Ten Free WordPress Themes
The following list of free WordPress themes is not exhaustive and may not meet your needs. All the themes presented here, however, are user friendly, compatible with widgets, use valid code, and are free.
Hybrid
Theme designer: Justin Tadlock
Hybrid is more of a theme framework, or parent theme that can be modified endlessly to create the perfect child theme, than a theme to use straight out of the box, but don’t let that intimidate you! It’s crazy easy to use, and Hybrid is very user-friendly.
By default, the Hybrid theme is very plain and simple, but it encompasses any and all of the WordPress features and functions that you would want:
It’s SEO-ready: Hybrid comes completely optimized for SEO (search engine optimization).
It’s highly customizable: Hybrid has 15 custom page templates for you to choose from. Each custom page is set up slightly differently, giving you an array of options.
It’s widget-ready: Hybrid has multiple widgetized areas for you to easily drop content into, making your WordPress theme experience easy and efficient.
You can download and install the theme directly into your WordPress website by using the automatic theme installer built in to your WordPress Dashboard.
designPile
Theme designer: Smashing Magazine
The highlights of this theme are the following:
Three different color schemes: black and pink, black and green, and black and blue
Sidebar and footer widgets
Post thumbnails: supports the WordPress post thumbnails/featured image feature
Space for monetization with ads
Built-in social networking links and sharing
The designPile theme is a sharp design and an easy-to-use free WordPress theme for any new user.
Responsive
Theme designer: Emil Uzelac
Responsive design is all the rage right now because of the emergence of mobile and tablet browsing. Responsive design ensures that a website looks perfect, no matter which device a reader is using to view it. The Responsive theme by Emil Uzelac features nine page templates including the Blog, Blog Summary, and other static page templates built on a fluid grid system that adapts to the user’s browsing environment.
Theme options in this responsive design include webmaster tools, logo management, social icons, and navigation menus as well as multilingual support.
P2
Theme designer: Automattic
You can easily see the Twitter-esque inspiration behind P2 by looking at the post text box displayed at the top of the theme. As with Twitter, users can post quick updates, and logged-in visitors can leave feedback on the updates.
All this happens from the convenience of the front page of your site — without requiring anyone to click through to a different page on your site, locate the comment form, type, and submit the comment. The P2 theme also features the following:
Live tag suggestions for your posts and updates
Threaded comment display
A show/hide feature for comments
Real-time notification for posts, updates, and comments
Keyboard shortcuts
Annotum Base
Theme designer: Crowd Favorite
Annotum Base is a scholar’s blog theme providing a complete open-access journaling system including peer review, workflow, and advanced editing and formatting for blog posts and pages. The most interesting features in this theme include structured figures, equations, and cross referencing from PubMed and CrossRef (including reference importing).
Other theme options include
Blackbird
Theme designer: InkThemes
Blackbird is a responsive theme (mobile ready) with extensive customization options including the ability to:
Use your own logo
Include your analytics code
Customize featured text using an easy widget
Customize background colors and/or images
Incorporate post thumbnails using the WordPress featured image feature
Customize the header image
Use the navigation menu feature in WordPress
iTheme
Theme designer: Nick La
iTheme is a WordPress theme designed with Macintosh lovers in mind. The theme emulates the design elements and features of the Macintosh operating system, with beautiful blue gradients and Mac-like menu headers and icons. This theme has a fully configurable sidebar that allows you to use WordPress widgets, and when they’re in your blog, you can drag those widgets around in the sidebar.
Esquire
Theme designer: Automattic
Esquire is a free WordPress theme created by Automattic, the company behind the WordPress.com hosted service. It has a distinct visual design with creative typography (fonts), a two-column layout, and visually creative design elements that make it unique (such as the date format and content styling).
Esquire supports all of the expected default WordPress features such as featured images, custom background, custom header, navigation menus, and post formats. The theme design is inspired by the art direction of Esquire Magazine.
WP-Creativix
Theme designer: IWEBIX
The WP-Creativix theme by IWEBIX is a very clean, professional-looking free theme for WordPress that you can begin using immediately after you install and activate it. This elegantly designed theme is well suited for a business, portfolio, or photoblogging website.
The WP-Creativix theme provides users with custom page templates (such as no-sidebar templates, portfolio, and blog) and allows you to use default WordPress features such as custom header, custom background, navigation menu, featured images, and threaded comments.
Gridline
Theme designer: Thad Allender
Gridline is a minimalist WordPress theme featuring a clean grid layout. The theme has clean, simple, light elements, which lets your design focus mainly on content rather than appearance. The theme uses black, white, and gray tones and a two-column layout, with content on the left and sidebar on the right.
