DazzlinDonna » Very Best Free (GPL) WordPress Themes to Modify and Make Your Own

Very Best Free (GPL) WordPress Themes to Modify and Make Your Own

Although there are tons of great “free” WordPress themes to download, “free” isn’t always “totally free”. It can be difficult to find a free WordPress theme that doesn’t come with some kind of condition (usually a required link). I found what I consider to be the 5 BEST, totally free WordPress themes, that have NO conditions attached to their use.

I picked the following themes based on their looks and features, and chose the ones that would be most likely to appeal to anyone wanting to customize a theme to suit their needs. Those that made the list also didn’t have any obvious code issues that might make it difficult to modify as needed.

Dkret2 is a 2-column theme with easy administration, and is widgetized, ajax-itized, & scheme skinnable. Note: This theme requires WordPress 2.2).

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Drikatruu Jelly is a 2-column theme. This one has some great code that is nicely commented, including telling you what each of the elements’ colors are, so you can quickly swap them out for colors of your choice. You do need WordPress 2.1 with the widget plugin or WordPress 2.2 (comes with built-in widget support) to be able to use drag-and-drop type editing functionality for some page elements.

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GPS Fluid is a fluid width 3 column theme that very image-light. Both sidebars are widget-ready. This one makes for a very good basic theme that can be used as a starting template for more complex designs.

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WuCoco is a simple, theme for WordPress 2.x, available with one-column, two-column, or three-column layouts with widget support for 2 and 3 column formats. This flexibility in number of columns allows you to try different things with no hassle. Because of its simplistic design, it is easy to imagine modifications such as new colors and graphics.

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Pride is a three-column, fixed-width theme, compatible with WordPress 2.x. Although it seems graphic heavy, Pride is really graphic-light. The speech bubbles in the sidebars give this theme an interesting look.

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Posted on June 8th, 2007 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: WordPress

11 Responses to “Very Best Free (GPL) WordPress Themes to Modify and Make Your Own”

rmccarley, on June 15th, 2007 at 4:17 am Said:

Thanks to this post I recently used Drikatruu Jelly. It is very clean and easy to adjust to your needs. Thanks for the tip!
Vlad, on July 8th, 2007 at 5:01 am Said:

You could add to this list MistyLook ( http://themes.wordpress.net/other/rounded-corners/ 831/mistylook-101/ ) which is also very good and some made by theme-time.com .
DazzlinDonna, on July 8th, 2007 at 7:51 am Said:

No, Vlad, that one doesn’t qualify. It isn’t totally “free” in that it has a sponsored link attached to it. There are tons of free themes that don’t qualify for this list because they have some sort of condition attached to their use.
Silvia, on August 29th, 2007 at 7:36 am Said:

Thanks for the great list Donna. I went with Drikatruu Jelly and just love it’s simplicity. Easy to change - a great time saver.
jameswillisisthebest, on September 8th, 2007 at 2:43 pm Said:

This is my first post
just saying HI
Maximus, on December 20th, 2007 at 1:45 am Said:

I would like to see a continuation of the topic
robert stevenson, on May 4th, 2008 at 11:09 am Said:

Hi, DD.

I’m considering switching to a GPL theme for my wordpress.com blog. Is there a way to test the Drikatruu Jelly or GPS Fluid themes. I have several widgets, and I want to see how they look before I make the switch. I also don’t know how to tell which version of Wordpress I am using. Any advice on this? BTW what’s the downside to using a sponsored blog?
Thanks. Donna
DazzlinDonna, on May 4th, 2008 at 8:02 pm Said:

Hi Robert. Yes, you can test themes with a nifty new plugin called Theme Test Drive which you can get at http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....est-drive/

You can tell which version of WP you are using by logging into your admin and looking at the very bottom of the screen once logged in. You’ll see the version there.

sponsored blog? do you mean sponsored theme? If you do, then the downside is that the link to the sponsor might be a link to a “bad neighborhood” - a site that Google doesn’t like - which would make you a part of that bad neighborhood, and Google may penalize you for it.