20 Specialty WordPress Themes
Published February 11th, 2008 in WordPressOne of the primary reasons that WordPress is the platform of choice for most bloggers is the incredible variety of themes that are available for its users. With thousands of existing free and premium themes to choose from (and plenty of designers willing to create custom themes), there is no need to settle for a one-size-fits-all solution.
There are a growing number of specialty WordPress themes available that have been designed for specific industries or for specific types of websites. These specialty themes in combination with the CMS capabilities of WordPress provide businesses, website owners, and bloggers new and improved opportunities to quickly and easily build and manage an effective website with substantially lower costs than just about any other option.
As WordPress continues to become a more popular choice for content management and users become more familiar with all of the possibilities, I believe specialty themes will only become even more common and higher quality.
In this post I’d like to take a look at 20 specialty WordPress themes that can help users to accomplish a very specific purpose with their website or blog. Some of these themes are free and others are premium. In many cases, you will still need a bit of customization to suit your needs and to help your site stand out a bit, but these themes give you a great foundation.
If you like getting design inspiration by looking at excellent blog designs, you’ll love our new gallery site Blog Design Heroes.
SPORTS THEMES
Revolution Sports Theme – Brian Gardner is one of the most well-known WordPress theme designers, and rightfully so. His Revolution line of premium themes includes one that is specially designed for sports-related content. The single-use license for this theme costs $79.95.
Template Xtreme – If you want a theme for any sports team, they will create one for you for $30.
Sk4t3 – This free theme features a grunge-style design that is intended for skateboarding and other extreme sports.
REAL ESTATE THEMES
Cory Miller’s Premium Real Estate Theme – Real estate agents can show off their listings with this premium theme for $59.95.
Real Estate Appraisal Theme – This free theme is intended for the industry of real estate appraisal.
MICROBLOGGING THEME
Prologue – This free theme was recently released from the people at Automattic. It is ideal for a group of people who need to be able to communicate brief messages while working in various locations.
NEWS AND MAGAZINE THEMES
Revolution News – Another piece of Brian Gardner’s Revolution line, the news theme is flexible enough to use for just about any type of news site. A single-use license costs $79.95.
Morning After – This free theme is attractive and has plenty of features for a magazine or news-style website.
Premium News – Another premium option for news sites, a single-use license for this theme will cost $99.95.
Mimbo – Darren Hoyt offers Mimbo, a clean, basic magazine theme that allows users to apply their own customizations. Darren will soon be releasing a premium version that is more styled. More importantly, the theme gets its name from Seinfeld, so you know it has to be good.
WP Magazine Theme – This premium theme is currently selling for$79 for a single-use license.
Branford Magazine Theme – Another quality option for free magazine themes, Branford features a clean and attractive look.
CHURCH THEME
Delta – This free theme is the only decent-looking church theme that I could find (not counting a Revolution rip-off that charges more than double the price of Revolution).
PHOTOBLOG THEMES
Neshita – A free theme that allows the emphasis to stay on the photos.
Nautilus – Another simple and free option for photoblogs.
PhotoPress – A free photoblog theme from Performancing.
Photo Blog – A dark theme, free theme.
CAR THEME
Ferrari Theme – This free theme shows that specialty themes exist for just about anything you could possibly want.
CSS GALLERY THEMES
Showcase – If you are interested in starting your own CSS gallery, this premium theme offers 8 different layouts and 5 different color schemes. A single-use license costs $70.
CSS Gallery Theme – This free theme is another option for starting a CSS Gallery.
88 Responses to “20 Specialty WordPress Themes”
These are some marvellous selections. I particularly liked BrandfordMagazine. If I hadn’t bought mine already, I’ll definitely go for that theme. Especially since it’s free!
Thanks Steven.
Cheers,
Ellesse
Ellesse,
I think your theme looks great as it is. Revolution is never a bad choice. And thanks for the stumble.
Thanks for the themes. You highlighted my choices for using wordpress as my blogging platform. The ability to download a lot of great quality themes and plugins.
I was going to code a blogging engine from scratch but what’s the point when you have Wordpress which gets the job done nicely?
- Dwayne Charrington.
http://www.dwaynecharrington.com
The themes are very well done. Thanks for sharing all these. I have bookmarked your site.
very Well
but i look for a job board theme
While looking for a new theme to use on my personal branded site I came across the Branford theme myself. I love it and I reckon it will look just neat to showcase myself to potential clients.
Besides, I can only vouch the highest for Brian Gardener’s themes as I’m using the Magazine one myself.
Monika
We used Brian’s Revolution Magazine theme for our new site at Men with Pens, and we’ve had some rave reviews on it. Customizing it to our tastes was one of the best experiences we’ve ever had.
Plus, we did a rockin’ job
Excellent selection, Steven. Bookmarked and all the rest of it.
Thank you so much! My old theme was getting … well, old and You just provided me with the change I needed. The Morning After theme really caught my eye.
new Premium but FREE Real Estate them on wpjoy.com
Dwayne,
I agree. Building a blog from scratch isn’t really worth the time, and you’ll have plenty of options with WP.
ma7moud,
I’m not aware of any job board themes, but there may be one out there.
Monika,
I agree. Branford is a nice theme and so are Brian’s.
