Short introduction from Smashing Magazine:

..we release a yet another freebie: JournalCrunch WordPress 3.0+ theme, a theme for magazines or portfolios with an integrated journal. The theme was designed by Site5 and released exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Features:

• Widget ready (footer and sidebar)
• Easy to setup, Theme Options Page
• Custom Homepage with 2 different views (featured posts or slider)
• WordPress Post Thumbnail Enabled
• WordPress 3.0+ Menu Management Support
• Latest Tweets Built-in Widget
• Built-in Pagination
• 9 shortcodes
• Grid and standard posts listing
• Ninvo Slider, easy to setup from Admin panel
• JQuery Drop-down menu
• JQuery PrettyPhoto Lightbox
• JQuery Forms
• Ajax based contact form
• Live form email validation

Screenshots:
Featured Posts View

Grid View

Slider View

Options Page

Aside from the beautiful design and layout, the numerous options and features usually found on premium WordPress themes, the Journal Crunch theme also has a very nice typography. If I had an extra blog, this theme would definitely be my first choice/option. Another cool feature I like in this theme is the built-in shortcodes that enable the user to customize the content style and how it should be displayed. With its flexibility (multiple layout styles), the Journal Crunch can be used not only for online portfolios or magazines but also for different types of blogs or websites.

The Journal Crunch theme is available to download for FREE and is released under a GPL license. The theme can be used and modified for any type of project without any restrictions. For the installation guide and complete documentation, click here.

Kudos once again to the folks of Smashing Magazine and Site5 for creating and sharing this beautiful theme to the WordPress community!

Preview or Download the Journal Crunch WordPress Theme for Portfolios and Magazines.

NOTE: This theme was scanned using the Theme Authenticity Checker and doesn’t contain any hidden or encrypted code.

The Sight WordPress theme is a widget-ready, WordPress 3.0.1-ready theme that features a modern and minimalistic design.

Here’s some insight from the theme authors/designers regarding the inspiration and motivation behind the theme design:

Sight is a powerful WordPress theme, best suited for Magazines and Blogs. The theme was designed in modern minimalistic style with Golden Grid usage. It has two views to get information in the way you want — a standard blog view and a grid view. A big image slider on the top gives you extra ability to show the most important content.

The theme supports the newest WordPress versions and has 2 Custom Menu Locations. 2 pagination types are available: Default with WP-NAVI support and Ajax-fetching, like in previous Twitter interface. The Sight theme supports Social Media. It has links to share each post to Twitter, Facebook, Delicious Digg, no plugins needed. It is also Search Engine Optimized, so you don’t need to care about it, just set it up and get love from Google.

Features:

• WordPress 3.0.1 Ready
• Theme Options page
• Two Pagination types (Default + WP Page-Navi support & AJAX-fetching posts)
• Valid XHTML 1.1
• jQuery-powered Featured Post Carousel
• Custom Widgets
• 2 Custom Menu Locations
• jQuery-powered Drop-down menu
• Nested comments
• Two post view types: standard blog view and a grid view
• Google Analytics Ready
• Custom Logo Upload
• Gravatar support
• Search Engine Optimized
• Browsers compatibility (IE 7 , IE 8 , Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome)
• Built in support for Social Bookmaking on Blog Posts – tinyurl.com API support for URL shorting

Screenshots:
Standard View

Grid View

Post Page

Custom Widgets

The Sight WordPress theme is a cool theme that has lots of options and features – standard view, grid view, custom widgets, etc. which I’m sure many WordPress users would love. It. is released under the GPL license. It is available to download for FREE and can be modified or can be used for any project without any restrictions.

Preview or Download the Sight WordPress Theme.

NOTE: This theme was scanned using the Theme Authenticity Checker and doesn’t contain any hidden or encrypted code.

“I almost missed it, but the 25th was exactly one year after the fateful comment from Mike that started the chain of events that brought WordPress into being. Look how far things have come from that comment to the world-class blogging software we have now. The longest journey begins with a single step.” -Matt Mullenweg

To honor the anniversary of WordPress, Ben Welch-Bolen of Site5 Hosting created a special free WordPress theme called the WordPress Anniversary theme.

The WordPress Anniversary Theme is a classic type of theme with several layout options. It comes with a custom “Thank you WordPress” just to show our appreciation to the crew that made such a big difference on the Web.

Features:

• Widget ready (footer and sidebar)
• Easy to setup, Theme Options Page
• WordPress Post Thumbnail Enabled
• WordPress 3.0+ Menu Management Support
• Latest Tweets Built-in Widget
• Built-in Pagination
• Grid and standard posts listing with or without thumbnails
• JQuery PrettyPhoto Lightbox
• JQuery Forms
• Ajax based contact form
• Live form email validation

Screenshots:
Right Sidebar Standard View

Right Sidebar Grid View

Right Sidebar Grid with Thumbnails

Left Sidebar Grid with Thumbnails

As a WordPress user for about 7 years now, I’d like to take this moment to thank Matt Mullenweg for coming up with the idea and creating WordPress. This piece of blogging software has not only allowed me to easily create and manage a blog, express and share my thoughts online but also enable me to earn money and make a living out of it. I’d also like to thank all the WordPress developers and contributors who work hard to develop new versions of the software, fix and patch bugs and the rest of the WordPress community who contribute their time and effort into making WordPress the best blogging software/CMS around.

