25 Tried and Tested WordPress Blog Themes

WordPress was initially created to serve solely as a blogging platform, so despite the fact that today it can be a home for every imaginable type of website, WordPress users still have a good reason to expect this CMS to provide them with everything necessary for the first-class blogging sites.

One of the initial steps you’ll have to complete while starting your WordPress blog is choosing a proper WP theme. No worries here: pretty much all of them can flawlessly comply with a blog format. However, there are some key players among WordPress blog templates that will facilitate your work to the extent possible and yet deliver the upscale end product. Meet them in our collection!

But before we actually start describing the themes, let’s briefly review the features that are important for a high-quality blogging template to have.

A Good WordPress Template for Blogging Should Be

SEO ready. This is the first essential feature that comes to mind while on the subject of WordPress themes for blogging.

Blogs are all about content, so to make your website findable on Google, you will have to ensure its content, firstly, is of high quality, and secondly, is created with SEO guidelines in mind. In other words, apart from creating compelling content, blog sites owners should devote a great deal of attention to search engine optimization, and a theme that is SEO-ready out of the box would be of great help for this purpose.

Then again, many WP users still argue which qualities contribute to making a theme SEO-friendly. Some believe that clean and well-written code is more than enough while others are of opinion that many more features are necessary (e.g., SEO-plugins compatibility, mobile friendliness, schema.org markup, etc.)

Mobile friendly. It is not a secret that search tools put more value on the sites that offer all-device accessibility. But even without reference to the ubiquitous search crawlers, having your blog displayed properly on various devices would never be out of place.

Besides the responsive themes there also exist other turn-key tools to help you make your site mobile-optimized and thus boost its ranking in Google Search. An example is WordPress AMP plugin by MotoPress that lets you build a mobile version of your website with instantly-loading AMP pages.)

Translation ready. As noted previously, many blogs are targeted at presenting text info. Bearing in mind that bloggers may need to handle websites in languages other than English, we consider translation adaptiveness an important criterion too.

Of course, there may exist a lot of other requirements dictated by the particular needs of each blog’s type and purpose, however, we used the сriteria above as a guide on template selection for today’s list of premium and free WordPress blog templates.

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So let’s not put the very essence off any longer and move straightly to the list of themes for the best blog platforms.

27 Best WordPress Themes for Blog Websites

Twenty Nineteen

Please welcome the most highly anticipated WordPress blogger theme of the year 2019!

The WordPress default themes lineup has recently been expanded with a new template called Twenty Nineteen and due to the theme’s blogging-focused nature, we see it fit to be included to our today’s collection.

Among peculiar features of Twenty Nineteen are full Gutenberg compatibility and refined typography that makes the template a perfect fit for writer’s and artist’s websites.

Plus, you will have a chance to play with featured images of your posts by adding funky color overlays for them directly in Live Customizer.

But a picture is worth a thousand words, so let’s take a look at how the new default template may be put into action.

MotoPress developers team has designed their own demo of Twenty Nineteen so feel free to follow the link below if you’d like to see what the new default theme is capable of.

Twenty Nineteen Demo

Avior

This free WordPress template is a bright example of a blogging theme with a time-proven minimalist design. Thanks to its polished overall style and rich functionality for managing blogs of any type, Avior can successfully back both personal websites and corporate or business blogs.

The theme gives you the freedom to customize a lot of website elements. It leads to the creation of the best free blog platform. You may start with the areas that come under the notice of your visitors immediately: add links to your social media accounts to the header area or fill the footer space with widgets (e.g. search box or recent posts.)

The next step of your site personalization can be changing page background, header/footer background, text, link, and button hover colors. This will allow you to design a unique look for your blog and adjust it to your preferences and/or demands of the content you are going to share.

Other features:

• SEO-optimized
• pre-designed templates for WooCommerce shop and product pages
• sidebar and full-width layouts for single posts
• 3 flexible menus
• fully customizable colors

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Startup Blog

Startup Blog is an awesome WordPress theme for tech companies, business journals, and startups. It has a modern design with a gradient-colored slider that works great for promoting the most important pages on your site.

With Startup Blog, you can maintain an active blog and grow your social following by promoting your profiles in the header. Whenever you have a hot new article or important announcement, you can highlight it in the slider to give it additional attention on the site.

