Portfolio WordPress Themes for December 2013

Gear up for the year-end and display your holiday photos or your best creative work with these flexible and dynamic portfolio WordPress themes for you or your clients. Check these out:

Sonnet – One Page Parallax Multipurpose Portfolio

Sonnet Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and streamlined One page Parallax Responsive Business Template built with Bootstrap 3.0.2, HTM5 & CSS3. This flat, easy to customize theme with its well-placed content blocks boasts of professional coding as its core power. Also included are Visual Composer – the most popular & powerful drag and drop layout builder for WordPress, a powerful section editor, responsive grid portfolio plugin – Megafolio, Zilla Shortcode, a Pricing Table manager among others. This premium theme supports Automated Plugin management and even includes a demo content importer which will let you build the site with dummy content in a second.

Mocha Flat Bold WordPress Portfolio Theme

Mocha Premium WordPress Theme is a unique and bold portfolio WordPress that is aesthetically clean, flat, minimalist in design ideal for any design agency, creative professional, freelance designer, photographer, or anyone in the creative industry wanting to make a good impression on clients. It’s very flexible and is powered with Bootstrap framework. This premium WordPress theme has advanced theme options with unlimited styling options, unlimited colors, 500+ Google Fonts, a Visual Shortcode manager, and tons of other features to help you fully customize your website. This premium theme is WordPress 3.6 and 3.7 compliant.

Mercury Responsive Portfolio Photography Theme

Mercury Premium WordPress Theme is a clean, minimalist parallax style portfolio theme that can be used for any portfolio, photography or business website. Features include responsive design which adapts to mobile devices (iPhone, iPad) and can be deactivated with one click in your backend, it is retina ready for ultra-sharp high resolution graphics, sticky main menu navigation, off-canvas mobile navigation, drag & drop content builder, 20 gallery templates, 6 portfolio templates, filterable portfolios, instant AJAX search, Music support for gallery pages, Password Protected Gallery Support, Image Gallery Comments Support, Fullscreen Youtube and Vimeo video support, and a whole lot more.

Upward: Experimental Portfolio & Blog

Upward Premium WordPress Theme is a unique experimental responsive, retina-ready WordPress theme using pseudo-elements to create a distinct presentation style on original browsers (Firefox and Chrome) unlike any other theme. Usually, non-original browsers (like Safari for Windows) do not support anti-aliasing of pseudo-elements. Also, not all browsers support CSS3 animation completely, thus some part of animation isn’t available in IE8-9, Safari and Opera. Other than that, this premium theme includes important features like: light and dark skins, post/page options, powerful visual shortcodes, unlimited sidebars, unlimited fonts, and so much more.

Nervaq – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme

Nervaq Premium WordPress Theme is a fully responsive Ajax-powered, parallax one page portfolio template with a modern, clean and minimalistic design ideal for creative agencies, designers, freelance creatives, and those in the creative industry. This premium theme is highly optimized for both mobile and desktop platforms, it uses lazy-loading of images assets and compression of all required scripts. Other features include: Drag and drop gallery management, localization ready, and is built on a full OOP , modular, load-on-demand, WordPress framework.

Grido: Responsive and Multipurpose Grid Portfolio

Grido Premium WordPress Theme is a minimalistic theme ideal for creative professionals that love flat and clean design. Its stunning design and layout capabilities with excellent color (ten preset) and typographic choices will give your portfolio the attention that it deserves. This premium responsive theme is highly customizable using the dedicated control panel and is a highly flexible and widgetized theme, packed with WordPress features such as post-formats, page templates, custom widgets, shortcodes, including important features specifically designed for it. It is also Themelovin plugins compatible: Themelovin Dribbble, Themelovin Portfolio, Themelovin Shortcodes, Themelovin Team, Themelovin TwitterIt.

Dirty Saloon – A Rugged One Page WordPress Theme

Dirty Saloon Premium WordPress Theme is a Cowboy Western-inspired premium responsive Theme that will surely make you hold your horses. This unique, flexible, and freshly designed theme features innovative AJAX loading of Posts and Portfolio items which can be turned on and off on demand with one click in Page Builder. It features a premium Aqua Page Builder for easy creation of new pages for your site.The theme also comes with a Revolution Slider, a convenient Administration panel, and many more.

