WP Theme Review: FREEmium

Here’s one free WordPress theme I’m sure most of you would be interested in. It’s called the FREEmium WP theme and I tell you the name says it all. First its free for everyone to download and second, the quality design-wise and features-wise are topnotch and at par with the current premium WordPress themes available out there.

The FREEmium WordPress theme was designed by Paul Kadysz and Dariusz Siedlecki and shared to us by the good folks at Freebiesdock.com.

Screenshots:
Homepage
FREEmium WordPress Theme

Post page
FREEmium WordPress Theme Post Page

Features:

  • XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • jQuery menu
  • quick submitting to web2.0 websites support
  • flickrRSS plugin support
  • threaded comments support
  • feedBurner subscribe via email support
  • a lot of advertising spots (125×125, 120×600, 300×250)
  • 2 widget ready sidebars
  • free for commercial & non-commercial use
  • Compatible with Safari, Firefox 3.0x, Opera

My Take:
I LOVE IT! Honestly, if I found this theme earlier or if it was released earlier, I would’ve used this on my blog. Anyways, I almost couldn’t find anything wrong with this theme. The design is awesome, it has most of the features I want/need, very customizable, has 125×125 banner ad spots, support for Feedburner email subscription and its widget-ready. Design-wise, I like how the content are displayed in the homepage, complete with post image and post date. The categories and archives shown on the left sidebar, ad banners and recent comments on the right sidebar, no space is wasted. And in the post page, I like how the post details are displayed (post date, time, author), tags and especially the custom bookmarking option “Share This” section at the top part of the post. FREEmium also has built-in support for the flickrRSS plugin and gravatars.

Regarding customization, since the FREEmium theme doesn’t use too much graphics customizing it won’t be that difficult. If you decide to change the color scheme, you might have to do some editing as some of the graphics contain the default colors. But if you want customize the header, it won’t be a problem. You change the font style or create your own custom header image and use it. If you want a bigger or more attractive RSS feed icon, you can also change the default icon. The FREEmium WP theme has a lot of potential and just like the authors said, it was designed to be as customizable as possible but it would be better and much more customizable if the theme package included PSD files to the custom graphics.

Although the FREEmium WP Theme is a very beautiful and very well designed theme, it is not perfect and it can’t please everybody. There are some things that I think would be an issue for some users. First is the navigation menu. The FREEmium theme has little space so if your blog has a lot of pages, you might have a problem with that. You could make the font size smaller but that will only free up a little space. Best thing you can do is to move the navigation menu or the search bar someplace else. Next would be the post content width size. For the post image on top of the post, the image has to be 350 pixels wide and for other parts of the post, you can have images as wide as 460 pixels. If your current blog post images are bigger than that and you plan to use the FREEmium theme, then you’ll have to resize your images so it would fit into the theme layout. There’s also another fix that can address both issues and that is to increase the theme’s width but make sure that it’s still compatible with small screen resolutions (at least 1024×768 resolution).

To sum it all up, all I can say is that the FREEmium WP Theme is one of the best free WordPress themes I’ve ever seen. Paul and Dariusz did an amazing job with this theme and hats off to them and thanks to the people behind Freebiesdock.com for making this wonderful theme available for everyone.

Preview or Download the FREEmium WordPress theme.

*hat tip to AJ

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23 Comments

  1. Freemium theme is really nice and I’m using it for my new blog. Just not having any luck changing the text logo to my own logo, which is an image. Any help would be much appreciated. I’ve been messing with css and header.php but can’t figure it out. Cheers

  2. @gamzter – Its okay, I also started like that. Had to learn HTML from online tutorials and from trial and error.

    Oh so you’re using the Amazing Grace theme huh? Looks really nice. :D

  3. @Ambo – Haha..I’m also a theme addict that’s why I love looking for nice and beautiful WordPress themes so I can write reviews about them. Thanks! Let me know when you’ve installed this theme on one of your blogs. :)

  4. @loy – Great theme indeed. New project? Cool! Share it with us when you launch it, ok? Yup, including the PSD files would help a lot to customize this theme. True, its rare to find quality free WordPress themes.

  5. This is a great theme, and kudos to Freebies Dock for releasing another good-looking theme that rivals the expensive premium ones. I am considering this theme for my new project. However, changing the overall look and feel is difficult. I want to change into something blue or brown, but that would mean creating new background images. Should have included PSD files for that.

    But then again, it’s not everyday you see designers release a WordPress theme as good as this one. :-)

  6. @gamzter – You mean a theme that already has a header graphic that you can customize? Coz if you can create your own custom header, I’m sure you can easily insert and implement it with this theme. :)

  7. @iRonnie – Yeah, AJ tipped me about the theme last week and it took me a while to finish the review. Same here, love at first sight. Too bad I just purchased a premium theme.

    Btw, you did a good job with your current blog theme and layout. :D

  8. @Juan – You have the Fresh News? Well both themes are nice. But if I had to option to choose between a premium theme and a nice free WP theme like FREEmium, I’d choose the latter.

    Are you having problems with the Fresh News theme? Why don’t you try the WooThemes forums? Most of the common issues are discussed and solved there.

  9. i managed to chance upon this theme a few days ago and it was love at first sight.. but i dont think it’ll suit my needs.

  10. @Ade – Oh..that sucks! Anyways, if you really like this theme then you can do another theme reboot. Just customize it and replace the one you recently installed. I make it sound so easy right? Hehe :D

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