2016-12-23

What makes a theme worthy of being considered the best premium WP theme? To better understand this, it’s critical to know everything WordPress has to offer in terms of website creation and design.

WordPress has the distinct honor of being a highly configurable Content Management System (CMS), which was originally designed to address the needs of bloggers but eventually evolved into a platform that accommodates plugins and design widgets – adding not only aesthetic value, but also functionality.

There are numerous premium WP Themes available on the Web designers’ market, including ones that ThemeForest offers, and it can be difficult to pinpoint the optimum one – especially when people’s needs and business demands are constantly evolving. In addition, technology continues to develop, creating additional themes which better respond to changing user needs.



When it comes to content, it’s  no longer sufficient to use random, non-thematic images or to have a wall of text populating a website. To attract traffic, additional multimedia such as video and audio, links and quotes are often made a part of the site’s content. The text has also been given a fresh treatment and the more concise the text is, the better it engages the site’s users. Finally, design elements are sharper – reflecting the fast development of design technology.

Here are some of the best premium WordPress themes for 2017, categorized according to their specific and relative fields and yours for grabs! This latest collection of the best WordPress themes has recently been updated and includes some exciting new additions.

UPDATED – December 23rd – Getting ready for 2017!

We’ve updated this collection of best recent WordPress templates, adding popular themes and removing some outdated ones.

The X Theme – Multipurpose Template

Category: eCommerce, Business, Portfolio, Gallery

It’s called the X Theme and they’re dubbing it as the theme of 2017 – combining elements of premium design and functionality, enabling you to create unlimited websites using the same core theme. Introduced in early 2014, the theme became an instant success in the Themeforest marketplace receiving positive reviews by many high profile internet marketers. The X Theme really has it all! Check out the 30 demos they’ve created by visiting the preview below.



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Divi – Multipurpose WordPress Theme

Category: Multi-purpose (special events, portfolio, business, special interests, eCommerce, IM)

Although Divi could be regarded as a multi-purpose premium WP theme, it’s especially recommended for use for life marker events such as weddings, or special interest sites such as those created for parenting advice and tips. It’s also excellent for promoting products and services through its custom post types. This theme has two homepage layouts available, together with multi-page templates.



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Photocrati

Category: Photography, Portfolio, Gallery

Photocrati is a leading theme platform specializing in the photography niche. It provides a platform of themes & templates which include a built-in gallery system, a photography options panel and much more. Ideal for photographers and highly customizable, Photocrati has a great record! Check out the multiple demos by clicking below.

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Boundless – Multipurpose WordPress Theme

Category: eCommerce, Business, Portfolio, Gallery

Boundless is a modern layout with parallax effects. Utilizing the power of HTML5 and CSS3, it brings you a beautiful design with an extremely lightweight code, which enables fast loading times. The Revolution slider will astonish your visitors, and you’ll be amazed by its numerous features: animations, custom icons, pricing tables, and much more.

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BeTheme Multipurpose WordPress Template

Category: Multipurpose, Portfolio, Business,  Photography

BeTheme is a modern multipurpose theme with a responsive and very beautiful design. When we say multipurpose, we mean it! BeTheme is perhaps one of the most complete themes and gives you a large array of options for building your next website. One indication of this is that over 55 different demos are included on purchase of the theme. A sample of the subjects included in the demos are: charity, loans, business, vet, author, DJ, restaurant, portfolio – and much more! This theme is extremely popular on Themeforest and receives rave reviews for design, functionality and support.

A sample of the subjects included in the demos are: charity, loans, business, vet, author, DJ, restaurant, portfolio – and much more! This theme is extremely popular on Themeforest and receives rave reviews for design, functionality and support.

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Nexus Modern Magazine Theme

Category: Blog, News, Corporate

A versatile magazine styled template with numerous content modules, short-codes and styles allowing you to fully control your theme’s front & back end easily. Created by the brilliant guys over at Elegant Themes, Nexus makes it simple to blog a great amount of content in a magazine, hassle-free style, which in addition to old print-style design, brings edge to the table. With a grid layout, responsiveness and abundance of features, Nexus is the ultimate choice for a magazine type website.