Creative WordPress Themes – November 2013

Are you working on a project and in need of a WordPress theme to match your client’s needs? Here are some of the latest creative and interesting WordPress themes to inspire you:

Attitude: Multimedia Portfolio for Media Artists

Attitude Premium WordPress Theme is a multimedia portfolio and blog theme specifically designed for media artists. This theme comes with 3 main media formats: audio – to share your creative sounds with the world, video – for producers, directors, and video designers to publish and share video, and gallery portfolio formats – for architects, interior & landscape designers, photographers and others who have few or many pictures for each project. Notable features are: fully compatible with high-resolution screens like a laptops with Retina-display, two color schemes – Light and Dark, custom slugs, portfolio migration from other themes, custom styles, motion typo, and demo XML to get started.

Swiss – Premium WordPress Theme

Swiss Premium WordPress Theme is an ultra minimal yet elegantly styled WordPress theme based on the Swiss design principles for layout, colors, and typography. Its European design flavor featuring big, bold typographic elements applies itself well to an agency, blog or portfolio website. This theme comes with 3 different homepage options, 2 blog styles, 3 filterable portfolio presentation options, a team members page, and many other features that will surely make your design company stand out. It also comes with a free Cr3ativ Shortcodes plugin you can use to easily add fully responsive elements such as google maps, alert boxes, columns, buttons (with or without icons) choose colors for buttons, pull quotes and so much more.

Pix – Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme

ePix Premium WordPress Theme is a feature-packed theme suitable to the demands of creative professionals like photographers, design agencies, creative freelancers, and the like. It is loaded with unique features like: the Fullscreen gallery, Stunning Galleries, advanced live Skin Editor, Visual Page Builder, Gallery Media Manager, Parallax, etc. It also includes other features such as: fully responsive, retina ready, advanced theme options, full WooCommerce design integration and WPML ready, font awesome integration, advanced typography options, Custom CSS field, SEO basics built-in, Wistia Video Hosting Integration, JW Player 6.x Integration with Audio / Video, extensive documentation and detailed screencast video tutorials and top-notch custom support.

Porcelain – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme

Porcelain Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and dynamic, fully responsive, parallax WordPress theme suited for all types of website needs. It comes with some awesome features, such as custom headers and custom background sections and it is the perfect canvas for your creative ideas. The combination of responsive design and parallax animations creates a high impact and impressive home page that looks great on all kinds of devices. Features include: an extensive admin panel, packed with various options so you can easily modify stylings, colors, fonts, layouts, etc., a flexible AJAX gallery with jQuery animations and effects, the gallery also provides an AJAX pagination and category filter for a better items organisation, content slider, Nivo slider, masonry layout support, and so much more.

OneUp – One Page Parallax Retina WordPress Theme

OneUp Premium WordPress Theme is a fully responsive HTML5 Retina enabled One Page WordPress Theme suitable for any kind of creative or business use. Built upon the responsive Twitter Bootstrap framework, the theme is highly optimized for both mobile and desktop platforms. This premium theme utilizes lazy-loading of images and compression of all required scripts, to ensure a fast-loading and awesome looking website. Features include: advanced page builder, layered slide builder, drag ‘n drop galleries, custom thumbnail cropping, WPML compatible, 4 slider engines, and many other great features to create a high visual impact website.

Gothica – A one Page WordPress Theme in Goth Style

Gothica Premium Responsive WordPress Theme is a bold and striking one page theme with a modern gothic flair. This premium theme features innovative AJAX loading of Posts and Portfolio items (can be turned on or off on demand with one click in Page Builder), premium Aqua Page Builder, Revolution Slider, responsive design, unlimited homepage templates, CSS3 features and animations, 5 Post Templates (Standard, video, link, gallery, audio), Team Page, and so much more.

