When it comes to blogging and online content management systems, one name is spoken more often than any other: WordPress. This amazingly user-friendly, endlessly-customizable framework is an open source project that has revolutionized the online community since its creation in 2003. Cropping up on hundreds of thousands of sites across the interweb with eager users and community created plugins to enhance performance, this programming powerhouse shows no signs of slowing down.

With so many sites on the bandwagon, designers and developers have answered the call by bringing a multitude of WordPress-ready themes to keep sites looking fresh and new. Given the popularity of the product, these themes make waves when they land in the cyber sea and finding examples that have not been widely used can be difficult and a little bit intimidating. However, after scouring the vast recesses of the web, we have found a few gems that you may not have seen before. Here are some of the standouts we happened to uncover.

Perfectom Theme

Features

• Optimized for all browsers
• XHTML/CSS valid
• Fixed width
• 2 columns

This theme offers a clean, very sleek setup for your website. It seems like it would be ideally suited for a fashion blog of some kind. Very crisp, overall.

CSS Gallery Theme

Features

• Built in tagging
• Google ads and a sidebar block with 125 x 125 banner ads
• Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional and valid CSS

Technically this theme was built as a base for a CSS/website gallery, and wonderfully so, however, personally I think the design also lends itself to being used greatly as a portfolio or as a general showcase gallery.

Langit Theme

Features

• Clean and simple
• 3 columns
• Sidebar widget ready
• XHTML + CSS valid
• Tested in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Opera, and Safari
• Compatible with WordPress 2.5 and below
• Logo PSD and font are included in the package

This is simply a wonderful theme for anyone looking to organize an in-depth blog or manage content that requires multiple category listings and also needs a lot of features. This theme meets both of those stipulations with grace and ease.

Linoluna Theme

Features

• Lean and simple CSS
• Grid Layout
• Tabbed Navigation
• Slideshow animated featured articles on front page

An extremely deep magazine theme suited magnificently for multi-author blogs. Among its many accessible features is a fantastic statistics calculator in each post which includes total comments, total views, author name, category, date, and an email address, not to mention the print function.

Monochrome Gallery Theme

Features

• Custom admin panel
• Easily customize theme
• Four widgetized areas
• More homepage content
• Author Archives
• Two page templates
• No editing themes files
• Blueprint CSS
• Valid XHTML and CSS

Monochrome Gallery is a free widgetized theme for WordPress packaged with an author archives page, AJAX slideshow, categorized posts with thumbnails on the homepage, and a CSS framework to aid in customization. Need I say more?

Small Magazine Theme

Features

• Unique and fresh design
• Widgetized Sidebar
• 125×125 ad spots
• 250×250 adsense spot
• Easily customizable using CSS
• Custom 404 Error page
• Fixed width
• Right Sidebar
• Built in Flickr support
• Styled Pagination
• Built in Gravatar
• Valid CSS & HTML

Here we have a fully loaded magazine theme packed with features. Completely ready to launch your online publication style site with a built in photo gallery and featured articles sections. If it’s a magazine theme you need, look no further.

Arthemia Theme

Features

• Drop Down Menus
• Automatic image resizing for thumbnails
• Gravatar Support
• 3 column with enhanced footer

On the other hand, when you need the perfect balance between a magazine type setup and blog, then this is your theme. You get the magazine headers and featured articles, with an ordered post section below a featured category break.

Isolated Theme

Features

• Two-column
• Widget-ready
• Rounded-corners

Yet another fine example of a content based theme. Meaning it is simple and clean while still offering a variety of features. Though none of that detracts from letting the content shine through.

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