Free WordPress themes have come a long way since Kubrick. Twenty Ten, Twenty Eleven, and the latest – Twenty Twelve – is the newest Kubrick as far as Free WordPress themes go. Twenty Twelve is the current default WordPress theme.
Let’s take a look at some of the features of this free default WordPress theme:
- Front Page Template where you can add text, images, video
- Responsive, Mobile-first Layout
- Custom ”Open Sans” Font
- Custom post formats: links, quotes, asides, statuses, images
- Widgets and No-sidebar layout
- Custom menu, custom header image, custom background color and image
- Multi columns
- Sidebar
- Flexible width
- Editor style
- Flexible header
- Featured images
- Full width template
- Post formats
- Sticky post
- Theme options
- Infinite Scroll
Those are a lot of features coming from a free WordPress theme, don’t you think? And most of these features are what you also get from a lot of Premium WordPress themes. If we use Twenty Twelve as our standard, what then can we expect in 2013, as far as Free WordPress themes are concerned?
- All of the features listed above will become standard features
- More Premium-like features
- eCommerce options
- Typography options
- Drag and drop options
- Page-builder options
- More Single Page Themes
- Free themes for email, mobile, etc.
- HTML5 and CSS3 and adhering to WordPress Coding standards
Many WordPress themes authors, providers and developers give away free themes as samples of their work. These samples, albeit free, are not necessarily inferior to Premium themes being sold in the marketplace. In truth, some of them are even better (or Best – shameless plug). The fact that these free samples are marketing tools to introduce these new authors to the market should be a weighty incentive for them to release high quality products that will catch the attention of WordPress professionals who are always on the lookout for something fresh.
Everybody loves twittering these days. Don’t believe me? The statistics should make you a believer. As of 2012, Twitter had 500 million active users! The 140 character post social media platform is ruling the world, second only to Facebook. Considering the huge number of Twitter users, people are using Twitter options like plugins and add-ons on more and more websites.
These plugins and add-ons can have varied uses and applications. For example, some commenting systems like Discus allow you to post a comment with your Twitter picture being displayed in the comment as your Avatar. This helps you not to upload your display picture again and again whenever you want to comment and hence saves a lot of time. See entry #3 below for more on this.
Or maybe you want your blog posts’ links to become tiny so that your readers may share them on Twitter. As we all know…Twitter has a 140 character limit. Under such a constraint it is not a wise practice to share large URLs on Twitter as you will want some room to type out some text relevant to the link in your tweets to tell your followers about what you are sharing. Option #7 below enables you to achieve this.
There are 10 other options below that combine the technology of WordPress and Twitter to produce great results. Check them out by scrolling down.
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According to a survey I came across a few months back, the number of people who use a smartphone is larger than the number of people who use a toothbrush! This means that if your website is not mobile phone friendly then you are missing on on a lot of visitors. Some people feel that if the number of people who surf the Internet on smartphones is A and the number of people who use the Internet from their computer is B then the total number of Internet users is A + B. Wrong!
A lot of people browse the Internet on their smartphones only when they can’t access it via a computer for e.g. while travelling in a car, train or bus etc. This means that there is a big overlap between A and B. A major portion of smartphone browsers is a subset of computer browsers. So what does this has to do with your website? A lot. If you ensure that your site is easily accessible to smartphones then the number of page impressions your site gets can dramatically increase as the same people who were visiting your site via their computers can visit it even when they are…say…travelling.
Below we have collected 15 beautiful WordPress themes designed specifically for mobile phones. Some are free and some cost a nominal amount. Check them out and see which ones work best for you! NOTE: A post on great Responsive WordPress Themes for 2013 is coming soon!
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Best Theme (v1.1) A Beautiful, Responsive Theme for WordPress Sites Make sure to check out our official post on the Best Theme for updates on recent and future releases! Take some time to check out the Best Theme demo …
Get free access to nearly two dozen HD video tutorials about WordPress including: Video 1: The Dashboard Video 2: Creating New Posts Video 3: Editing An Existing Post Video 4: Using Categories & Tags Video 5: Inserting Images & Photos …