Tao: Retina & Responsive WordPress Portfolio Theme

Tao Premium WordPress theme is unique and incredibly easy to use WordPress portfolio theme that’s quick to setup and easy to customize. This premium handcrafted theme is perfect for showcasing your work with a creative twist. Check out the unique folding effect of the grid boxes. Other features include: fully retina & responsive, semantic and clean HTML5, coded with graceful degradation and SEO in mind, focus on user-experience, usability, and beautiful typography, WordPress 3.0+ ready (featured images, custom post types, custom menus), unbranded theme options, localisation support, widget enabled, diversified portfolio, etc.

Useful WordPress Widgets For Your Website

Not sure which widgets to add to your website? Widgets are handy tools or content that make it easy to customize the content of your sidebar(s). You can add, arrange, and remove them from the sidebar(s) of your blog according to your design and function preferences. Here are some useful and popular widgets to beef up the overall functionality of your WordPress theme.

Sidebar and Widget Manager

This powerful widget manager allows you to have full control over your WordPress theme pages, layouts, and content and turn them into widgetized, responsive layouts. With its easy to use grid manager, this tool allows you to drop and drag widgets into any part of the page. You can replace existing sidebars with custom ones, add a sidebar in a page template file, manage vertical and horizontal widget alignment, and so much more. This widget supports other popular widgets such as WooCommerce, WPML, BuddyPress and BBpress. Designed to fit into the core WordPress design, the Sidebar and Widget Manager requires easy administration with minimal fuss.

Taxonomies Filter Widget

Taxonomies Filter Widget is a robust but powerful WordPress plugin that creates a widget which acts as a filter for your categories, tags, taxonomies and numerical custom fields. Visitors will then be able to do faceted searches on your site to filter posts and pages by taxonomies and numerical custom fields, using drop-downs, checkboxes, radio buttons, multi select and range sliders. While built especially for sites with a variety of categories, custom taxonomies and custom posts (eg: shops, directories, tutorials, job boards or listings), this plugin will also do a great job at filtering the WordPress posts and pages by categories, tags and even post format. Search can be done using dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, multi-select and range sliders. Hierarchical navigation is also possible, allowing readers to drill down to specific information.

Popular Posts Bar Widget

This two-in-one widget allows you to show trending posts by comments or views according to a custom time interval, in say, the last 7 days. What makes this Popular Posts Widget unlike the rest is that it displays your most popular posts in a bar format. You can customize the number of posts to be shown or set a time lapse filter to show only those related to a specific time frame. The graphic display engages the curiosity of visitors thus encouraging them to check out the most popular posts in your site. The widget also gives out information on how many visitors have checked out your posts which can prove valuable to you as a provider of content.

Twitter Ultimate WordPress Plugin

Twitter Ultimate is a user friendly, highly customizable WordPress plugin you can use to display real time twitter feed based on the search word / username / list entered. You can: display tweets from usernames or tweets mentioning a word, display tweets from multiple queries or usernames, control number of tweets to be shown in the feed, control speed of incoming tweets, embed the widget directly on your pages or posts, etc. This gives you real time, live feedback for a specific post or page.

Hello Ajax Tabs

“Hello ajax tabs” is a WordPress plugin, which can be used for creating tabs element from any widgets you have. This plugin comes with 16 predefined styles and 23 animation effects, ajax support, multi tabs support, easing support, vertical tabs support, menu width and height adjustment controls for vertical tabs, fixed height support, other useful features to ensure you can create the tabs you need.

Dropbox Frontend Slider

The Dropbox Frontend Slider widget allows you to display dropbox images directly on your website. You can display these images either using the flexslider without effects or create your own effects. You can also choose between various frontend image sizes, choose the direct URL from Dropbox where the images are located, add or edit your dropbox images and immediately see the changes coming up on the frontend, etc.

One Page WordPress Themes – October 2013

One Page WordPress themes are becoming quite popular lately. Not only do these ultra simplified and straightforward themes look brilliant but they are also faster loading. Some say they also produce higher conversion rates. Here are some of the latest One Page WordPress themes you need to check out:

GoBlack One Page Parallax WordPress Theme

GoBlack Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and modern single-page portfolio styled theme ideal for the promoting services of creatives, design agencies, or creative freelancers in a professional manner. This 100% fully responsive theme was built in HTML5 and CSS3 using Parallax javascript to create the animated parallax image effects that make it engaging and dynamic. GoBlack features include the revolution slider, unique portfolio scroll animation, smooth tabless design, fentancy black color schemes, and so much more.

