The most recent WordPress theme competition has recently concluded. You can see the results here.
My good friend, Adam Freetly, won an award for his very sweet theme, Disconnected, which is a heavy modification of vanilla mist’s connections. I say “heavy modification” because to the average onlooker Adam’s theme really looks nothing like connections. At any rate, it’s very cool that his design won for best two column design. I know he’s super happy about it too :D. The award is well deserved, disconnected is a quality theme.
This year’s competition really brought out the talent, of that much I’m sure. I’ve never seen so many quality themes in one location. Here’s a list of some of my favorite themes from this year’s competition (keep in mind, I’m not trying to say that those themes I left off this list were somehow lesser quality, I’m just listing the ones that I personally liked the looks of the most):
Foliage Mod by Derek Punsalan. This is one of those themes that just makes you say, “wow.” I watched as he developed this theme live on his personal site. Then he released it to the masses and all I could think was, “that’s incredibly generous.” Normally people don’t put that much time into something only to let it go.
Ambiru by Phu Ly. Phu is probably one of the more talented theme designers I know of. He cranks out quality themes like it’s as easy as breathing but make no doubt, this theme stands out from his other work as a unique, quality theme.
Chaotic Soul by Bryan Veloso: Even though this wasn’t an official entry in the contest, it’s too cool not to mention.? Dark themes are hard to do well. But with Chaotic Soul, Bryan did everything right. It’s so lovely, I could cry.
Dfire by Tracy Ou: This theme, in my opinion, doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Of all the themes I just listed, this one actually tempted me to ditch my current design. It’s got the tabbed navigation which I love, and the dark color scheme is just really sweet. It’s also got a nifty javascript shelf for additional navigation.
Everyone who submitted a site this year really went above and beyond. Well, except for those people who ripped other’s designs and submitted them as their own (this actually happened with Joshua Ink‘s site); I have no respect for that.
So go check out these WordPress themes I mentioned as well as all the rest on the WordPress Theme Viewer. Who knows, you just may find the theme you’ve been searching for!