Other features:

• Startup Blog Pro upgrade
• ready post templates
• responsive layouts
• 60+ new color options
• 600+ custom fonts

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Piemont

One of the dearest wishes of all the theme users who are eager to launch their brand-new site as soon as possible is to have a chance to obtain precisely the same gorgeously designed website they’ve seen in the demo. They would then simply insert the needed text, optionally load their own images, and voila…

Piemont is a theme that moves us closer to this fantastically smart automatization: it comes packaged with 9 ready-designed demos for various types of blogs that, what is more, can be installed by clicking one single button. Sample content installation as well as all the design tailorings are made within the user-friendly control panel.

Other features:

• optimized for speed
• 11 overall color options
• 4 front page slider outlines
• 9 plugins integrated (Instagram Feed, MailChimp Newsletter, Piemont Translation Manager, WooCommerce)

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Ashe

Lite version of Ashe can rightly be landed on the list of the most popular free blog themes in the WordPress.org theme repository. Ashe Pro inherits the lite version’s elegant style and expands its utility with pre-made demos: it offers 13 ready samples that can be one-click installed by going to Appearance, picking one you would like to apply, and clicking Activate button (just as you’d do when installing a regular theme or plugin.)

Some of the demos are aimed at particular blog types (food, fashion, or travel ones) while the rest are of wide applicability. But on the whole, each of the predefined website styles provides unique blog (front) page layout combinations. This template is the answer to how to start a blog for free and make money.

Other features:

• text/image logo (free)
• support for Woocommerce shop integration (free)
• MailPoet integration (free)
• speed optimization (pro)
• post formats (pro)
• sticky navigation menu (pro)

Grand Blog

Grand Blog is a 360-degree tool for powering WordPress blogs. The theme enables you to outline your posts on the front page in a great number of ways: you will be free to choose among 15 advanced layout options and specify sidebar positions for them. Add all the possible variations of header content design, and you’ll get more than 20 patterns of homepage outline.

One more exclusively a blogging-dedicated element of the theme’s functionality is support for review post types via WP Review plugin. Oftentimes bloggers have to review and advertise various products or services, so this option is a truly valuable asset for building user trust in the item advertised.

Other features:

• one click demo import
• design tailorings through WP Customizer
• FontAwesome Icons collection
• 100% responsive and retina-ready
• Instagram feed integration

Soledad

On the one hand, the theme is a ready-to-go basis for any type of blog. This is achieved with numerous pre-compelled demos that are optimized to fit a particular blog subject and can be applied to your site in one click.

On the other hand, Soledad still leaves you more than enough space for further customization. The theme’s guaranteed smooth performance with a plethora of various plugins including bbPress and BuddyPress, WooCommerce, SEO plugins and Toolset Types plugin for adding custom post types speaks volumes about the flexibility of this template.

For you to be able to build and edit your website pages with ease, Soledad offers two instruments of visual page editing – native WP Live Customizer and renowned Visual Composer page builder.

Other features:

• AMP support
• translation directly in WordPress Customizer
• SEO plugins compatible
• dark color skin available
• GDPR-compliant

Ink

Ink is all about expanding your page’s usable space with a custom widget-based layout approach. Tweak the outline of any page you wish using different content segments (widgets) for the creation of the best blogging platforms. You will be able to choose between the four available widget types: Static Content widget for displaying content of any static page on the other page of your website, Recent Posts/Recent Posts Grid widgets, and Contributors widget for sharing your blog author’s info.

Set your front page to display your recent posts and be sure it will be perfectly fit for the blogging niche: Ink provides you with an awesome Pinterest-style homepage layout, composed of your posts’ featured images.

Other features:

• video or image header options
• 9 blog outlines
• advanced settings of posts’ featured images (image opacity, background color, cover filter)
• child theme support

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Hive Lite

If we were supposed to create a slogan for this template, it would definitely be something like “Hive Lite — where the style lives.” Well, frankly, this theme helps create the best free blog platforms and deserves a much better motto, but in any case, among the words that can be included in the theme’s description would definitely be ‘elegant’, ‘classy’, ‘stylish’ or ‘chic’.

Hive Lite is perfectly suitable for writing-oriented blogs and magazines. Present your content arranged as a masonry grid on the front page and pick a layout for a single post page from the 2 available options: a standard right-sidebar or a portrait one, which brings the focus to images.

This theme is a freemium blogging template that can be downloaded from the WordPress theme repository and optionally upgraded to pro to obtain a live-mode customization option and dedicated support.

