It’s been a big year for the ManageWP blog. I joined the team in November of 2011 and in early 2012 we started a regular posting schedule, publishing a new article every single weekday. In recent months we have introduced new authors, such as Charnita and Cliff, who have all contributed great articles.
All of this means that we get through a lot of themes and plugins — especially with our themes and plugins of the month post series. And with the end of the year looming it seems appropriate to round up a selection of the very best themes and plugins we have covered throughout 2012. This post focuses on the themes.
2012’s Themes of the Year
The selection criteria for the themes you see below is pretty simple. Each theme must:
- Be freely available on WordPress.org
- Have been created or updated within the last twelve months
- Have less than 100,000 downloads (at the time of its original selection)
- Be highly rated
This results in a list of unique, quality themes — many of which you will not have heard of.
The top 50 free themes below are ranked by a combination of the number of downloads and average ratings. You can also click on the column headers to sort them by the number of downloads or the average rating (individually). Enjoy!
[table id=1 /]
My Favorite Themes
There’s a lot to choose from the above list but each and every theme is worthy of inclusion. I know this because they have all been featured in a themes of the month post and only the cream of the crop are included there.
However, there are a handful of themes that stick out to me — themes that I really like. With that in mind, below I have picked out a diverse selection of five themes for you to take a closer look at.
Esquire
Pachyderm
Sampression Lite
Lugada
Twenty Twelve
What’s Your Favorite Theme of 2012?
Do you (or have you ever) used any of the themes above? Do you have a particular favorite? Or is there a premium theme that you think is particularly worthy of mention? Please let us know in the comments section!
Michael
Hi Tom,
After having browsed the web n number of times for various WP related info, I have come to the conclusion that the posts on managewp are one of the bests in terms of quality, depth of information and recommendations. Hats off to your hardwork!!
I wanted your quick recommendation — Can you suggest me some of the best WP themes/plugins for Product Reviews? I have searched a lot and there are many such “best themes/plugins”, but none of them look convincing to me. Your authoritative suggestion will go a long way in helping me develop better quality review sites.
Thanks,
Tom Ewer
Hey Michael,
I’m afraid that’s not something I’ve ever looked into in-depth so I wouldn’t want to give you an off-the-cuff recommendation. Sorry!
Cheers,
Tom
Felipe Pavão
Congratulations for making the list. Happy new year.
Mike Zielonka
PageLines FTW!
Gotta love a developer and noob friendly framework that saves you time, is fast, and has bootstrap built in!
Jacko
Yo I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this that’s why i retweeted it.
Happy new year.
Tom Ewer
Same to you Jacko 🙂