This is a free theme offered by a commercial theme company: Graph Paper Press — and while it is free, to be able to download it, you need to register for a free account on the Graph Paper Press website.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
archive
1. (noun) A list of previous blog posts, in chronological order. 2. (verb) To place files or blog posts in a safer place (on DVD or another server) for longer-term or backup storage.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
attribute
Used in an HTML tag to give an instruction to a Web browser. For example, in This link goes to <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>, the <a> tag gets an attribute (href) and a value ("http://www.google.com") to go along with the basic tag. In this case, the attribute indicates to the browser that what comes next is a hypertext reference — in this case, a Web page.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blacklist
An often-centralized list of e-mail addresses, URLs, and IP addresses used by spammers that are then forbidden in any blog post on your blog. With an up-to-date blacklist, a lot of spam is stopped before it becomes a comment.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
block
To stop all contact with a MySpace user. He can’t comment on your blog page or send you any message that you actually receive.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blog
A combination of the words Web and log. Bloggers (individuals, groups, or businesses) post a chronological log of information. Content is determined entirely by the author(s) of the blog; many are personal journals.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blog post
An entry in a blog, possibly containing text, images, and other media.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogger
The author of a blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogging policy
Outlines what you’re allowed to post in your blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogging software
Technology that enables you to blog. Can be either hosted or nonhosted.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
blogroll
A collection of links used or recommended by a blogger.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
cookie
A short piece of computer code, stored on your computer, that enables Web sites to remember certain settings and information the next time you visit that site.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Dashboard
A kind of control panel in Blogger that shows you the blogs you’ve set up, giving you access posting, using help resources, or even creating another blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
definition list
A type of HTML list that gives a term and then its definition and has built-in spacing to lay out those elements properly.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
disk space
Amount of room available on your hard drive.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
domain
A domain is the address, or main URL, that people type in the browser to get to your Web site. The domain name you choose can’t be used by anyone else.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
domain registrar
A service that enables you to register a domain name.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
entry
An single posting in a blog containing text, images, or other media, or any combination of those things.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Facebook
A social-networking service that enables you to keep in contact with families and friends via the Web.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Flickr
A Web site that allows you to share, organize, edit, and otherwise manage your photos.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Friend List
Your virtual online address book in MySpace. You can become someone’s friend by either sending a fellow MySpacer a Friend Request or by being on the receiving end of a Friend Request from another MySpace user.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
hosted services
Manages the data, software, and Web hosting of a blog; the blogger just manages the content.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
HTML
The computer coding used by Web designers to create Web pages.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
hyperlink
A navigation tool that allows a user to go from one Web location to another by clicking. Hyperinks (or just links) are typically underlined.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
hypertext reference
In HTML, the address that a hyperlink connects to when clicked. For example, in This link goes to <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>, the hypertext reference (href) is http://www.google.com. Hyperlink references can also jump to new positions on the same page, open a new e-mail message, or begin a file download.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
link
Short for hyperlink, a navigation tool that allows a user to go from one Web location to another by clicking. Links are typically underlined.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Mom test
A self-test that flags inappropriate blog posts. If you’d let your mom read the post, then it’s probably passed the Mom test. Specifically, don’t blog about topics you think will hurt others; don’t blog about others without their permission, even about topics you consider inconsequential; and don’t identify friends and lovers by name without their permission.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
MySpace
A social-networking service that enables you to keep in contact with families and friends via the Web.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
MySpace profile
Your MySpace identity. It can contain as much or as little information about you as you’d like.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
news aggregation
The ability to aggregate news by using RSS feeds. Having a news aggregator included with your blog package allows your site to pull in information from another blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
nonhosted service
Blog software that you set up on your own Web server. It allows you to take on all responsibilities related to maintaining your blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
ordered list
Contains items that must be listed in a particular order, such as a list of ranks or preferences. It may also indicate a list of steps for the reader to follow.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
pinging
An automated notification system for search engines and newsreaders, letting those services know that your blog has been updated. A ping occurs when one computer asks another whether it’s there; the second computer confirms its presence.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
post
1. (noun) An entry in a blog containing text, images, other media, or any combination of these. 2. (verb) The act of creating and/or uploading a blog entry.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
private profile
A MySpace profile that’s limited on who can view it, such as only people on your Friend List.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
public domain
The status of publications, processes, and product designs that are free from copyrights and/or patents and are available for anyone's use.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
social network
A service, such as Facebook or MySpace, that enables to keep in touch with people you know — and meet people you don’t know.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
spam
Unsolicited electronic messages sent in bulk that may be commercial, nonsensical, or malicious. In addition to e-mail spam, blog comments and blog forums can be targeted by spammers.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
tag
A relevant keyword associated or assigned to a piece of information, such as an image, a blog entry, or a video clip. Tags are usually chosen informally by the content creator or by the online community; they help give content to nontext media and organize information for ease of searching.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Trackback
A technology that tracks references to a blog posting that occurs on other blogs. They allow bloggers to link to blog posts on related topics.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
transparent
1. Being honest and truthful on your blog. Also means that you admit mistakes and engage in dialogue with readers who leave comments. Considered proper blogging etiquette. 2. Integration of applications, programs, and media from different sources in such a way that the end user is unaware that the content is not self-contained.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
unordered list
unordered list is a series of bulleted items and is used for lists that don’t require numbering.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
video blog
A blog consisting of video files, or the practice of placing a video file in a blog post.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
video-sharing service
A service, such as YouTube, that enables you to share video with others.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Web host
The Web server where you software, graphics, and other files live online.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
Web server
Technology that looks at what Web page is requested and then feeds the browser the appropriate file. It does most of the hard work of serving Web pages to visitors coming to your Web site.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
whitelist
A list of preselected users who are allowed to comment on your blog.

Blogging & Social Networking Glossary
YouTube
A video-sharing service.