Other features:

• support for galleries
• support for various post formats
• custom typography elements

Zillah

Being a clean-designed freemium theme equipped with a vast range of features (check the list below), Zillah can at the same time be considerably extended by means of various plugins like Photo Gallery Grid, WooCommerce, or Contact Form 7. Plus, it will seamlessly cooperate with many visual page builders.

But in case you want to start customizing your theme as soon as possible without spending time on installing any additional software — WordPress native Live Customizer can be applied for the theme editing as well.

The theme will be a perfect pick for lifestyle, fashion, or other personal blogs.

Other features:

• responsive design
• SEO friendliness
• instant demo import
• support for various types of background content
• RTL support
• ready for translation

Let’s Blog

Websites, built on the basis of popular WP themes, are sometimes accused of looking all alike. We don’t really agree with such an allegation and to back up our opinion with facts, present you a template that can be rebuilt and re-styled in lots and lots of ways, letting you create unique-looking websites for each particular occasion.

Let’s Blog is a premium top-sold WordPress theme that offers over 20 (!) layout options for building unmatched layout combinations for your website pages. What’s more, the lean and balanced design of Let’s blog doesn’t confine you to any narrow sphere: keep a personal online diary, launch your own photography website or set up a niche blog to promote your business.

Other features:

• instant search option (instant drop-down menu with search results appearing right after user starts typing in the search form)
• customization via native Live Customizer
• one click demo installation
• FontAwesome icons
• Instagram gallery integration

Gutenix

Gutenix is an excellent WordPress starter theme for running a blog because it comes with tons of content settings that you can implement to your website and raise the level of users’ interest. The template comes with 30+ premade demos which you can try and choose which one suits you best.

Working with typography is a breeze: use Google Fonts, adjust line height and letter spacing, imply global settings for each piece of content. There are also multiple blog layout options such as listing, grid, masonry, justify, etc.

Other features:

• High loading speed
• Customizable header
• Multiple site layouts
• Advanced styles
• Easy navigation

Elara

Elara freemium WP template is an extremely feature-rich theme designed specifically for food niche. It offers the choice between a header post slider and a hero banner or lets you display your posts right at the top of your homepage without any additional header content. Elara is geared towards portrait images and lets you choose a highlighted post you would like to direct your users’ attention to.

As a cooking enthusiast, you would definitely like to share some recipes with your audience, and an instructive video format would be a perfect tool to this end. That is exactly why Elara offers advanced support for video posts that lets your front page videos be played in swiftly loading pop-up windows so the users won’t have to switch to another page to view them.

Other features:

• WP Instagram Widget compatible (free)
• image/text logo (free)
• pre-made template for a special category page (e.g., in case you want to split your posts into different groups and gather them on a separate page) (free)
• recipe shortcode builder (pro)

Olsen

As the theme demo suggests, this template can be successfully used as a basis for fashion or Instagram-inspired lifestyle blogs.

The theme is available in 2 editions — a free one called Olsen Lite and a premium Olsen version.

As for the free blogging platforms, the available post layouts it provides are Classic Sidebar or 2-column Sidebar. The pro version adds 9 more layout options for the front page and widens the list of features the template can be improved with: install the WooCommerce plugin and start selling online or use pre-designed Lookbook pages to turn the theme into a ready-to-wear base for a fashion blog.

Other features:

• one click demo import (free)
• Instagram feed embedding via plugin (free)
• design tuning through Live Customizer (free)
• post greeting options (displaying different greeting messages for visitors depending on the URL they were redirected from) (pro)
• support for various post formats

Tracks

Tracks is one of the best free WordPress themes for blogs that allows you to start out in the blogging industry without paying a dime. The template is not overloaded with tons of confusing instruments or functions and that’s why we consider it to be a perfect choice for blogging for beginners or if you would like to cut down expenses on website creation.

At the same time, Tracks won’t let your blog fade into the crowd of other websites of the same type. The theme offers a spectacular dark-colored design and awesome horizontal tile layout for your posts on the front page and hover animations that will make the overall look of your site even more dynamic and modern.

Other features:

• fully responsive
• text or image logo options
• social media icons
• search box
• copyright info editing

Writee

Writee is yet one more ambassador of the free blog themes in our list, which, to our mind, can be especially good for 2 peculiar aims: creating a writer’s/publisher’s or a corporate blog.

