In case you’re not one of the quarter of a million people who subscribe to Smashing Magazine, they recently published a list of 40 high quality free WordPress themes. I don’t mean to disparage the work of the theme developers listed in the post, but defining “high quality” seems a bit subjective. And like most top (insert random number here) lists on the web these days, little effort is put into saying exactly why the author thinks the item is included. Rather, a short blurb simply describing the item is given. I’ve looked at many, many WP themes that aesthetically look nice, but one glance under the hood, and I run for the hills.

That said, as the author points out, finding free, modern, attractively designed WordPress themes these days is becoming more and more difficult with the inundation of premium themes. Which begets the ongoing, and sometimes heated debate of WordPress, GPL, and themes, which is the subject of another post for another day.

I did find a theme that potentially could be the base for a new look for this site, ZinePress. I say a base, as the color scheme isn’t what I envision for this site, nor am I enamored with the the opacity of the footer background over the body background image, but as I point out in the intro, that’s a subjective opinion, not meant to take away from the overall quality of the design. It also brings out the point that I’ve always thought that by using a “free” WordPress theme, it’s meant to be a starting point for a user to customize for their site, to their tastes, not something that you should necessarily use stock. The whole “why recreate the wheel” thing.

EDIT – heh, I looked closer at the post for ZinePress, and it was released over a year ago, so the list isn’t necessarily of recently released themes it seems. Again, not to diminish the contributions of the theme authors who’ve generously shared their work.