Starting a new website or blog in WordPress is a really exciting job for most WP lovers.
But theme selection is time-consuming and confusing.
When you search for WordPress theme in Google you get 1 billion results.
OMG!
Selecting a perfect theme for your website for this ocean of themes is very difficult.
Undoubtedly the best place to find a top free WordPress theme is the official WordPress repository, but it has more than 7000 free WordPress themes.
So what to do?
Before uploading any free WordPress theme on your server you must test the theme on a few points.
The following are some points you should consider before selecting a free WordPress theme for your site.
Vulnerability
One of the top reasons for WordPress website breach is outdated or poorly coded WordPress themes or plugins. Most of the time developer’s targets enhanced the look and feel of the site and they overlooked the vulnerabilities in the scripts. So while choosing a free WordPress theme you must scan the WordPress theme on WordPress vulnerability scanner.
Frequency of Updates
WordPress is evolving every day. WordPress releases major and security updates frequently to keep software vulnerability free. While selecting a free WordPress theme you must check how frequently the theme is updated by its developers and theme is compatible with the current version of WordPress.
Loading Speed
If loading speed of your WordPress site higher than expected time chances are that the user might move to another site. According to surveys, a user leaves the website if it is taking more than 2.5 seconds to load. You must avoid a poorly coded theme and select a fast loading WordPress theme.
Mobile Friendliness
More and more users are browsing sites on smartphones. Google also introduced the mobile-first crawling algorithm. These are the most convincing factors to adopt a responsive mobile-friendly WordPress theme. Always test your shortlisted WordPress theme on Google’s mobile-friendly test tool.
SEO Compatibility
A good website is nothing without traffic. And SEO plays a vital role in getting traffic on your website. SEO compatibility is a must feature of any WordPress theme. So always choose an SEO friendly WordPress theme for your site.
Here we are making your job easy.
We have a collection of handpicked best free WordPress themes.
Best Free WordPress Themes 2020
Here are the best free WordPress themes for a personal blog, portfolio sites, business sites, and WooCommerce stores.
Sydney
Sydney is a compelling business theme for companies and freelancers to design their website. It has powerful customization features like access to all Google Fonts, full color control, layout control and many more.
Its full-screen slider works perfectly on all screen sizes. For those who want to feature their services or products, it’s an absolute solution for them.
It sticky navigation helps people to reach important pages while scrolling, and parallax background adds lively dimensions to your home page.
It supports powerful plugins such as SEO by Yoast, W3 Total Cache, Contact Form 7, WP Rocket and many more.
Active Installations: 200,000+
Astra
Astra is a highly customizable WordPress theme for a business website, WooCommerce store, portfolio site and personal blog.
Its lightweight, fast, SEO friendly, native AMP ready and comes with Schema.org code integrated for better search engine ranking.
It’s compatible and works perfectly with popular page builders like Elementor, Divi, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, etc.
Why should you use Astra?
The Astra theme is active on more than 4,00,000 site.
It’s regularly updated by the developer Brainstorm Force.
OceanWP
The OceanWP is a handy free WordPress theme. You can use it for blogging, portfolio, business, and eCommerce sites.
The theme has 13 demos available which you can import in one click with Ocean Demo Import extension.
It’s fully responsive with top grades in most of speed testing tools.
It works with most popular page builder plugins such as Elementor, Divi, Brizy, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, Thrive Architect, King Composer, and SiteOrigin.
Active Installations: 400,000+
Hestia
Hestia is a free slick material design theme for small businesses, creative agencies, startups, and freelancers. It’s built on multipurpose one-page layout design to design site for any type of business.
It comes with starter sites like travel agents, eCommerce, solar energy panel business and veterinary center. You can import these ready-made starter sites with one click to speed up your site development process.
You can also customize it with all popular page builders like Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin and Divi Builder.
It’s mobile-friendly responsive design and fast speed makes it SEO friendly too.
Active Installations: 100,000+
Neve
Neve is a lightweight multipurpose theme built for WordPress sites. It is a popular choice for blogs, startups, corporate sites, and the WooCommerce powered online stores.
Neve’s mobile-first approach and compatibility with AMP makes it an obvious choice of search engine optimizers.
Neve’s official site claims 100% speed grade on GTmetrix, Loading in less than 1 second and lightweight theme.
It seamlessly works with Gutenberg and top page builders like Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin and Divi Builder.
Bocksy
The Blocksy is a lighter and faster multipurpose free WordPress theme by the Creativethemes team.
Blocksy is made for ultra-performance. According to the developer its scores 90% in Google PageSpeed, 92% in Pingdom Performance Grade, 100% in GTmetrix PageSpeed Score and 88% in GTmetrix YSlow score.
It has many options to customize and change every part of the site. Its advanced typography options give you great control over font selection, font size, line height, and letter spacing.
It’s built with the latest web technologies – React, Webpack, Babel, PHP 7 and JavaScript (ECMAScript 7).
You can also use it with your favorite page builder likes Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, etc.
In this post, we have listed the best free WordPress themes for blogs and small businesses. If you find a good free WordPress theme with excellent features and performance lets us know in the comment section below!