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Uncode

Category:  Performance, Creative

Although created in 2015, Uncode was recently revamped and re-introduced in late June 2016, featuring pixel perfect creative theme with amazing attention to detail. Being a top seller among the 30 all-timers on ThemeForest, this theme boasts 30+ pre-made concepts for you to choose from. With advanced grid, enhanced Visual Composer and a selection of pre made templates, no surprise it’s a favorite of ours – so check it out.

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Bridge – Creative MP WordPress Theme

Category:  Creative, Multipurpose, Trending

Bridge is a leading WP layout currently leading the top 5 templates on ThemeForest. The unique twist of multi purpose features with a creative touch is surely refreshing! Add to this the ability to choose from 100 pre made demos, having 24 design concepts, 84 professionally made shortcodes and all the necessities – great support & documentation, responsiveness and much more.

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Mozzy – Premium Portfolio & Blog Template

Category: Portfolio, Creative, Business

A stunning, simple portfolio & blog theme from the creators of CSSigniter. Enjoy multiple options on your portfolio dashboard and be sure to use the flexible homepage, which allows you to modify your website’s look in no time at all, while choosing column numbers, layout, contact forms and so much more. Grab a look and enjoy a full range theme company which offers a $39 bundle.

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Inception – Multipurpose Portfolio Theme

Category: Portfolio, One page, Corporate

Inception is the perfect one-page portfolio theme, with beautiful CSS3 animations, smooth section transitions, a customizable footer, and Google Maps integration. All of this means that you can easily showcase yourself and your business, regardless of whether it’s online or offline. And with its beautiful design, Inception is a theme that will leave a fantastic and lasting first impression on your visitors.

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The Nordic

Category: Creative, Portfolio

Part e-commerce store, part portfolio – the Nordic theme is every inch an online talent-showcasing tool. On the left you’ll find a variety of functional categories that can be customized to suit you, and in the center you’ll be able to exhibit exactly what you do, in style! It’s a fully responsive website that utilizes Ajax effects to their fullest – making it easy to achieve an interactive website that simply oozes staying power!

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Impreza 3.4 – With Exclusive Header Builder

Category: Retina, eCommerce, Multipurpose

Impreza is a multipurpose theme brought to you by UpSolution, a “Power Elite Author” from the Envato community. With close to 15,000 sales, 4.8 start average review and boasting comments from the community, this theme rocks the charts with it’s simplicity and elegancy. The layout is clean and comes with various add-on options, including the free trial option, where you actually migrate a website to test the template before purchasing. The theme will suit any photography, portfolio, store and corporate site easily and comes with pre-made templates to choose from.

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Asgard

Category: Magazine / Blog

Asgard is a template the supports multiple authors which makes it ideal for news and magazine-style blogs. The Wiloke Widgets Plugin is included and gives you access to 11 different widgets that you can use to customize your sidebar. It’s also powered by Visual Composer so you can build pages by dragging and dropping the elements you want onto the page. You have six different blog layouts and the template is fully responsive.

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The Abundance – eCommerce Store

Category: eCommerce, Store

If we had to choose a particular theme that does exactly what it’s supposed to, without the need to customize anything beyond the logo and images – it’s the Abundance theme. As far as portfolio templates go, this template should definitely be perched somewhere near the top of them. Where this theme really stands out from the crowd is in its ability to feature no fewer than 5 different slideshows. That’s a whole load of portfolio space for someone hoping to publicize what they do best! It also features HTML 5 support too – making it even easier for programmers to strut their stuff.

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Skylab Design

Category: Design, Minimal, Photography

Beyond its pretty cool name, Skylab certainly has the features to back up its functionality. The demo neatly portrays a fashion photographer’s work; but there’s really no reason why any type of photographer couldn’t enjoy the benefits. The images can be customized, the design simply oozes style, the layout is both mobile responsive and search engine optimize-able, and there’s a great range of demo content included within the package to get the ball rolling.