James,
Your theme looks really good.
Wow! Impressive list, Steven. I’ll definitely be bookmarking it.
Thanks Matt.
Hey Steven, nice finds
I’ve been playing around with the Prologue theme, and it’s pretty cool, might use it (or something similar) on FF eventually.
Some really great usable themes there! Thanks for pointing them all out.
Hey Jon,
I thought about using the Prologue theme here to try to add a community feature. At the moment it’s not going to happen, but I think it could be cool on FF.
Vandelay, I always think that YOUR blog theme looks great ! Every time I come here to read your posts my eyes thank my brain for having chosen your blog.
I assume you created it ?
I really like Revolution and the sports theme. Brian Gardner really rules. Hey Steven, why not come up with a list of the best magazine type themes?
Mouki,
Thanks for the compliment. Yes, the theme is customized from the default Kubrick theme.
Ruchir,
I have thought about that. Maybe it will happen. Thanks for the suggestion.
These are well designed themes, check out my blog to see my custom made WordPress Theme.
love the ferrari theme
Revolution Sports Theme is as it says ‘insanely customizeable’ (but spelt proper) Im hacking mine up as we speak
http://www.thedailypunt.com
Hi! thanks for providing these layouts they are really attractive. After watching these blogs I feel like having different blogs and use each of these layouts in them. I think blogs are a good way to enhance your web marketing skills as you can experiment with colors,layouts etc. Blog does improve your creativity and i enjoy blogging.
Hi! Thanks for providing such a attractive list of themes. Having a eye catchy layout does help your business do well.
Theme for photography
http://jericosystems.com/2008/06/09/cloudscape-wordpress-theme/
Cheers for listing the gallery themes. I’ve been searching through Google for these and the two you’ve listed look like they could be just the ticket. I am leaning towards the CSS Gallery theme just now but will keep looking to see if I can find one even better.
Eric,
Thanks for the additional link.
Mercury,
I’ve toyed around with the gallery theme a little bit and it’s pretty cool. It’s a fairly bare bones look, which is nice if you want to customize it a bit.
Thanks for this great resources, bookmarked your site! Well-done!
The themes are very well done. Thanks for sharing all these. I have bookmarked your site.
Great theme. I gave it a testrun and encountered a small problem. In the featured content carousel are five
Excellent selection, Steven. Bookmarked and all the rest of it.
wow, great themes. i love it. nice selection.
It’s amazing
i dont think many people will be downloading the Patriots one anymore haha!
If you are looking for specialized church themes that don’t look like a blog you can find some free ones at http://www.organizedthemes.com.
Wow !!! i was searching one theme like this one for my Sports Car blog.
Good colection of Wordpress sports themes
cool themes
Very attractive themes. The real estate appraisal is very clean
Hi
I love all those themes
They are all clean and well designed and laid out.
Thanks for sharing.
I only want to say thankz for this themes!
The Revolution News theme is my favorite one. It looks very clean, yet flexible as well. Thanks for sharing this!
hello,
do you have an 2 column sports themes that are adsense ready that is hip and trendy
Looking at some themes, its impossible to tell which ones are blogs. Some very good themes. Thanks for putting them together.
The real estate theme looks very professional.
Nice clean layout and easy to identify and use navigation.
It’s superior at laeast in looks to many real estate agent sites I come across.
I own 6 real estate sites myself and so I appreciate a nice clean theme when I see it. Well done!
I love the skate theme but can’t access it now. Is there any alternate site for downloads? Thanks!
Woww, Thank you brother . Very good theme .
Very nice themes thanks
Cool post! I’ll bookmark this page and wish to share it to all my friends and clients.
I am looking for Sports Themes collection… Any helpful link?
Has anyone in here come across a decent user friendly directory listing plugin for wp?
By that I mean something which sets out categories for adding paid and free links in exchange for requiring a reciporovcal link ie a wordpress directory site
Andrew
Australia
This is the only one I’m aware of – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/business-directory/
At this point it doesn’t offer options for a paid directory.
Thanks for sharing! very nice themes.
Joachim
Nice Themes…Thanks For Sharing
Awesome themes! Very good and professional. Thanks for all of this.
I like the real estate appraisal theme. Where can it be purchased?
Darin,
That theme may not be available anymore, it seems to be a dead link. You can find a similar real estate theme here – http://themeforest.net/item/real-estate-theme/17730
V – Thanks for the link.
Great Themes. I used some of the themes as I develop websites in Wordpress for some of my clients. I did encounter some problems with some of the themes. But overall the issues are easily resolved. My clients loved them and so will you. Thanks for the great info
The more simplistic.. the better!
nice gallery theme
I gave you guys a Stumble & a Delicious tag since I’m a particular fan of these ’speciality’ themes. The Morning After may be a good choice for a solar site I’m designing.
RobertO
Hey thanks a lot for the inspiration! I really like the clean look of the Branson Magazine and will use it for a new site I am building. Keep up the good work bro.
Very nice themes, thanks for your sharing!
thanks for the good list.
I’m looking for an events template/theme for wordpress, and how to display “upcoming events”. Each event is treated as a post.
If you have seen one theme like this, please let me know!
Cool list, thanks for sharing
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