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Every year designers are pushing the boundaries of what WordPress can do. 2012 is no different. In just a few short months we have seen a large increase in the number of premium WordPress themes being released, and the bar is certainly being raised with the new additions to the ranks.
It’s encouraging to see so many designers making their themes responsive so that their themes look great on desktops, tablets and mobile devices. Designers are also adding more custom page templates, short codes and portfolio functionality to their WordPress themes too.
Today we would like to show you 25 of the best WordPress themes that desginers have been released so far in 2012. We hope you enjoy the list.
The Themes
1. Indie Fest
Regular License: $99
A fantastic looking design for bands and musicians that comes with 8 different backgrounds and 17 main colour schemes. It features a customized twitter feed widget for updating fans, a SoundCloud player to promote your music and a newsletter sign up widget too. It also utilizes the WordPress plugin GigPress for promoting upcoming gigs.
2. Unsigned
Standard License: $70, Developer License: $70
Developed by WooThemes, Unsigned is a powerful responsive design for musicians and bands. The theme is very flexible as it allows you to customise the home page using widgets. Several modules are included to help you build the perfect bad website.
There’s an events module for displaying a list of your gigs and events, a discography module that lets you display album information and a galleries module to manage your photos. There’s also a video module, a SoundCloud player and a featured slider. It also includes lots of WooFramework standard features such as short codes, sidebar manager, built in SEO options and custom page templates.
3. LitePress
Single License: $69
A responsive clean magazine design from WP Zoom, LitePress could be used for an online magazine, news website or blog. Featured images are used heavily in this design. There’s a beautiful featured post slideshow on the home page, a featured category widget and a tabbed widget too. All of which use featured images to promote your posts.
The theme also includes a video custom post type for displaying video slideshows and a great theme options area.
4. Smooth Pro
Essential Package: $39.95, Standard Package: $69.95, Premium Package: $99.95
An advanced real estate theme that comes with IDX-MLS integration. One of the themes best features is the property information search box that lets visitors search by property type, number of bedrooms or bathrooms, location and neighbourhood. Results can be filtered by price too.
Agents can login to your site and add, modify or delete listings. It’s also possible to add video tours directly into listings by simply adding the video link in the post editor video field.
5. Backbone
Standard Pack: $79, Developer Pack: $159
With Backbone, ColorLabs have managed to create one of the most beautiful clean responsive theme frameworks available for WordPress. It uses a drag and drop user interface for the options area that lets you customise every aspect of your website. The layout and sidebar managers work great and it has a useful import and export feature for your settings.
Bacbone also comes with two stylish child themes. Kirei is a business template that is suitable for corporate websites and portfolios, whilst Vidio is a great looking blog theme made specifically for video bloggers.
6. A Personal Blog
Regular License: $30
A simple elegant WordPress design that is perfect for personal blogs. It comes with five custom widgets for displaying your logo, tweets and ads. It also has 5 built in short codes for controlling your typography and archives and contact page templates.
7. Guesthouse
Regular License: 35$
Guesthouse is a fully functional hospitality theme that was created for hotels, restaurants, B & Bs, camp sites, travel agencies, ski resorts and more. Designed using HTML5, it comes with 8 theme skins, lots of portfolio layouts and a home page slider that has over 20 effects.
A short code generator is also built in to help you style your content and the admin area can be branded easily with your own logo, colours and text.
8. Webworks
Regular License: $35
Webworks is one of the most unique and most stylish designs released so far in 2012. Users get to choose from 4 beautiful animated menus for the home page. It comes with a resume page template for your CV, FAQ page template, 6 portfolio templates, contact template and a blog template that can have the sidebar placed on the left or right or removed altogether.
The responsive design also looks great on mobile devices and it supports 50 font types.
9. ShopDock
Standard License: $39, Developer License: $59
Powered by WooCommerce, ShopDock is an Ecommerce design with a difference. Rather than having to go to the checkout page to view the number of items in their cart, a permanent shopping cart (the ShopDock) is displayed at the bottom of every page using Javascript. It sounds a bit gimmicky but is actually a very useful feature.
Coded in HTML5 and CSS3, ShopDock has a responsive design and it also comes with 7 colour schemes and a great looking customizable feature product slider on the home page.
10. Perseus
Regular License: $35
A simple yet beautiful WordPress design that is suitable for blogs or portfolio websites. The portfolio template allows you to place portfolio items in 1, 2 or 3 columns. You can also add a nivo slideshow to any of your pages.
It’s not the most feature rich WordPress theme available though this simplicity should appeal to those of you who are looking for a basic yet elegant design for their website.
