As a content-rich website, your goal is to provide your audience with the most accurate and helpful information as possible. But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how excellent your information is or how original it is. If your website’s appearance is displeasing to the eyes (this varies from person to person, so you might want to conduct an AB testing to see which design is the best; what looks good to you might not look good to the majority of your visitors) or if it looks like a copy of a popular site in terms of design, then most of your visitors will just leave without batting an eye to your content. In fact, it only takes less than a second for visitors to form an opinion about your website, according to Go Web Daddy. So, you must capture your visitors with a great first impression.
Making a great first impression entails a lot of things. But we are not going to cover them here. We’re here to give you some of the best themes that will enable you to make a killer first impression.
Thankfully, WordPress is, out of the box, able to give an excellent first impression. Its default themes are good enough, but they still lack something. If you’ve been using WordPress for a long time, you already know what it is: an easy and effortless way to make your website’s design unique – the freedom to design how your site would look like without having to learn how to code or without having to spend a lot of your time coding and designing.
There are thousands of WordPress themes out there, each of them carefully crafted to meet a certain need. Free or paid, custom WordPress themes offer its users a varying amount of customization options, from a simple color switcher to intricate drag and drop page builders.
In this article, we are going to see ten of the best WordPress themes for content sites. We’ll give you five free and five paid WordPress themes to choose from. We’ve chosen the ones that will give you enough freedom (sometimes more than enough) to easily change the look and feel of your website with minimal to no coding required at all.
Let’s go build that killer first impression!
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Best Free WordPress Themes for Content Sites
The following themes are free, but also offer a pro version with extended features. Even though they are free, they have a decent number of features and options that will let you customize them with minimal to no coding at all. Of course, if you know CSS, then you can make them look even better. They’re perfect for new WordPress users looking to test the waters and they can eventually be upgraded to their premium counterparts for extended features.
Here are five of the best free themes for WordPress content sites.
ColorMag
ColorMag is a free theme from ThemeGrill. It’s a responsive theme featuring a magazine-style layout. It has tons of customization options for free.
If you are a web designer, it even has a demo content that you can easily import by installing a plugin called “Theme Grill Demo Importer.” This allows you to see how it looks when populated with different types of content – perfect when you’re looking to customize it via CSS.
Finally, if you’re at a loss on how to use it, you’ll be glad to know that it has an extensive documentation covering all of its features (including the PRO features).
Why it’s one of the best:
- Tons of customization feature
- Clean, readable font
- Excellent homepage layout
- Has extensive documentation
- Has a demo content
Download here. View the demo here.
Editorial
As the name suggests, this theme is perfect for content websites. It’s very similar to ColorMag in terms of basic appearance, but with the amount of customization feature it has, you can easily make it look very different. It has a fewer customizing options compared to ColorMag but they should be enough to make your site look unique. It’s also great for those who believe less is more and it’s also better for complete beginners since they won’t be overwhelmed by the number of options it has. Perhaps its biggest advantage is that it’s WPML ready, making it easy to translate your site’s content to your local language.
Why it’s one of the best:
- WPML ready
- Excellent custom widgets
- Social media links
- Sticky menu
Download here. View the demo here.
Hueman
This one is a popular free WordPress theme that has been featured quite a number of times in different theme collections already. It has a beautiful design that can be easily customized, thanks to it’s organized and detailed customizer options. Like the other free themes in this list, this one also has a pro version, but the free version’s number of options can rival even the premium ones. It also comes with an option to serve a minified stylesheet which can help improve your website’s loading time. For SEO, it comes with structured data markup out of the box – if you don’t know what it is and how important it is for your site, read this article.
Why it’s one of the best:
- High resolution
- Premium-like options
- Structured data markup integrated
- Performance friendly
Download here. View the demo here.
Iconic One
If you are looking for a theme with traditional blog layout, Iconic One is no doubt one of the best choices. It’s simple and easy to use. But this means having a limited amount of customization options. If you want to massively alter the way it looks, you’ll need to know CSS or hire someone who knows. However, if you want to focus on simplicity, readability, and plugin compatibility (many plugins can help you customize how your site looks) then this one gets the job done. And it loads fast!
