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I got one fresh, small project, where I needed small portfolio site for a friend. It got me thinking and lead to research what WordPress can offer to me, with its great CMS platform. I was a little bit surprised, because I got even better results than I expected- theres was a plenty of interesting portfolio, photo gallery themes, where homepage was static, but still you can tie together static with dynamic content and add blog as well. Maybe it’s nothing new or signifunt for most of you, but I wasn’t aware there is possible to get such theme so easily, where of course my friend could manually change it’s content without touching or learning any code knowledge.
It was commercial theme I tested, but since most of people look just for free stuff, I gave it a try and searched for free Portfolio, photo gallery type themes. Enjoy, by the way I also put like 3-4 best portfolio premium themes I found, I hope you wont mind, they are just beautiful alternatives and for very cheap prize!
Photocrati is a powerful WordPress theme for photographers that comes with 60 built-in styles plus an options panel that allows customization of most elements on the site. It comes with a fully featured gallery management system – and it’s the only photography theme with built-in ecommerce for selling images and prints. One of the premium themes I tested – with huge built-in power.
PhotoSquares is very flexible premium gallery WordPress theme that is perfect way for designers and photographers to display their portfolio.
This theme allows you to set your own thumbnail sizes so everyone will be able to create most suitable layout.
Download PhotoSquares portfolio theme here.
Gallery is a beautiful, free, gallery-style Thematic child theme for WordPress, designed by Christopher Wallace especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. It is extremely flexible and can be used as a starting point for design galleries and portfolios.
I really enjoyed this theme because of it’s clean looks and in the same time powerful features built in. Beautiful theme you can easily customize.
Gridlocked is a grid-based, post-format supporting, layout-shuffling, minimalistic theme for creatives. It is both a classic portfolio for showcasing your work and a modern tumblr-style blogging system.
A truly versatile theme, Gridlocked can be configured to focus on your work, your blogging, or both. Support for post formats means you can jazz up your blog with your own self-hosted video, audio, images, galleries, asides, links, quotes and of course good old standard posts.
Work-a-holic is a free minimalistic two and three column WordPress theme that focuses mainly on showcasing portfolios for artists, web designers, photographers and illustrators. Work-a-holic separates your portfolio from your blog, enabling easy navigation for clients in a clean, intuitive fashion. It also has a separate sidebar for portfolio (shows recent projects) and a separate widgetized sidebar for the blog and pages.
Use as a standard blog or use the customized homepage layout, as shown in our demo, that you can activate via our options panel
Sharpfolio is a WordPress theme designed to enable Web Designers, Graphic Designers, Photographers, Motion Designers, Artists or any creative professional to showcase their work in a simple, clean, beautiful portfolio. Sharpfolio aims to focus primarily on your work, because after all, this is what’s most important.
This is a dark-colored theme suitable for anyone who wants to create a quick portfolio or wants to showcase his work through WordPress. The theme is fully CSS/XHTML validated, WordPress 2.6+ ready and comes with easy to modify code.
Garnish is a clean-cut, straight to the point, simple to use portfolio theme. The uncluttered, one-page, ajax-powered portfolio is perfect for placing your most important work directly in front of your potential clients.
If you have ever used a “coming soon” page in place of your portfolio on account of being too busy, Garnish is for you. It’s simple, convenient and to the point. If you’re the modifying type, it’s a pretty decent blank canvas too!
Support for post formats means you can jazz up your blog with your own self-hosted video, audio, images, galleries, asides, links, quotes and of course good old standard posts.
New, just released theme from the same creators of Nishita. New theme really looks much crisper and cleaner – beautiful theme for photographers! Enjoy!
Viewport, a free WordPress theme created by Paul Bennett is focused around a clean and simple, content based layout. The aim is to grab the user’s attention and draw them straight into the content.
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Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 16:51
Deliberately misleading title. Most of these are not free. Are you wilfully ignorant or just trying to piss off your visitors?
b
Thursday, April 19th, 2012 05:21
Changed title, and a lot of options are free, check those without price points.
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 02:18
Dude, free should not be in the title.
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 06:58
Just 2 first ones are premium. All the others are free and I won’t change title because of Google. I am sorry.
Friday, February 10th, 2012 17:40
My understanding of “portfolio gallery theme” seems to be a bit different than most of these designs – they are very “bloggy” in their appearance, while I’d be expecting something allowing me to create more classic pages. And as a photographer I have many pictures which I want always group in galleries – I’ll never think about showing thumbnails of individual pictures on the main page, it will always be a set of thumbnails representing (sub)galleries – again, something different than I see here (latest pictures etc.). I’m not WP developer – not sure if it’s WP constraints, or just that the authors still cannot abandon the bloggy way of thinking…
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 20:58
Hey Dainis, awesome post just what I needed right now. Need to update my portfolio. Thanks for uncovering these!
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 14:38
great collection here mate, especially the Autochrome theme.
Friday, January 6th, 2012 16:15
What a great collection here. thanks for sharing. i relay like 4th one. And now i’ll update for my blog.
