You just finished with the WordPress installation.

Phewww good job!

Now it’s time to install a free WordPress theme out of the many available in the theme library.

Wait!

How would you know which theme to choose from when you have a lot of options and don’t anything about it?

Don’t worry; we have you covered. In this article, I’ll talk about the ten most popular free WordPress themes that will blow your mind.

So, are you ready to install the first theme and kickstart your blog?

Let’s jump right into the article.

Top 10 Free WordPress Themes To Start Your Blogging Career

Here is our handpicked list of best free WordPress themes for blogs that you can install today.

1) GeneratePress

GeneratePress is a free theme created by Tom Usborne. With over 100k+ active installations and 800+ five star reviews, GeneratePress is one of the most popular themes amongst blogger.

The theme is ideal for newbie and advanced bloggers.

If you’re looking for a perfect SEO friendly theme to kickstart your blog, GeneratePress is the right theme for you.

GeneratePress Features:

  • The theme is compatible with all popular WordPress plugins.
  • Built-in schema.org and the goodness of structured data, GeneratePress is a perfectly SEO optimized theme.
  • You can customize anything and everything on this theme from buttons to background colors, font size, and text.
  • GeneratePress is a frequently updated theme. That means you won’t have to worry about any security breach or information leak.
  • The theme seamlessly integrates with third-party page builders like Thrive Architect, Elementor, Beaver Builder and more.
  • The developers have made the theme fast, which results in better site loading speeds.
  • The theme supports 600+ font awesome fonts.

Overall, GeneratePress is a brilliant theme, and I’d highly recommend you to start your blogging career using this theme. It is one of our favorite themes.

GeneratePress also have a premium version which costs you $49.99 with one-year of updates and priority support. You can update the same theme at 40% OFF for the next year.

Get GeneratePress

2) Astra

The second free and again, one of the well-known themes in the WordPress repository is, Astra.

Astra is a fast-moving company because they started in early 2016 and at the time of writing this article, they have an active installation on over 300k+ website with over 1800+ five star reviews.

Pretty impressive, right?

The theme is perfect not only for bloggers but also for business owners, personal portfolio websites, and for creating a full-fledged e-commerce store.

With less than 50kb of front-end, Astra theme loads lightning fast and is SEO ready.

Surprisingly, it’s free to use theme with all these amazing features which I’ll talk about in a moment.

Astra Features

  • WooCommerce integration helps you create good looking e-commerce store without hiring expensive developers.  
  • Built on structured data and native AMP, Astra is also set to boost your SEO performance in the SERPs.
  • The theme seamlessly integrates with popular page builder plugins like Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, and Visual Composer.
  • Astra gives you a set of pre-built websites, so you don’t need to juggle messing around with various elements. They keep adding a new collection of themes periodically.
  • The theme loads in less than 0.5 seconds as they don’t load any JQuery files in the backend and the front-end is super light too.
  • With Astra, you can customize almost everything from layout settings to header options, colors, and typography of your blog.
  • The theme is translation ready.

Astra is a fantastic theme to try your hands on initially. They do have the Astra Pro that comes with more advanced features and better customization options.

Astra Pro starts at $59/yr. However, you don’t just yet need the pro version if you’re just beginning your blogging journey the free version is more than enough for you.

Get Astra

3) OceanWP

OceanWP is the favorite choice of WordPress theme among bloggers and developers. With over a million downloads, OceanWP is sure to help you succeed.

The theme is fast loading and made with minimal yet powerful graphics and transitions.

One of the cool features that you get with OceanWP is the access to their easy to use extensions (more on this later).

Apart from that, you get a lightning fast support team who is always ready to help you out with all your queries.  

OceanWP Features:

  • OceanWP is a fully mobile responsive site.
  • The theme is also one of the fastest loading sites in the WordPress repository.
  • Readymade demos available for you to use directly on your site.
  • OceanWP theme can be translated in your native language & is RTL ready.
  • The theme is SEO friendly.
  • Integrates with WooCommerce giving you the ability to create an entire e-commerce store.
  • OceanWP works with page builder plugins like Brizy, SiteOrigin, Thrive Architect, Elementor, Divi & Beaver Builder.
  • Finally, you get support for exclusive OceanWP extensions like Sticky Header, Full Screen, Popup Login, Social Sharing, Custom Sidebar. With this, you can cut down on the number of additional plugins on your site.

OceanWP is an entirely free theme, and all the extensions are free too! The theme is fast and trusted by a lot of professional bloggers. You should try it out.

Get OceanWP

4) Schema

If you specifically need the best SEO optimized theme ever built in the WordPress theme repository, you should try out the Schema theme by MyThemeShop.

Schema tells the search engines which the blog, header, and the footer sections in your blog. That way, search crawlers can understand your site better, which eventually helps you in getting higher rankings.

Schema Features:

  • The theme is 100% mobile and tablet responsive.
  • Perfectly manage your ad placements to earn you more ad revenue.
  • There’s a built-in review system in the theme to collect user reviews.
  • Change an unlimited number of backgrounds, fonts, and colors.
  • The code is lightweight and clean, this helps your site load super fast.
  • Support to show related posts after every post end.
  • The theme supports Google fonts and ready-made icon packs to make your site even more beautiful.

If I were to pick an SEO friendly theme from the list of free WordPress themes, I would always pick Schema because of its fast loading speed and SEO goodness.

Get Schema

5) ColorMag

If you love magazine type themes, ColorMag theme by ThemeGrill is a great option to go with. ColorMag is currently the number one free WordPress magazine theme with over 100k+ active installations.

