Do you like the professional polish that you find on popular websites like Engadget, but you can’t possibly afford to hire a professional designer and coder to create a similar custom WordPress theme for you? Fear not. The online community is there to help and one such example is the Widodo theme for WordPress.

This WordPress theme has been designed to include a huge number of features that you may not normally find in a free theme. For instance, it comes pre-configured to integrate with many popular social networks. It integrates with Fllickr, Facebook Pages, Twitter, and more. There’s also drop-down support for the menus, as well as great thumbnails for the posts.

Those thumbnails can be prominently displayed above the fold, enticing your readers to dive into your latest content. You’ll also notice the great use of the sidebar to promote your newest posts, social network contributions, and more. The multi-page navigation makes it easy to get to the older content too.

Head on over to WPGPL.com to get the full list of features, a great screenshot, and even a live demo of Widodo Theme for WordPress. Download the theme through this link on wpgpl.com. Do you like the professional polish that you find on sites like Engadget, but you can

At first glance, the Yoko WordPress theme may not look like anything particularly special, but behind that seemingly simple design is a very useful and interesting trick. And that’s why you might want to implement it on your blog too.

Let’s start with the basics. Yoko is a three-column theme. Above the large header image is the name of the site and some basic navigational links. Below that is the main content in the far left column with two right sidebars to accept your widgets and other customizations. This is where you can display your archive links, search bar, recent post listing, and so forth. Other features include different post formats, customized backgrounds, logos, and more.

But the most fascinating feature of Yoko is that it has a “responsive layout.” What this is means is that the theme will automatically optimize itself for devices of different sizes. View it on a regular computer and you get three columns. However, go down to the smaller display of a tablet or a smartphone, and the theme will switch to either a two-column or one-column layout. This makes for the best possible mobile experience.

Head on over to the WordPress Free Themes Directory to get a live preview of Yoko Theme. That is also where you can download the theme for free and implement it on your own site.

A clean slate. That’s roughly how “tabula rasa” translates into English, but Tabula Rosa is something different entirely. It is a WordPress theme developed by Leo Newball.

As its name implies, this theme takes on a very minimalist approach, but its reasonably simple-looking appearance is deceptive. That’s because it comes with several hidden features that are working behind the scenes.

For instance, while the main column with your main content will scroll as usual, the left sidebar and the header image remain fixed. This makes for a very elegant user experience, as does the “hovering” dropdown menus in the sidebar.

If you’re looking for a WordPress theme that puts a good focus on the basics while still giving some graceful highlights, Tabula Rosa might be for you. The download link is available on Leo Newball’s site, which happens to be running on that theme as well.

One of the many great things about WordPress is its sheer versatility. It can be almost anything to anyone, thanks to the huge array of modifications built upon the same kind of framework. Themes are a great way to utilize that versatility.

One of the newer themes to emerge on the scene is the Slim Free WordPress Theme. A prominent feature here is a built-in color picker, allowing you to customize the colors scheme to fit your needs quickly and easily. Another big bonus is the Javascript image slider in the header. This can rotate through images in the header area.

Going through the rest of the features on the Slim Free WordPress Theme, you’ll find that it has a built-in gallery style template for showcasing photos, drop down menus, integrated related posts, widgetized footer, and featured posts on the homepage.

For more information, including some screenshots, check out WP Explorer. That page will also contain the free download link to go along with this Creative Commons licensed theme.

WordPress is a very powerful content management system that can be heavily customized and personalized to suit your specific needs and preferences. One way to do this is to look for a WordPress theme that fits what you want. SpinnyLite was recently released and it looks to be quite robust.

You get a woodgrain background image, which can be suitable for a number of different niches and genres. The navigation links at the top of the page are easy to use and you’ll also notice the “featured posts” section close to the top as well. To add articles to this section, simply create a new category and assign that category in the theme options page.

The theme has also been preconfigured for social media integration (via the social icons and Twitter updates) as well as for the placement of advertisements. There is a slot for a 468×60 banner in the header, plus a series of 125 x 125 block ads in the sidebar. SpinnyLite comes with a contact form, multi-page support, and widget support too.

The free version of SpinnyLite can be demo’d and downloaded from WebDesignLessons.com. If you’d prefer the magazine style version of SpinnyLite, it is also available from the same page, but it will cost you $35 to buy.

Your WordPress blog doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s. You can customize it to suit your particular audience and your particular preferences. One theme that you might want to consider is Ribbons Free.

The layout is robust, yet simple and clean enough to offer a positive user experience. Using the jQuery Cycle Plugin, you get to feature a series of posts toward the top of the page. Visitors can cycle through them with the previous and next buttons just below that.

Underneath that, you find the usual reverse chronological blog orientation, but the theme has been preconfigured to show a thumbnail image and an excerpt. This way, the design is consistent and clean. There’s also a 468×60 banner next to the header, as well as integration with social media via the buttons toward the top-right.

Make your way over to WP Explorer to check out the live preview of Ribbons Free. The link for the free download can be found on the same page, as Ribbons Free is distributed with a GPL license.