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 22:03
Not one of these themes are free. Thanks for wasting my time!
Thursday, December 1st, 2011 05:34
I’m sorry, this article was published 682 days ago and many have changed their plans (and some even stopped their support). We have tons of new collections, if you’d want to see.
Thursday, September 8th, 2011 01:17
just few of the themes are premium, almost all of them are free.
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 08:46
Dainis, this is a nice collection of themes, and on top of that you have a very nicely designed site. I’m glad to see you added Photocrati to the list. If you ever get around to editing or expanding, you ought to consider adding some of the new themes from ThemeForest as well. There are some beautifully designed themes there.
I think there’s a new style emerging now with full width or full screen images and sidebar – style menus.
In any case, thanks!
Monday, July 25th, 2011 02:03
Great collection of Themes – It’s cool to see how in the latest years the availability of both free and premium themes has grown – WP was in the beginning only a blog engine, now it seems like an excellent platform for building almost everything. A classifieds site, a portfolio site, you name it: WP most likely can handle it.
There’s just a problem – especially for who wants to add a personal touch: installing a WordPress theme, the biggest issue most users are facing is customization: every theme has his set of options, more and more panels in the wp-admin….and sometimes for a coder it’s simpler to work out the css or the template files rather than guessing what option to edit.
For a newbie, all those options seem to be confusing, because sometimes is not clear what part of the template or what functionality they allow….Starting from this consideration, I wanted to develop a different concept of customization interface, allowing live theme editing, without leaving your site. Real WYSIWYG editable WordPress themes…that is my goal.
Friday, July 22nd, 2011 16:50
Free themes? Where?
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 02:41
Here you go! http://www.google.com/search?q=1stwebdesigner.com+free+themes First 10 results are from this site!
Saturday, July 16th, 2011 11:10
Another really great wordpress showcase. Thanks Paul. It’s amazing to see how far wordpress has come, it really can be anything for anyone these days.
btw – really like the minimal dessign theme – nice.
Saturday, June 18th, 2011 11:08
My brother recommended I might like this web site. He was once totally right. This post actually made my day. You can not consider just how so much time I had spent for this information! Thank you!
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 15:53
I like template no.6 Creative by Nature and no. 17. Infinity.
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 08:17
The collection is awesome. As I am favoring open source, I like to go with ViewPort. However, we can recommend Photocrati and others mentioned themes to our clients. I’ve saved your article as a bookmark in my Chrome. Good for future usage :)
Friday, April 15th, 2011 01:40
Wow, great collection! I will be using foreword thinking, It works pretty good so far. Its worth the money! i wass thinking of findin someoane to program a blog for me but it seems easyer to use one of these. they look verry nice and simple.
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 21:06
Loved the list and found a theme for what I need. Aloha!
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 18:54
Admirable weblog! I’ll probably be referencing some of this details in my next speech. I would appreciate it when you visited my website at
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 21:59
Awesome selection.
So far, my favorite is this one : http://tesigner2.cmsmasters.net/
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 21:57
Awesome collection. I like Irresistible for that cool background and transparent boxes.
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 22:43
Nice collection
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 11:11
Now, why haven’t I known about the Gallery theme?! I’ll probably use that for a gallery I’m trying to build.
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 07:20
nice collection list man, does any of this theme has compatible with wordpress 2.9 version?
Monday, January 18th, 2010 17:17
Vinjas galiigi neizskataas peec free. Laikam buusiet nulleejushi :D, joks, kas joks, bet nu juusu blogs ir tieshaam fantastisks. Velns ar aaraa, shitaadi posti. Prieks i acis sviest te iekshaa.
Monday, January 18th, 2010 17:58
uh paldies! nu tad Tev vajag pasekot arī premium theme rakstam, kas drīz tiks publicēts.. jo pa 25$ var dabūt tādas superīgas tēmas, kuras vispār prieks editēt, viss automatizēts.
Prieks dzirdēt tādu pozitīvu LV komentāru! Cheers!
Monday, January 18th, 2010 17:15
Nice post. I loved Work-a-holic and used to help build my portfolio site.
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Arnold
Saturday, July 16th, 2011 11:10
Another really great wordpress showcase. Thanks Paul. It’s amazing to see how far wordpress has come, it really can be anything for anyone these days.
btw – really like the minimal dessign theme – nice.
alohatony
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 21:06
Loved the list and found a theme for what I need. Aloha!
Enrique Stambach
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 18:54
Admirable weblog! I’ll probably be referencing some of this details in my next speech. I would appreciate it when you visited my website at
Aliza Shehpati
Friday, April 15th, 2011 01:40
Wow, great collection! I will be using foreword thinking, It works pretty good so far. Its worth the money! i wass thinking of findin someoane to program a blog for me but it seems easyer to use one of these. they look verry nice and simple.
Krsna
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 08:17
The collection is awesome. As I am favoring open source, I like to go with ViewPort. However, we can recommend Photocrati and others mentioned themes to our clients. I’ve saved your article as a bookmark in my Chrome. Good for future usage :)
Andy
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 15:53
I like template no.6 Creative by Nature and no. 17. Infinity.