Prisma One Page Responsive WordPress Theme

Prisma Premium WordPress Theme was developed with a goal to provide a quick solution to create an impressive modern website with an easily editable layout without sacrificing unique aesthetics. This bold, fully responsive one page theme built with Bootstrap 2.3.2 is easy to customize and includes features such as: filterable portfolio with integrated Fancybox, animated retina-ready splash menu, and also single page layout with stand-alone page setup option among others.

Flavor One Page Parallax WordPress Theme

Flavor Premium WordPress Theme is a warm and classic looking one page premium theme that will surely make your portfolio stand out. The generous space dedicated to presenting images (filterable) is readily accessible and gives visitors a very good idea of the quality of your work. Salient features of this theme include: modular homepage – layout sections + layout shortcodes, smooth tabless design, parallax effect, flexible grid system built with Bootstrap, among many.

Webmakers One Page WordPress Theme

Webmakers Premium WordPress Theme is a single page, clean and minimalist style WordPress theme recommended for creatives, freelancers and agencies. This theme comes with 5 pre-made theme skins, powerful theme options with ability to change typography, unlimited style settings for colors, fonts, and other design elements, a custom plugin based shortcode generator to build theme element easily, a built in ajax contact form, to name a few.

Cingle Responsive One Page WordPress Theme

Cingle Premium WordPress Theme is a clean, responsive multi purpose One Page WordPress theme ideal for a range of web uses. This premium theme will work well for business or corporate portfolios, creative agencies, design professionals, or even freelance professionals who want a more flexible theme to meet their various needs. Cingle features an ultra responsive design (enable/disable), sticky navigation, light and dark styles, parallax, Google Analytics tracking code, unlimited theme customization options, etc. to get your website to where you want it to be.

Simple Easy Parallax Retina WordPress Theme

Simple Premium WordPress Theme is an impressive, modern and yet very easy to use flat design WordPress theme with both single page and multiple page layout options. This fully responsive theme inspired by cool metro colors and built with Bootstrap includes features such as: mobile optimized parallax feature, animated contents, retina display optimization, touch optimized responsive layout, filterable expanding portfolio, and fully tested it on iPhone 5, iPad 4, S3 android and Windows Phone.

Visia Responsive One Page Retina WordPress Theme

Visia Premium WordPress Theme is a beautiful, minimalist, fully responsive retina ready single page WordPress theme that will surely impress your visitors. This premium theme includes a separate blog section and is suitable for any kind of creative or business use. Visia is highly optimized for both mobile and desktop platforms and uses a lazy-loading support for images, assets and compression of all required scripts for lightning fast loading time. It also features a built in custom thumbnail cropping tool to help you control images you need to highlight for your posts.

Omni One Page/Multi Page Parallax Flat WordPress Theme

Omni Premium WordPress Theme is a high quality, flat and full responsive WordPress theme for creative businesses or photographers. This Bootstrap built modern theme gives you 5 amazing header options to choose from (portfolio, revolution slider, video, parallax, layer slider).You can add unlimited pages and separators to each page and customize them according to your own preferences.You also have a choice between the One Page and the MultiPage version which can be easily switched in the Admin panel.

Elegant Themes Releases First Ever Free WordPress Theme

Great news from Elegant Themes! Elegant Themes just released it’s first ever FREE WordPress theme and it is a gem. Check out Serene – a clean, minimalist and absolutely beautiful blogging theme that will surely inspire your writing muse. Its modern and yet elegant design create that easy to read feel that will make visitors want to linger a little longer.

Customizing is definitely easy using the Theme customizer giving you freedom to be creative with it and match your blog to your personality and writing style. Capture your every mood in every post with the use of any of the available 6 post formats to choose from (article, gallery, audio, link, video, and quote). Post on the go and be confident that your blog will look amazing on any mobile or handheld device because of this theme’s responsive design. Organize your posts and color code each section or post type with custom colors and select fonts. The theme’s overall typographic style is clean and conducive to encouraging reading. Prefer some other type of font? You can easily change it to any of your font preferences in the theme’s admin panel. Social networking is also a breeze with the built in social networking buttons that can easily be configured in the Customizer panel.