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Flashlight

Category: Full screen, Portfolio

If only there was a way to maximize the look and feel of a website, without having to spend weeks and weeks programming. Popping up to answer our prayers is the Flashlight theme – a visually stimulating design that makes it easy to represent your talents. As far as a portfolio template goes, the Flashlight has to be one of the most effective – and not just because of the 75% dedication to image space.

You can even customize the layout, typefaces and colors too – making this template a great solution for anyone hoping to get their message across in a unique way.

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uDesign Business Template

Category: Business, Minimal

As its name might suggest, the uDesing template is all about you and your preferences. Every single element can be customized; from the typefaces used on any particular page, all the way to uniquely colored header bars or sectioned areas. It fully supports dozens of international languages, it comes with its very own visual composition tool for effects, and it’s entirely e-commerce ready. Overall, this theme allows a business to showcase what it does best and gets its message across perfectly; all while allowing you to sit back as the audience rolls in – thanks to the built-in SEO tool.

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Avada

Category: Business, Ecommerce, Portfolio, Multipurpose

An extremely popular theme, and for a reason. This is one of the most sold WordPress templates ever, number 1 seller on ThemeForest for years, thanks to its multi-purpose design. You can create anything from it – from blogs to online stores and beautiful creative portfolios. The theme is WooCommerce ready, has lots of gallery and slider options, as well as many other features that will leave you satisfied.

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Lavish – Responsive Business Theme

Category: Corporate, Minimal, Business

If you’re looking for a sophisticated design for your business website then the Lavish theme with it’s minimalist and responsive scheme provides it! With multiple available shortcodes, using Lavish, you can easily create as many buttons, tabs, and as much toggle content as needed. Show where you’re located with Google Maps Integration, and create multiple pages with the easy page builder.

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Flatsome – Best Selling Responsive WooCommerce Theme

Category: eCommerce, WooCommerce

Another great theme made by UXthemes, Flatsome is a Woocommerce template with raving reviews and fan base, and for a good reason. Being retina ready and appealing exclusively for store owners, the features of this item is great for the sole purpose of an online shop. Although you will not find any premade templates, using the xml import features give you the ability to start quickly with the demo design, which is fabulous and will allow you to create your online shop in no time.

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The Retailer – A Diverse Business and eCommerce Template

Category: Business, eCommerce, Multipurpose

The Retailer is a stunning multipurpose theme with amazing support for WooCommerce and eCommerce sites. It has a modern design with a good layout and a powerful admin panel which allows you to customize how your theme looks without any hassle. Whether you want to build a corporate website, an online store or just a portfolio, The Retailer is a great theme to look at.

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Shopkeeper – Ultimate eCommerce Layout

Category:  eCommerce, Multipurpose, Responsive

Shopkeeper is a truly awesome multipurpose layout made with passion, which you can use for plenty different purposes. Some of the most popular ones are: online stores, portfolio, business and blog. The theme comes with Visual Composer and Revolution Slider. Apart from that, Shopkeeper also has a great admin panel which promotes customization via easy to use settings. The eCommerce features of the theme are strong and the theme is clean, fast and responsive.

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ePix – Fullscreen Photography Gallery

Category: Creative, Photography, Fullscreen

ePix is a stunning fullscreen photography theme. It has over a dozen predefined skins and the tools to help you create thousands more. With AJAX lazy load, you will have the best loading times. Visual Composer will make sure that your pages are with the perfect layout and that they suit your work. In other words, ePix is one of the few photography themes that you will have success using. It is robust, responsive, and it’s regularly updated. Certainly a WordPress jewel.

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Moment

Category: Gallery, Blogging

Moment is a theme for bloggers who want to create something which is both unique and attractive at the same time. It has a really nice grid-based layout which displays the thumbnail images of the post – you’ll be amazed when you see the demo bring this to life! There are 4 layouts for your blog posts, and a very powerful admin panel which allows you to easily customize the outlook of your theme.