Quite apart from judging by the template’s name, it’s plain to see that the magazine-style format of Writee would smoothly embrace and arrange any amount of text content. Moreover, to prove themselves text-oriented, both free and pro theme editions provide their users with more than 600 Google fonts to choose from and ready MO/PO files for translation.

In the case of using Writee as a corporate blog templatе, the theme makes sure you are getting everything needed to establish your brand identity in the free blogger platforms: upload your company’s logo and add a favicon. The premium version will as well enable you to edit the copyright info on the bottom of your website pages to make your blog look fully personalized and professional.

Other features:

• breadcrumbs support (free)
• built-in related posts displaying option (free)
• Instagram feed on the footer area (pro)
• Facebook Like widget (pro)
• sticky header and sidebar (pro)

Escher

A bold and ultra-modern Escher theme is an ultimate choice for the vibrant action sports or adventure travel blog. Daring minimalist layout, posts hover effects and animations are just perfect for the dynamic presentation of the action-packed content.

The major attraction of the theme is a vivid tiled-gallery home page layout, available among other 5 pre-designed front page styles. No matter which format your post is, it will be seamlessly integrated into your front page posts collection thanks to the theme’s support for different post formats.

If you, however, would like to stick to the more classic front page design and keep the dynamic way of the content presented at the same time, go for the Animated Grid homepage style.

Other features:

• one click demo installation
• built-in Slider Revolution plugin
• built-in Visual Composer page builder
• 5 single post layouts
• child theme included
• infinite scroll

Vlog

Video blogging has evolved into a freestanding blogging niche with its own features and standards. Vlogs are typically associated with the major video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, however, we are strongly convinced that there is no point in limiting yourself to the video hostings exceptionally. Reinforcing your video platform account with a personal vlogging website will contribute to your Internet popularity a lot. That’s why our today’s list features one of the most well-trusted video blogging WordPress templates with a self-explanatory name — Vlog.

Link your YouTube/Vimeo/Dailymotion accounts to your own website and enjoy auto transferring of videos with the Video Importer plugin. You will also have a chance to organize your videos in playlists (i.e. categories) to maintain handy search and navigation through your content. Two more useful options making the theme even more video-targeted are Watch Later and Cinema Mode features.

Other features:

• sticky featured video
• banner ads embedding option
• pagination support and 4 pagination types
• support for bbPress forums
• optimized for speed

Voyager

Voyager theme is a fresh approach to travel blog creation. Share your travel memories richly in detail by marking the spots you’ve visited on the wide-format Google map and building an interactive itinerary of your journey. Such an approach will create a kind of participation effect for your audience and let your website visitors follow every step of your trip. This becomes possible through the use of Trip custom post types, pre-added to the theme.

You will be also able to set a static pre-designed homepage to gather and highlight all the important info and posts you would like your visitors to see straight away. The front page layout and its content blocks can be easily customized through a drag-and-drop page builder.

Other features:

• WooCommerce ready that is important since blogging for money is quite popular
• support for YouTube, Vimeo and self-hosted videos
• Portfolio post type
• support for bbPress forums creation
• child theme

Blggn

Instagram has given a rise to the special type of 2-in-1 lifestyle+fashion micro-blogs presenting outfits, looks, and remarkable moments of bloggers’ everyday life as a single smooth mix. One of the reasons that contributed to the success of this type of Instagram profile was Instagram’s image-oriented design that focuses users’ attention on the actual content. If you are willing to adopt the concept but build a prosperous personal fashion+lifestyle blog on your own website, try taking Blggn as its basis.

Theme’s design revolves around large-sized images, however, you will still be able to switch to the medium size of images within a post.

Other features:

• front page customization with Visual Composer
• Instagram feed in footer
• sticky menu on scroll
• 10 variations of the homepage posts slider

Authentic

Authentic is a theme built with a particular focus on the improvement of user experience that subsequently leads to the enhancement of user engagement on your site.

The theme allows displaying the number of each post’s views, post-reading time, and the table of content for long text posts: save your users’ time and let them spend it enjoying your feed. Add share buttons to your posts, display related posts directly within the text area of the currently read ones and make use of the infinite scroll option to encourage your website visitors to view even more of your amazing content.

Other features:

• placing AdSense banners via Live Customizer
• low-quality image placeholders (LQIP)
• AMP support
• customization of social icons

Read WP

The theme developers claim this template to be intensely focused on website readability, and rightly so: the theme’s polished typography and sharply contrasting color scheme make a perfect duo for creating a professional-looking and visually pleasing design.