Why it’s one of the best:
- Simple and straightforward
- Easy to use
- Fast
Download here. View the demo here.
Customizr
With over 100,000 active installs, Customizr is one of the most popular free WordPress themes. However, no two websites using this theme can look exactly the same if they fully utilize its options and customization features. It has a built-in slider, an ability to filter which categories appear on the front page, separate customization options for mobile and desktop menus, and so much more. However, with the sheer number of features, it has a slight learning curve and can be a bit challenging for complete beginners. But hey, it’s free!
Why it’s one of the best:
- A free premium quality theme
Download here. View the demo here.
Best Paid WordPress Themes for Content Sites
Sure, we have Customizr in our free theme roundup, but nothing beats the power, number of features, design, and level of support offered by premium themes. In addition to that, most of the paid themes come bundled with a number of premium plugins that you can use to further enhance and customize the look and feel of your site. If you’re serious about making a presence on the internet, then consider getting one of the following premium WordPress themes:
Newspaper
One of the best-selling theme in Themeforest, Newspaper by TagDiv offers a diverse array of features that cater to any type of website. Whether you are planning to create a video blog site, a news website, or a viral site, this theme has the feature you need. It has its own composer, or visual editor, which makes it easier to build and design custom layouts with ease even if you don’t know how to write a single line of code.
Why it’s one of the best:
- Loads fast
- Integrated custom page builder
- Dozens of templates
- Excellent premium widgets
- Translation options
Buy it here. View the demo here.
ReHub
If you are creating a review website, affiliate website, or anything related or similar to those niches, then ReHub theme is your perfect choice. This theme specifically caters to affiliate marketers and the like; for example, those who want to create a product review website. You can even set it up as an affiliate store: your site will look like an online shop but instead of buying from you, you give them a link to the seller’s product page.
Why it’s one of the best:
- Create elegant pros and cons lists
- Integrated rating system
- Let your audience submit reviews
- WooCommerce ready
Buy it here. View the demo here.
Divi
A multipurpose theme perfect for any type of content, Divi is another one of the most popular premium WordPress themes. It has tons of premade templates and you can also import or export layouts. Like Newspaper theme, it has its own integrated custom page builder, which makes designing your website a piece of cake even if you don’t know how to code. Perhaps one thing that sets this theme apart from others on this list is that you can buy it once and use it on any number of websites you, your client, or your friend owns (most premium themes are limited to single site use; if you want to use them on a second website, you’d have to buy a separate license).
Why it’s one of the best:
- Custom WYSIWYG page builder
- Massive choice of elements such as CTA buttons, music player, etc.
- Unlimited website usage
Buy it here. View the demo here.
Schema
The developers of this theme have only one thing in mind: creating a theme with full structured data or schema support. Very few WordPress themes match can match Schema when it comes to structured data support. Almost any kind of content you create with this theme will be generated with proper schema tags and this will make your website look outstanding in SERPs. More information about schema/structured data can be found here and from the official website.
Why it’s one of the best:
- Full schema/structured data support
- Built-in online shop support
- Translation ready
- Strong SEO
Buy it here. View the demo here.
Genesis
This is more of a framework than a theme. Its default appearance is very close to WordPress Twenty Fifteen theme, but the number of SEO options and customization features it offers can help you create a truly unique website. This theme is a perfect choice if you plan to hire a web designer/developer to design or build your website (or if you are a developer looking to build WordPress sites for your clients). Another thing that makes this theme advantageous compared to others on this list is that you can choose to add only the features that you need. The capabilities of this theme are endless. However, this theme is not suitable for beginners or those who would rather use a visual page builder to design their website.
Why it’s one of the best:
- Lightweight
- Fully customizable using child themes
- Build any design without restrictions
- Developer friendly
Conclusion
For a WordPress site to succeed, it needs to have a unique theme – one that can separate it from others. All of the themes we presented comes with excellent number of features or customization options even the free ones. If you chose a free one, however, we’d still recommend you to switch to a paid theme later on once you’ve become more successful. The number of features and customization options available in paid themes are well worth it.