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Cake

Category: Corporate, Responsive, Photography

Cake is an amazing multipurpose theme for WordPress. Though the name might be playful and funny, Cake is a theme which means business! It comes with a very powerful admin panel with options for all of the aspects of the theme – and we all know that a diversified admin panel is the building block of every excellent theme! On top of this, there’s a drag and drop builder which allows you to quickly and easily create custom pages. For greater usability, there are also lots of custom shortcodes making it easy for you to import content.

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Karma

Category: Creative, Business

As a fully responsive parallax enabled premium WP theme, Karma is rightly rated among the best because of its special theme features which include an Isotope Gallery with Fancybox – ideal for video and image sharing sites such as YouTube and Instagram, and a vertical timeline layout that comes with its own set of media queries and icons. This theme truly lives up to its name, probably the best of the many Word Press themes currently out there, and vouched for by over 21,000 buyers on Themeforest!

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The7 Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme

Category: Business, Portfolio, Photography

This is a new premium theme with ultra modern design. The theme is multi-purpose and you can use it for anything from a regular blog, to a full-scale online store. An extremely flexible theme, which will be of great use for any and every project.

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Wiksi Premium Responsive Layout

Category: Magazine, News

If you want a sleek and fully responsive theme built solidly on HTML5 and CSS3 architecture, look no further than Wiksi. This theme’s designed sites can be seen using desktops, smartphones, and tablets. With a shortcode generator, it provides opportunities for endless customization, has a Revolution Slider and offers cross-browser support.

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Natural

Category: Environmental, Multipurpose

If you want to make a contribution to Mother Earth, it helps if you have a fresh looking website to support your goals. The Natural theme from Organic Themes is designed to suit the purpose of environmental blogs, organizations, or even nature-based businesses. The theme includes custom page templates, a portfolio template, a large slider, and an options panel that allows you to change every aspect of the layout if you wish.

It’s retina-ready and mobile responsive so that the message can be received by everyone no matter what computing device they’re using.

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Kallyas v4

Category: eCommerce, Multipurpose

If you’re looking for free ecommerce WordPress themes, then you may be excited to hear that the developers of the Kallyas theme actually provided a free version of the template – albeit on a trial basis. If you didn’t get a chance to try the free version, then we’d definitely recommend that you consider purchasing this theme anyway! We love the inclusion of the sliders that could help to showcase your latest products or services – and when considering that the theme comes fully loaded with dummy data; all that you’ll need to do is update the text and images, and you’re good to go. We can safely say this is one of the more notable WordPress premium themes out there.

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Solo

Category: Multipurpose, Minimal, One page

Solo is ideal for seamless jQuery effects that help you come up with a flawless style for your portfolio site. Visual expansion and automatic scrolling combine effortlessly for the best designer’s showcase.

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I Love Rockband

Category: Music

For designers who are creating websites for those in the music industry, or who are themselves musically inclined, it’s very hard to resist the appeal of the I Love Rockband theme. Although it’s specifically situated for dealing with rock-oriented musicality, it’s also highly open to being used to design any kind of site that’s meant for showcasing artists ranging from solo performers to complete bands or orchestral symphonies, and promotional musical events, irrespective of the musical genre. This music theme is one of the best wordpress themes for the year 2013 and will probably lead 2017 as well.

This theme is fully responsive, and comes with a multi-level dropdown menu. It’s also cross compatible with most new browsers.

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Adventure

Category: Travel, Blogging

If you are a traveling blogger, you will probably want to share your stories with the world and inspire people from all over the globe to embrace your lifestyle. Adventure is a perfect starting point for that mission. It has a very clean design which is focused entirely on readability and presenting your content. Sharing photographs is done very elegantly within the posts. Adventure is fully responsive and people will be able to follow you around the world from their mobile devices.

