons (subscribe, unsubscribe, subscribed, reply all, reply, flag), among others.

400 Hand Drawn Icons

400 Hand Drawn Icons Set has been provided by Freepik.com exclusively for the readers of Blog Oh! Blog. These are free to use in your personal and commercial projects and are provided in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format and can be easily used on any website.

Free Line Icons from Elegant Themes

This free line-style icon set from Elegant Themes ships with a total of 100 different icons and is a re-mastering and expansion on their previous Divi Icons. The new set has been re-created at a new size and line-weight, and 50 new icons have been added as well! The download package includes the vectored .AI and .SVG files, as well as 32px and 64px .PNGs.

Free eCommerce Icon Set

This set of 33 flat e-commerce icons were exclusively designed and created for Smashing Magazine by the team at Responsive. The icons are ideally suited to e-commerce projects and include many popular payment providers, including Bitcoin. The icons come in different-sized PNGs (32 × 32, 64 × 64, 128 × 128 and 256 × 256 pixels), and the set includes Photoshop and Illustrator files containing all of the icons. Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, freely available for private and commercial projects.

Enjoy these free graphic design resources and share your projects with us.