Apart from that, you are getting a set of options to customize your website layout: pick one of the three available blog page outlines (sidebar/no sidebar or masonry) and fill the footer area with widgets via custom Dynamic Footer Builder.

We consider Read WP to be a good fit for a writer’s, translator’s, or artist’s blog. Moreover, the theme offers means for creating unlimited portfolios or galleries to showcase the works of the website owner, so the template in question may even evolve into a creative portfolio website.

Other features:

• support for all 9 posts format
• 600+ Google fonts
• SEO-optimized
• 20+ social media icons

Neptune

Neptune is an example of a niche-specific blog theme thought out to the last detail to be compliant with all demands of the sphere it is devoted to. This template is targeted at creation of food blogs, sharing recipes, or menu ideas.

Let your visitors find everything they are looking for without even having to leave your website: allow them to switch between reading and cooking modes of viewing your recipes (the latter will leave only the actual recipe text and illustrations to be shown on a page), add a timer to your pages for the users to be able to easily control their cooking process or give your visitors a possibility to bookmark the dishes they like.

Other features:

• Google Rich Snippets support
• user registration and login options
• categorizing recipes by cuisines with country flags
• front-end submission of recipes

Blake von Hauer

Following the hottest trend of branded content and influencer marketing, the Blake von Hauer template gives you a chance to benefit from these approaches and stay in line with the major regulations on sponsored content disclosure at the same time: you will be able to mark and indicate promoted posts with the respective note if this happens to be necessary.

Homepage layout options are quite broad as well and, moreover, their concept is creatively different from the common grid or column ones: the theme’s front page consists of multi-sized post blocks that will keep the design from becoming monotonous.

Other features:

• 3 slider positions available
• 13 custom widgets
• 8 widget areas
• translation via Live Customizer

Shout

This multifunction blogging template offers 3 pre-styled demos of general use (fancy Lifestyle, dark-colored Brave, and classy Minimal ones), 2 demos for niche blogs (food and travel), a sample for a Facebook feed page, a magazine website demo, and the RTL version of the theme. The design of all the samples is extremely clean, balanced, and thus easily adjustable to the broad variety of blogging sites.

The same principle of flexibility applies to the process of customization: it would be equally easy to edit the Shout theme for both WordPress beginners and advanced users. This becomes possible with the custom-developed Theme Control Panel, which packs together all the settings for modification of the theme’s form and content.

Other features:

• editable with WPBakery (Visual Composer)
• 100+ fonts via Extra fonts plugin
• WooCommerce compatibility letting you know how to make money blogging
• Testimonials and Team Members custom post types

Flow

One look at the Flow’s exuberant front page design is enough to understand that the visual aspect of the theme is its area of strength. The first feature to make this template stand out is the way the full text of the posts is displayed. Instead of being opened on a separate page, a post expands and smoothly fits among the others. This creates a fascinating interactive experience and can definitely boost user engagement. What’s more, your website visitors won’t have to wait for yet one more page to load.

Thanks to this approach to post arranging, you are getting a beautiful mix of a one-page and a blogging template at the same time.

Other features:

• one click demo install
• support for all post formats
• built-in Visual Composer
• child theme available

Hydra

No matter which of the two available main page layouts you are staying with (the Standard or the Left-aligned one), the result of your choice will always be a unique-looking website.

The split-screen effect created by constantly visible posts archive makes your blog look ultra-futuristic. The template’s high-tech appearance can be customized with equally high-tech means: Hydra is ready to be tailored with the next-gen Gutenberg editor.

This theme will be a perfect fit for technical, software development, startup, cryptocurrency blog sites, and similar.

Other features:

• 12 custom widgets
• live editing via WordPress Customizer
• responsive and retina-ready
• 700+ Google fonts
• SEO-friendly

Wrapping Up

WordPress blog templates bring plenty of options and tools for creating unique and robust blogs of any focus. However, due to the fact that WordPress has evolved into a multipurpose CMS for various website formats, we can now also find other decent types of themes to build WordPress websites with (think for instance of one-page themes that are widely used for powering corporate or business sites.)

Your Opinion?

So what is your thought on WP blogging templates? Are there any other types of WordPress themes (e.g., eCommerce, portfolio, one-page templates) that have already gained more popularity than the time-honored blogging ones, or perhaps will even outlast them someday? Share your verdict in the comments!

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