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Invictus

Category: Photography, Fullscreen

Here you can showcase your images and videos in full screen glory. It’s fully responsive too. The options panel allows you to customize a lot of the elements, and nifty effects are possible as well. It’s so easy to use it’s virtually unbeatable.

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Themify Parallax

Category: Parallax, Portfolio, One Page

Maximize the use of the single page Themify theme and its parallax effects by using fly-in elements in relation to your images. Among other things, this theme has portfolio custom post type with Ajax expander and an option for lightbox or photoswipe gallery.

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MayaShop

Category: eCommerce

You can sell just about anything under the sun with this theme that uses the JigoShop and the WooCommerce plugins. Customization is a breeze even for non-developers, starting with the more than 50 custom backgrounds and 8 different sliders.

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TastyFood

Category: Lifestyle and Food Blogging

There’s nothing that can waste an elegantly cooked meal or spoil even the freshest images of ingredients than a site that does not do much by way of visual appeal.  The TastyFood theme is the ideal solution to the quest of foodies and those involved in the food and beverage industries for a stylish site that incorporates a strong sense of visual engagement.

Your recipes, food and beverage items,  food presentations, and/or catering events can all be qualified and quantified with the theme’s Rating & Review feature. You can also quickly build an enticing and mouthwatering Gallery, with six advertisement placement options to help you earn on the side.

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The ROUA Theme

Category: Blog, Portfolio, Gallery

A beautiful theme that can double as both a blog and a portfolio is what Roua is all about. This is a new and modern theme which incorporates all of the web trends. Based on the very powerful Bootstrap framework, you can be sure that this is a theme that will allow you to customize every little bit about it.  Responsiveness is very important nowadays, so the developers have made sure that the theme displays perfectly on all kinds of devices.

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City Guide Premium Guide WordPress Theme

Category: Entertainment, Business

City Guide is one of the most modern WP themes of its kind. It presents you with the possibility to create a website which can be used for many reasons, but mainly concerning tourism and sightseeing. The theme has Google Maps integration and has made it very easy for you to manage.

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Bazar Shop

Category: eCommerce, Business, Store

Bazar Shop is a Woo Commerce powered theme which is highly creative yet super neat. Creating unlimited styles and using powerful options for your online shop with a custom builder, you can focus on your content and product list instead of back-end non sense. This theme rocked the Themeforest marketplace in 2013 and will surely be a leader in 2017, so be sure to check out the demo below.

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Parasponsive

Category: eCommerce, Business, Flat design

Parasponsive is SEO optimized, making it ideal for businesses who want to get a good SERP position. The theme is compatible with smartphones and tablets, additionally to  640+ Google Fonts included. WooCommerce enabled and beautifully designed, Paraspnosive is a great theme to choose for business purposes.

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Event Premium Entertainment Theme

Category: Music, Events

Event is a beautiful theme by Themify, with an amazing design and cool scroll down effects. The Themify builder will allow you to create endless layouts and page styles without having to put in any effort at all. Managing a website has never been easier before!

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Propulsion

Category: Ecommerce, Business

If you are in the need of a responsive online store in just a few hours, then Propulsion can do the job for you. It has a simple and beautiful design and WooCommerce will help you create your online store in just a few minutes. There are great gallery options if you would like to create a catalog-type site.

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BlogNews

Category: News, Magazine, Blog

At the core of every site that richly features content is a blog. Weblogs have evolved from being personal outpourings of opinion and stories, to a wide variety of fashionable and vari-functional online forms. Must be one of the best Wordpress  news templates you can find today.

In the news/magazine/blog category, there’s the BlogNews theme as a robust contender.  It can be considered special because it makes available two layout options for your homepage – blog style and magazine style.  You can choose from its 6 color schemes, and font styles based on serif and sans-serif. For your images, this theme allows for the creation of automatic thumbnails. Its panel for theme settings provides designers with 74 different options.

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Parallax Pro Premium Narrative Parallax Theme

Category: Blog, Photography

Parallax Pro is an amazing parallax theme, allowing you to tell your story in this beautiful design with lots of options and settings for customization. Creating page sections is very easy and it does not require that you have any coding knowledge. You can easily switch between pre-defined skins.