11. Eleven40
Regular License: $24.95, With Genesis Framework: $79.95
Powered by the Genesis framework, Eleven40 is a beautiful responsive design that can have a 1, 2 or 3 column layout. It also comes with 4 colour schemes and works with custom headers, featured images and threaded comments.
12. Vintage Camera
FREE
A free, retro blogging design that comes in 5 different styles. It has a responsive design and supports WordPress post formats such as videos and quotes, custom flyout menus and 3 widget areas in the footer. Custom header and background options are supported too.
13. Delicacy
FREE
A beautiful clean design that was developed for food related blogs. Recipe details such as preparation time can be added underneath the post editor, though the design could easily be used for any type of blog.
It also features a nivo slider on the home page, 4 custom widgets, 6 colour schemes and 6 background patterns.
14. Resolution
FREE
One of the best looking free WordPress designs released this year. Resolution is big, bold and stylish. It uses beautiful fonts and blog post pages have no sidebar so that more emphasis is placed on content. The theme comes with a basic options area that lets you customise the background image and it supports WordPress menus too.
15. Convertible
Access to all Elegant Themes designs for $39 per year
A great theme for marketers, Convertible allows you to create professional looking landing pages easily. Pages can be designed using a user friendly drag and drop page builder. 13 modules are included to help you build your page including image and content sliders, testimonial boxes, tabbed content and ribbon headers. It also boasts a very cool Ajax powered options page.
16. Sundance
FREE
Sundance is a clean blogging theme from the Automattic team. It supports sticky posts and custom headers, backgrounds and menus. A full page template is included and the home page has a beautiful video carousel to showcase your latest video posts.
17. Veles
Regular License: $35
A clean corporate design that comes with 3 different home page layouts. It also comes with a services template, contact template, about us template, blog template and 4 different portfolio template layouts. 5 different sliders are included too and there built in short codes for styling your content.
18. Feature!
Regular License: $45
Feature! is a community magazine theme that integrates beautifully with the popular plugins BuddyPress and bbPress. Coded using HTML5 and CSS3, it comes with 6 different colour schemes and 100 background patterns and there is a built in review system with 3 different thumbnail types.
Unlimited sidebars can be created if you want to give each page a unique look. 6 custom widgets and lots of short codes are built in to the theme too. It’s a great option for an online magazine.
19. Domena
Regular License: $20
Domena is a simple clean template that will help you sell your domain name online. A light and dark version of the design are available and there is 4 different colour schemes available for buttons and links etc.
What makes Domena so special is it’s integration with Google Analytics. This option will be particularly useful to those who are selling domains with good traffic. A mobile version of the theme is also included.
20. Pixem
Regular License: $35
Pixem is a unique responsive portfolio design that was coded using HTML5. It’s an incredibly versatile theme which comes with light and dark colour schemes. It also includes 12 background images, 2 portfolio styles, four custom post types, seven custom widgets and 8 unique page templates.
21. HyperGrid
Regular License: $35
One of the best gallery showcase templates released over the last few years, Hypergrid is a great design for galleries and online portfolios. Advertising has been integrated into the design perfectly and it comes with a built in submission form to encourage visitors to submit their own websites or designs. The only thing it lacks is the option to charge visitors for submissions.
22. Big Company
Regular License: $30
Big Company is a clean corporate design that comes with 15 different colour schemes. What sets this apart from most other business designs is the ability to customise every single page with a different background. This is a great tool for branding different areas of your website.
A fantastic looking pricing table manager is also built into the theme and there are numerous custom page templates too.
23. Handmade
Regular License: $35
With a cute design that is more common on personal blogs, the Handmade theme from Obox is a fully functional WooCommerce eCommerce design that stands out from the crowd. Large images are used throughout the theme to list products and it has a stylish blog template as well.
Handmade is a great choice for an arts and crafts shop or a personal blog and is powered using the OCMX Live theme framework so WordPress beginners will be comfortable using it.
24. Right Now
Regular License: $35
Right Now is a stunning WordPress design for photographers that was developed using HTML5 and CSS3. The rotating full screen background supports images and video. Visitors can change the background using a gallery slider at the bottom of the page. Thankfully, there is a button at the bottom of the page for visitors to turn off audio if they find music from your video annoying.
The theme also supports over 450 Google fonts though one of its best features is the gallery manager that lets you upload more than 100 images at the one time. It’s shaping up to be one of the best selling WordPress themes in the ThemeForest marketplace in 2012.
25. Wisdom Of Life
Regular License: $35
Wisdom Of Life is a clean corporate theme that has a magazine style layout. It was designed for charities and non-profit organisations though could easily be adapted for a news or business website. It includes options for events management, 4 different portfolio page templates and lots of custom widgets.
What’s your favourite design from the beginning of this year? If your favourite theme didn’t make our list, please leave a comment below and share it with other Noupe readers.
(rb)