Overall, you get the tried and tested Elegant Themes quality with all the basic things you need to set up an amazing looking blog at absolutely zero cost. This free WordPress theme includes features such as:

  • nElegant Design
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • 6 Different Post Formats
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Unparalleled Support

Serene Free-mium WordPress Theme is available for download in the WordPress.org WP theme Directory. An exclusive version with additional bells and whistles will soon be made available to Elegant Themes members and subscribers.

Get Serene Now For Free!

WordPress Websites to Inspire You

WordPress has been around for 10 years and continues to go strong as more and more people discover the many creative ways you can use it for to create the website you need and want. One of the best ways to demonstrate the many possibilities you can achieve with this free software is to see an actual WordPress website that is both beautiful and functional. Be inspired with these outstanding WordPress websites we’ve found:

WordPress is a pretty powerful tool you can use to create amazing and stunning websites with. Its tried and tested coding architecture makes it one of the most robust content management platforms out there today. The best part of it all is that it is available for free.

We hope these websites inspire you to imagine and create that dream website you’ve always wanted.

30 Creative Business WordPress Themes

For a successful business an outstanding site plays a major role, Today a lot of creative professionals have realized this and use Word Press as the engine for building an online site. The ease of use of WordPress, the high number of portfolio styled themes and plugins available for building a professional portfolio web site makes the decision easy.  (more…)

WordPress Themes: Flat vs Skeuomorphism

First it was responsive, and then it was retina-ready, and now it’s all about flat design. – mainstream design trends that have been embraced and integrated into a lot of current WordPress theme designs. Not exactly a bad thing especially if you are being sensitive to the demands of the target market you are servicing. Flat design (as seen in Windows 8) is the current design flavor as opposed to the more traditional skeuomorphic designs (as seen in pre-iOS 7 graphics). It is not exactly a “new” design style but it has received a lot of attention lately especially because of Apple’s recent decision to go “flat” in the latest iteration of iOS. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Skeuomorphism Defined

Skeuomorph, , or skeuomorphism – n. (Pronunciation: /?skyo?o??môr?fiz?m/)
Skeuomorphism refers to a design principle in which design cues are taken from the physical world. This term is most frequently applied to user interfaces (UIs), where much of the design has traditionally aimed to recall the real world – such as the use of folder and files images for computer filing systems, or a letter symbol for email – probably to make computers feel more familiar to users. However, this approach is increasingly being criticized for its lack of ingenuity and its failure to pioneer designs that truly harness a computer’s superior capabilities, rather than forcing it to merely mimic the behavior of a physical object.

The term skeuomorphism is derived from the Greek words “skeuos,” which means vessel or tool, and “morphe,” which means “shape.”
(source: Techopedia.com)

Flat Design Defined

Flat design is a minimalistic design approach that emphasizes usability. It features clean, open space, crisp edges, bright colours and two-dimensional/flat illustrations. In flat design, ornamental elements are viewed as unnecessary clutter. If an aspect serves no functional purpose, it’s a distraction from user experience. This is the reason for the minimalistic nature of flat design. (source: creativebloq.com)

Flat design is a technique that uses simple effects – or lack thereof – to create a design scheme that does not include three-dimensional attributes. Effects such as drop shadows, bevels, embossing and gradients are not used in flat design projects.
Some call the look of flat design simple, although it can be quite complex. The look itself is simple, direct and user-friendly, making it an increasingly popular option for mobile user interfaces as well as trendy web design. (source: designmodo.com)

The Debate – Old Ornate vs. The New Cool

Many designers argue for or against either one of these design styles. It is an ongoing debate in design circles and the discussion has sometimes been heated and enlightening at the same time. Aside from the obvious difference in looks, visual designers have taken to flat design in response to technology. Not only is it quicker to design but also the smaller file sizes of these design elements allow for faster loading and a more efficient UI experience. As the web becomes more mature and more distinct in its visual language, the use of these flat design elements will become more instinctive and less dependent on graphics that imitate real life.