Veezual
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 21:57
Awesome collection. I like Irresistible for that cool background and transparent boxes.
Tutorijali HDonWEB
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 22:43
Nice collection
Matt Axell
Monday, January 18th, 2010 17:15
Nice post. I loved Work-a-holic and used to help build my portfolio site.
wpfeed
Monday, January 18th, 2010 18:37
thanks for the list and thank you for mentioning wpFolio.
radikaalz
Monday, January 18th, 2010 17:17
Vinjas galiigi neizskataas peec free. Laikam buusiet nulleejushi :D, joks, kas joks, bet nu juusu blogs ir tieshaam fantastisks. Velns ar aaraa, shitaadi posti. Prieks i acis sviest te iekshaa.
Dainis Graveris
Monday, January 18th, 2010 17:58
uh paldies! nu tad Tev vajag pasekot arī premium theme rakstam, kas drīz tiks publicēts.. jo pa 25$ var dabūt tādas superīgas tēmas, kuras vispār prieks editēt, viss automatizēts.
Prieks dzirdēt tādu pozitīvu LV komentāru! Cheers!
arfandia
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 07:20
nice collection list man, does any of this theme has compatible with wordpress 2.9 version?
Matthew Heidenreich
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 00:18
great collection, thanks for this share!
Teejay
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 11:11
Now, why haven’t I known about the Gallery theme?! I’ll probably use that for a gallery I’m trying to build.
Lola Cheu
Saturday, June 18th, 2011 11:08
My brother recommended I might like this web site. He was once totally right. This post actually made my day. You can not consider just how so much time I had spent for this information! Thank you!
Bill
Friday, July 22nd, 2011 16:50
Free themes? Where?
Rean John Uehara
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 02:41
Here you go! http://www.google.com/search?q=1stwebdesigner.com+free+themes First 10 results are from this site!
david
Friday, February 10th, 2012 17:40
My understanding of “portfolio gallery theme” seems to be a bit different than most of these designs – they are very “bloggy” in their appearance, while I’d be expecting something allowing me to create more classic pages. And as a photographer I have many pictures which I want always group in galleries – I’ll never think about showing thumbnails of individual pictures on the main page, it will always be a set of thumbnails representing (sub)galleries – again, something different than I see here (latest pictures etc.). I’m not WP developer – not sure if it’s WP constraints, or just that the authors still cannot abandon the bloggy way of thinking…
Tony Meyer
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 20:58
Hey Dainis, awesome post just what I needed right now. Need to update my portfolio. Thanks for uncovering these!
Mike
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 02:18
Dude, free should not be in the title.
Dainis Graveris
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 06:58
Just 2 first ones are premium. All the others are free and I won’t change title because of Google. I am sorry.
Ben K
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 16:51
Deliberately misleading title. Most of these are not free. Are you wilfully ignorant or just trying to piss off your visitors?
b
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, April 19th, 2012 05:21
Changed title, and a lot of options are free, check those without price points.
Denis Koo
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 14:38
great collection here mate, especially the Autochrome theme.
Jignesh Prajapati
Friday, January 6th, 2012 16:15
What a great collection here. thanks for sharing. i relay like 4th one. And now i’ll update for my blog.
Matteo
Monday, July 25th, 2011 02:03
Great collection of Themes – It’s cool to see how in the latest years the availability of both free and premium themes has grown – WP was in the beginning only a blog engine, now it seems like an excellent platform for building almost everything. A classifieds site, a portfolio site, you name it: WP most likely can handle it.
There’s just a problem – especially for who wants to add a personal touch: installing a WordPress theme, the biggest issue most users are facing is customization: every theme has his set of options, more and more panels in the wp-admin….and sometimes for a coder it’s simpler to work out the css or the template files rather than guessing what option to edit.
For a newbie, all those options seem to be confusing, because sometimes is not clear what part of the template or what functionality they allow….Starting from this consideration, I wanted to develop a different concept of customization interface, allowing live theme editing, without leaving your site. Real WYSIWYG editable WordPress themes…that is my goal.
Erick
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 08:46
Dainis, this is a nice collection of themes, and on top of that you have a very nicely designed site. I’m glad to see you added Photocrati to the list. If you ever get around to editing or expanding, you ought to consider adding some of the new themes from ThemeForest as well. There are some beautifully designed themes there.
I think there’s a new style emerging now with full width or full screen images and sidebar – style menus.
In any case, thanks!
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, September 8th, 2011 01:17
just few of the themes are premium, almost all of them are free.
RyLoree
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 22:03
Not one of these themes are free. Thanks for wasting my time!
Rean John Uehara
Thursday, December 1st, 2011 05:34
I’m sorry, this article was published 682 days ago and many have changed their plans (and some even stopped their support). We have tons of new collections, if you’d want to see.
olivier
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 21:59
Awesome selection.
So far, my favorite is this one : http://tesigner2.cmsmasters.net/