In Wordpress

Are free WordPress themes a dying breed?

k2.jpg

To paraphrase a Mony Python sketch “We’re not quite dead yet!” But some days it sure seems that way.

A couple years back, the idea of “premium” themes for WordPress was still relatively new, and it seemed like most of the truly creative work around WordPress themes was published free. A few premium – read: for pay – themes were around in various forms, but they didn’t dominate the conversation. Personally I obsessed with forever-in-beta K2, and hacked that thing to oblivion on my personal blog at least a dozen different ways.

Then Thesis* came along (*no affiliate links here), and the WordPress world was never the same. While others were first out the gate, once Brian and Chris showcased how much money was to be had via a strong premium theme and a rocking affiliate program, the flood was on.

Premium theme vendors are now so common, and their products so commonplace, that it’s as if a light switch was thrown on the WordPress community and it became the norm for self-hosted WordPress users to pay for their themes. (If you host on WordPress.com, you may not have even noticed)

For theme developers the shift to premium was obvious – why invest a huge amount of work in a free theme (except as a traffic hook to upsell to your premium version, of course) if you could spend that time building something you’d actually get paid, potentially handsomely, for? It’s hard to argue with that line of thinking – many premium themes obviously reflect huge amounts of work by the designers and developers, and if there is a way for them to be compensated for it, why not give it a shot?

It’s also hard to argue, to my eye, that the quality of WordPress themes (free and premium) in aggregate hasn’t improved dramatically in the past few years. I firmly believe a large part of that is due to very talented designers investing their efforts into premium themes.

And many premium themes are just stellar, either in design or code – I’m obviously a big fan of Thesis, have built sites on StudioPress (great for magazine/community sites), and am furiously brainstorming some excuse to build a video-based site using something from Press75. I recommend premium themes continually.

But with all the focus on premium, I realized I’ve lost touch with the state and quality of free WordPress themes. Turning to Smashing Magazine, purveyor of great mega lists such as this, I found: 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009.

There are some fantastic themes in there, but it’s an open question as to how many of those are recently developed, or will continue to be updated as WordPress evolves.

The natural follow on question, for me at least:

Is there is a viable future for truly high quality, professional yet FREE themes or will premium become the dominant theme model in the WordPress community’s future? I’d love your thoughts.

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  • http://www.lancebledsoe.com lancebledsoe

    Enjoyed this, Kevin. Couldn't help but find myself amused by the irony of your post when juxtaposed with http://wplimits.com/2008/10/are-premium-themes-… , which was written almost a year ago.

    I suspect there will be room for both free and premium themes for the foreseeable future, but my crystal ball is as cloudy as anyone's, and as noted in the above post, “Everything changes very quickly on the web.” It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

  • socialmallard

    Thanks for the comment Lance, and yeah, some entertaining irony between the two posts. It really was the Thesis theme that I think was the catalyst – A quality theme with great options that appeal to, mostly, the small business types (like me) and more professional bloggers. What made it the catalyst though was the legions of Copyblogger fans who came over to it, coupled with the affiliate program and the resulting massive amount of visibility it received.

    Once theme designers saw that, I think the impetus for creating free themes was seriously diminished. The gold rush was on. Which is why I'm thinking most quality free themes going fwd will be seeded as marketing for premium upsells or design shop services – still about tapping into the WP theme money machine.

    Good or bad thing, hard to say. There's a place for both free and premium, though I know it inspires a lot of passion and debate within the core WP community. I suspect some flavor of premium WP plugins is next (many are there – ad, affiliate, review, etc). They just need a similar catalyst and we'll see a similar huge shift happen in that market – even with the more complex GPL arguments for plugins.

  • smallbusinesshelp

    It's not everyday that you can change people's mindset from “Free” to “Fee”. But outstanding themes (more like platforms) such as Thesis have done just that.

  • socialmallard

    I agree – it has been an impressive shift. I'm wondering however how long it will take for Automattic to start building in some of the theme management and customization options that makes Thesis so appealing currently.

  • http://www.socialmallard.com/ Kevin Briody

    I agree – it has been an impressive shift. I'm wondering however how long it will take for Automattic to start building in some of the theme management and customization options that makes Thesis so appealing currently.