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Titan

Category: Portfolio, Photograpy

Titan is an astonishing WordPress portfolio theme, which is a must for photographers. There are many gallery effects, slider options and animations, and many other features that are going to make your visitors’ jaws drop. Create your stunning unique portfolio in this easy to manage theme!

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Flatty 7

Category: Parallax, Multi-purpose, Flat design

Photo studios and agencies that rely heavily on the infusion of creative juices can find online site design fulfillment with Flatty 7. It combines the simplicity of a flat single page template a full screen slider aside from parallax scrolling, to come up with a true winner of template.

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Voyage

Category: Travel blog / agency

If you want your visitors to catch the traveling bug, you need to entice them with captivating images and videos of some amazing travel adventures, and that’s what the Voyage theme can do. It doesn’t matter if they’re seeing the site on a large PC monitor or on their smartphones, the theme’s responsive so it will work regardless of screen size.

Voyage also allows you to feature your tour and hotel packages, along with other functions that a travel agency website needs.

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CleanPort

Category: Portfolio, Business

CleanPort is a flat design theme with a very good-looking layout, created especially for businesses and agencies who want to create a reliable and enchanting portfolio without having to spends thousands on developers. Get this theme now and see how your audience will like the amazing slideshows and portfolio pages.

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Modernize

Category: Corporate, Education

Modernize has started a whole new age in WordPress theme creation. It is full of features and is a multi-purpose theme that could serve very different areas just as well. Our tests show that the people are most used to seeing this theme filled with business, or educational content, due to the clean and simple design which sets the focus entirely on the text.

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Ego

Category: Parallax, Portfolio, One Page

Ego has a fullscreen slider and 200+ design options covering fonts, colors, patterns, slider animations, loaders, and slider transition speeds. Great for fashion-oriented or celebrity publicity websites.

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MedPark

Category: Medical, HTML5, Responsive

MedPark is a premium WP theme that’s a sure bet for creating websites that have a medical, health care, or education focus. A functional and attractive slider allows you to show off medical services, present doctors with their credentials and specializations, and engage site visitors by giving them the ability to make appointments online.

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Chromatic WordPress Portfolio Theme By Graph Paper Press

Category:  Portfolio, eCommerce, Photography

Chromatic is a minimalist portfolio theme for photographers and all visual creatives. The layout is sleek with a menu on the left and block-based portfolio to the right. Everything about the theme is fully responsive and looks fantastic on mobile devices. Chromatic is eCommerce ready which means you can instantly sell your photographs, or licenses for them, directly on your website. The powerful admin panel, backed by the color picker, is the perfect tool for customizing your website and giving it that personalized touch.

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Pandora Box

Category: Design, Magazine

If you’re a designer or developer for mobile platforms who wants to show off your creative work, go with Pandora Box. It’s a single page HTML template that makes showcasing your works easy to do.

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Lawyer

Category: Law, Business

Setting up a website for your law firm is actually easy with the Lawyer theme for WordPress. The impressive admin options panel enables you to set up and customize each page to conform to your specifications. A few of the key features include the ability to upload your own images, icons, backgrounds, and logo, unlimited color choices with the color picker, helpful shortcodes, and a revolution slider for truly striking multi-layered slides.

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Freelancer

Category: Design, One Page

If you’re a web designer, chances are you’ve run across clients who insist on making sites “as colorful as possible!” With Freelancer, a fully-responsive theme, you can give them and yourself all the color variations they want, the choices are limitless.

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Medi

Category: Health and Medical

A health clinic obviously needs to be clean as a whistle, and with the responsive Medi theme you can emphasize the cleanliness and professionalism of your clinic or hospital. The Medi theme is laid out efficiently, and you can customize it by choosing one of the color scheme options available. You can then add custom widgets for a custom contact form with a map, along with widgets for scheduling, open hours, and even testimonials.

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