Kudos to Ben Welch-Bolen for creating and sharing this special WordPress theme to the WordPress community!

The WordPress Anniversary Theme is released under GPL and can be used for FREE without any restrictions. To learn more and access the documentation and support forum for this theme, visit the WordPress Anniversary Theme website.

Preview or Download the WordPress Anniversary Theme.

[via Theme Lab]

Just realized while I was browsing through my blog archives that I haven’t published any WordPress theme related posts in a while. Decided feature the latest WordPress themes from Elegant Themes, one of the most reliable and best places to find excellent quality yet affordable premium WordPress themes.

The Glider theme was specifically designed for the personal website/blog/portfolio type of site. It has a contemporary style and a javascript-powered layout. This cool and versatile theme features a fully featured blog and portfolio section. The theme is widget-ready, supports gravatars and threaded comments and compatible with all popular web browsers – IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Screenshots:
Homepage

Portfolio

About page

Blog

Features:

• WordPress 3.0 compatible
• Five Color Schemes
• Gallery Section
• Threaded Comments
• Optional Blog-style Structure
• Gravatar ready
• Firefox, Safari, IE8 + IE7 + IE6, Opera, Netscape compatible
• Advertisement Ready
• Widget ready sidebars
• Theme Options Page
• Custom thumbnail images
• PSD files
• Valid XHTML + CSS
• Smooth tabless design

Preview or Purchase the Glider WordPress theme from Elegant Themes

TheStyle theme is a stylish WordPress theme that features a crisp and modern design. It also has a fluid width and jQuery-enchanced layout that adjusts to the visitor’s/viewer’s screen resolution, ensuring optimal viewing experience and maximum exposure for the site content. This theme is widget-ready, has gravatar and threaded comments support, five color schemes to choose from and compatible with IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, and Opera web browsers.

Screenshots:
Portfolio/Homepage

Post page

Features:

• WordPress 3.0 compatible
• Five Color Schemes
• Threaded Comments
• Optional Blog-style Structure
• Gravatar ready
• Firefox, Safari, IE8 + IE7 + IE6, Opera, Netscape compatible
• Advertisement Ready
• Widget ready sidebars
• Theme Options Page
• Custom thumbnail images
• PSD files
• Valid XHTML + CSS
• Smooth tabless design

Preview or Purchase TheStyle WordPress theme from Elegant Themes

Personally, I like the second theme – TheStyle better. For me, TheStyle’s design and layout catches my eye more than Glider’s. But that’s just me. I’m sure some of you would disagree with me and prefer the Glider theme. These are just the two latest premium WordPress themes from Elegant Themes. Make sure to visit Elegant Themes to view the entire theme collection and other upcoming themes.

Btw, if you’re not yet a member of Elegant Themes you can get unlimited access to all these themes for only $39/year. If you develop websites for your clients, you can purchase the Developer License for a one time fee of $89 that will allow you to use the theme for an unlimited number of client projects.

Good news WordPress fans, DevPress is here! It’s a new site where you can get beautiful WordPress themes, functional plugins and useful WordPress tutorials. Launched yesterday, DevPress a collaboration of 4 guys who love WordPress, the community and open source.

The DevPress team is made up of Justin Tadlock, Patrick Daly, Ptah Dunbar and Tung Do. Many of you know Justin Tadlock for his free WordPress themes and plugins and also the Theme Hybrid theme club. Patrick Daly is known for developing free Hybrid child themes. Ptah Dunbar is a core contributor of WordPress and a BuddyPress developer. Tung Do aka Small Potato creator and former owner of WPDesigner.

Here’s an excerpt from the DevPress launch blog post:

What you should know about DevPress is we are figuring this whole thing out. We don’t have a business plan or any hard-and-fast rules about the direction this site is headed in. Instead, we have dreams of what DevPress could eventually become, but at the moment, it’s a melting pot of the team’s collaborative effort. Although the direction is still a bit blurry… we do have one primary goal — to produce the best, highest quality, GPL’d, make you say “wha?!” kinda products. All in that order.

In short, we’re four guys putting in whatever time we have to build plugins/themes that we think are cool.

Today, we’re just building the foundation and not trying to make a big splash in the WordPress pool. DevPress is easing into the waters because it’s much better for us (and you) that we take our time making quality products rather than trying to push several mediocre products out at once.

To celebrate the launch of DevPress, the team have released a free news/magazine styled parent theme for WordPress called News.

News WordPress Theme

Preview or Download the News WordPress theme

Aside from the News WordPress theme, DevPress has also released several free WordPress plugins:

• Clean My Archives – a simple, easy-to-use plugin for creating elegant archives pages of your blog posts. It was created to simplify the process that other archives plugins make more complex than needed.
• Slideshow – a beautifully-designed image slideshow that cycles through image attachments of your blog posts (or any post type) using the jQuery Cycle plugin.
• Members – a complete user, role, and content management system for sites with multiple users. It’s a powerful membership plugin that grants fine-grain control over your WordPress install.

As a WordPress user and advocate, it’s good to see a group of excellent WordPress developers and designers come together and collaborate to bring quality products to the WordPress community. I’m also happy to see Tung Do “officially” back in the WordPress scene.

DevPress is surely a welcomed addition to the WordPress community. Personally, I’m expecting great things from DevPress and looking forward to what they have in store for WordPress and its community. To the DevPress team, congratulations and we wish you all the best!

[via Theme Lab]