ColorMag Features:

  • You have over seven featured posts widget styles.
  • There’s a special breaking news sticky widget to get more eyeballs on the featured content.
  • It’s WooCommerce compatible, which means you can also create a complete e-commerce store on top of the ColorMag theme. 
  • Show or hide related posts at the bottom of every article.
  • ColorMag is a cross-browser compatible theme and is also SEO friendly.
  • Show your blog’s social media handle in the header & footer section of the theme.

They do have the Pro version of this theme which starts at $69 and includes more advanced features like support for Google fonts, a special type of featured widget and much more.

Get ColorMag

6) GreatMag

GreatMag is just another WordPress magazine theme designed by Athemes. The theme comes with a lot of custom widgets, typography, color options, and font controls.

If you’re starting a news or a content-rich website you can consider using GreatMag as your free WordPress theme option.

GreatMag Features:

  • You have support to connect with third-party page builders and create alluring landing pages. The theme integrates with most of the popular page builder plugins.
  • You have all the essential widget support to create a perfect magazine style website.
  • In terms of customizations, you can change the fonts, background of the theme, colors all from the theme customizer.
  • Select from the various blog layouts available to you – list, classic, and full-width.
  • The theme is mobile responsive and works perfectly fine in tablets too.
  • It supports translation and Google fonts.

The team is very active in answering your queries if you have any related to GreatMag. Also, they frequently release new theme updates to give you the best overall experience.

Get GreatMag 

7) Sparkling

Sparkling is one of my favorite free WordPress themes. The design of the theme is clean and minimal.

Sparkling is perfect for all type of bloggers – travel, health, food, business, finance, photography, personal, and building your e-commerce store.

The theme works excellent with plugins like Contact Form 7, bbPress, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and other popular plugins.

Sparkling Features:

  • The theme is schema and SEO friendly, which gives you more search engine visibility.
  • Integrates with WooCommerce to build your complete online e-commerce shop.
  • Built with the power of Bootstrap 3, the theme works perfect on mobile & tablet devices.
  • With the available customization options, you can change fonts, set up the slider, remove or edit footer copyrights, and change the header.
  • Make use of the featured slider option which is a full-screen slider to get you more traffic on the best content of your site.
  • If you have a lot of content on the site, you can implement the infinite scroll feature which makes the content easy to load for your readers.

Get Sparkling

8) Accelerate

Accelerate is a simple looking multipurpose WordPress theme designed for simplicity and ease of use. 

The theme is free to use and has a premium look and feel to it. The theme empowers over 20k+ WordPress websites and has almost similar features to that of GreatMag. ThemeGrill develops both themes.

Accelerate Features:

  • In the free version of the theme, you get support for four sliders.
  • The theme is WooCommerce compatible, so if you want to sell your physical or digital products on your blog, you can do that too.
  • It supports both the boxed & wide layout options.
  • You get several widget options to play around like the image services widget, call to action widget, and featured content widget.
  • You can set a primary color in the theme, which will be reflected on your entire set, keeping your brand colors intact.

You get a limited set of features with the free version of the theme. However, there’s the Pro version which unlocks all the advanced features like special widgets, footer copyright editor, 600+ Google fonts, social icons, and many more.

Get Accelerate

9) NewsPaper X

As the name suggests, NewsPaper X is an exclusive theme for news websites and is one of the top free WordPress themes for content-rich sites.

The theme has an attractive layout that stands out for your brand. The very popular Colorlib develops it. Let’s now have a quick look at all the features of NewsPaper X.

NewsPaper X Features:

  • NewsPaper X is an SEO friendly theme and has clean code which search engines love.
  • The theme is mobile and tablet responsive.
  • It’s super easy to customize.
  • You get advanced footer and header widget to add more beautiful looking elements to your WordPress site.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to design a WordPress theme because you can directly import the NewsPaper X demo on to your running WordPress site.

Get NewsPaperX

10) Hueman

The last theme in the list of our top 10 WordPress free themes is Hueman; it’s a theme developed by Press Customizr.

The theme has a professional look to it and is built keeping bloggers and business owners in mind.

You get boatloads of customization options like the full color and layout control, changing Google fonts, sticky navigation, header image, and so much more.

The theme powers more than 80k+ WordPress users and is ideal for running a content-rich magazine site.

Hueman Features

  • You can get an unlimited number of widget areas which can be assigned to an individual page or different WP sections.
  • Decrease your website’s bounce rate by putting in the related posts after each post on your site.
  • The theme is good for SEO and is built on clean and minimal code.
  • Select from the hundreds of available fonts via Google Fonts.
  • Put up the popular content on top of the website with the help of a featured story or slider widget.
  • Use up to 4 footer widgets or no footer widgets at all. The choice is yours.  

Get Hueman

Conclusion

Choosing the right WordPress theme when you are just starting your blogging journey can be overwhelming.

WordPress is filled up with a ton of free and premium themes. We tried collecting the best of all the free themes and bundled it in this article.

I hope you found this article helpful and if you did, don’t forget to leave a comment down below and let me know.

Also, do share which WordPress theme you love the most and why I’d love to hear it from you guys!


Sidz is a college drop-out, "musician turned digital geek", a spiritually grounded minimalist, father of 2, and husband of a loving wife. He founded the Internet Lifestyle Hub in 2018 to fix the education and employment system for good. Currently, he is helping over 20,000+ coaches, teachers, and experts digitize their knowledge. He’s an international best-selling author of the book You Can Coach and is on a mission to help 1,000,000 people live a lifestyle of freedom!

    3 replies to "Top 10 Free WordPress Themes To Start Your Blogging Career"

    • Very good article. I’m experiencing a few of these issues as well..

    • Charudatta Sawant

      Nice article, I tried ColorMag Free Theme and it’s working fine for blog.

    • Rodrigo

      Nice, I am using ColorMag Free and is really good, now i buy colormagPro its really worth =)

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