WordPress and Flat Design

WordPress designers have already been incorporating flat design into many of the WordPress themes that are coming out. Minimalist, clean, simple graphic elements are common in several of the newer theme releases. Excessive shadows, real world things, 3D effects, gradients are a few of the effects that have been greatly reduced and have given way to cleaner, simpler, colorful, light and modern elements.

Which one is better?

Some people like log cabins while others prefer IKEA-styled homes. We can’t say one is better than the other because it is a matter of personal preference. As far as designing WordPress themes for a specific market goes, one market will prefer the minimalist look while another will be wowed by a 3D, parallax powered, visually stimulating theme. Some are even drawn to crowded design. The choice belongs to the consumer. And the consumer will buy whatever matches his or her preferences and meets his or her goals and objectives. What may seem beautiful to one client can look disgusting and awful to another.

WordPress professionals who create WordPress themes and sell them in the marketplace are subject to the whims of of the consumer. No one can really predict which theme will be a smashing hit once it is released. However, delivering a product to the market that is consistent with one’s design sensibilities and high standards of quality will always find its target market match somewhere along the way.

Share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

Flat Design WordPress Themes You Can Flaunt

Design trends come & go. Some rise to the top like a shooting star and stay there with the rest of the stars while others burst like comets and fade into the night sky. One so called design “trend” that has actually been around for the longest time has been getting much attention only recently. In fact, even Apple has finally embraced it and has incorporated it in their latest iteration of the iOs. Say hello to the flat design. And it has found its way in many of the newest WordPress themes being released. Here are some examples of WordPress themes that have gone “flat”. Check these out.

Nova Flat & Clean Responsive Theme

If you are looking for a WordPress theme that can be used for multipurpose applications and for diverse types of websites, check out Nova Premium WordPress Theme, a clean, flat design multipurpose premium theme that will surely amaze you. It’s got a sample content importer, 14 homepage options, 9 premium sliders, unlimited header options, a page builder, fluid layout, a skin manager, and a short code editor just to name a few. The flat graphics are integrated nicely and they add to the overall professional look of the theme.

Showy Bold and Flat Portfolio

Impress your clients with this ultra minimalist, boldly simple, flat design WordPress portfolio theme, Showy. Design agencies, creative professionals, and freelance artists will love the simple, uncluttered look of this premium theme that will surely put their creative work in the spotlight. Less is more, indeed. And if it’s a portfolio showcase you want, you have everything you actually really need in this excellent theme.

Flat Responsive Portfolio Theme

If your’re looking for a fresh new way to present your portfolio in step with the latest flat design trend, Flat Premium WordPress Theme is worth a peek. The horizontal scrolling action gives visitors the feeling that they are going through a glossy high end design magazine. You get a choice of 2 homepage options, flat design interactive social media buttons, AJAX pagination for quicker load time, collapsible side menu, tons of other features, plus it is retina ready (great for images) with an optional retina logo upload field feature.

Revusion Flat Corporate Theme

Revusion Premium WordPress Theme is a flat responsive, modern and very professional looking corporate theme packed with features for today’s modern business. Revusion integrates Pixeden flat icons into its design as inspired by the current flat design UI trend. This premium theme gives you several different layout options via its page templates. You can choose to add a testimonial page, a team page, a services page, an FAQ page, a gallery page, aside from the usual blog, portfolio, and contact pages to ensure you can pick exactly what you want to add to your site. This retina display ready theme also comes with the Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin.

Sistina Flat Multipurpose Shop Theme

Sistina Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and modern WooCommerce theme, designed with a fresh flat style and with a great responsive and retina-ready design. The cool flat graphic elements, modern typography, and streamlined layout give this theme that modern flair that will appeal to today’s modern shopper. This WordPress theme includes several premium features like the Wishlist and the Compare Products features, the Product Enquiry form (for catalog use sans the shopping cart), the Ajax layered filter, and also a Popup plugin to show offers and news.