In today’s article, I am going to tell you 5+ Best Free WordPress Theme for Blogging? so if you want to know about them, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about it, so let’s start.
In this highly competitive online market, blogging can get difficult, especially for beginners. You need to buy hosting, find a domain name, get a blogging-friendly theme, etc. To help you in blogging here is the 5+ Best Free WordPress Theme for Blogging.
All of these themes are my absolute favorite blogging themes. Plus, beginners, all have a free version to try.
Each theme will carry a short review focused on the theme’s user-friendliness, features, performance, support, and documentation. Plus, I will also add screenshots of desktop and mobile demo sites.
Today’s article focuses on the same,i.e, “5+ Best Free WordPress Theme for Blogging”. The articles entail each bit of information necessary for you to know.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
5+ Best Free WordPress Theme for Blogging?
The term blogging straight away indicates a website with lots of blogs. Lots of blogs would mean the theme should be blogging-friendly.
Blogging-friendly indicates the theme should be;
- User Friendly
- Optimized for SEO
- Mobile Responsive
- Having good performance
- Filled with features essential to display Blog/Archive pages and Single Blog Posts
The above points are a must consider for a beginner, before purchasing a WordPress blogging theme.
We will be looking at the following freemium WordPress blogging themes.
- Blocksy
- Kadence
- Astra
- GeneratePress
- OceanWP
All of these themes have a free version and pro version plans.
1. Blocksy
Blocksy is lightweight and a fast WordPress theme. It is 100% Gutenberg block-based and offers multiple features to build a blog that your readers will love to read.
It has been developed with modern technologies like React and Babel; that not only keeps the code stable but also offers a smooth web experience to your visitors.
- Lightweight and looks amazing on mobile
- Suitable for beginners with lots of customization features
- Great Google page speed score, GT Metrix, and Pingdom results
- Code is optimized for search engines
- Offers lots of elements to drag and drop in Header Builder & Footer Builder
- Supports multiple conditional headers, footers & sidebars
- Gives advanced category and post layouts
- Comes with features like Author Box, Related Posts, Read Time, etc.
To add up, Blocksy also supports popular page builders and offers 25+ Starter Sites.
Other features like Advanced WooCommerce controls, White Label, support for advanced custom fields, lots of WooCommerce hooks, etc. not only helps a beginner but this theme is highly appreciated by professionals as well.
Meaning, that if you buy this theme at the beginning of your blogging journey. Chances are, you will stick around and use most of its advanced features.
Blocksy comes with 5 extensions with its free version and 10 premium extensions with its pro version plans. The pricing plans range from $49 to $99 per year.
Lifetime plans: Available
2. Kadence
Kadence is another theme that is very identical to Blocksy in terms of speed, features, customization options, user-friendliness, and even pricing plans.
To know more about their similarities and differences, read Blocksy vs Kadence.
Just like Blocksy, Kadence is another lightweight, SEO-optimized, and highly responsive WordPress blogging theme for beginners.
- Comes with Header Builder and Footer Builder
- Integrates well with Elementor, Brizy, and Beaver Builder
- Supports multiple conditional sidebars
- Lets you make awesome mega menus
- Sticky header and transparent header, and Off-Canvas Panel are a bonus
- Comes with Font Pairing feature in Typography
Kadence has a bigger collection of Starter Templates (75+) than Blocksy and you are almost sure to find the type of site you are looking for.
The theme has over 100,000+ active installations from the WordPress repository, and also offers Kadence Blocks Pro with its base premium version. Kadence Blocks Pro is a premium WordPress block plugin that comes with advanced Gutenberg blocks, helping you in creating nearly anything on your site.
Moreover, in the basic customization like colors and typography, Kadence comes with 3 global color palettes that easily let you keep different colors for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Font Pairing feature under typography really helps beginners to set the tone on their website.
Installing a starter template starts with choosing between light & dark color palettes, followed by selecting one of the paired fonts presets.
Kadence theme pricing ranges from $59 to $199 per year.
Lifetime plans: Available
3. Astra
Astra is a multi-purpose WordPress theme created by Brainstorm Force. It offers clean layouts to build blogs, portfolio sites, service-based sites, and even online shops.
Astra follows a freemium model. The free version of the Astra theme is called WP Astra and the premium versions are Astra Pro, Astra Essential Bundle, and Astra Growth Bundle.
This theme has been running in the market for the last 5 years and has 1 million+ active installations from the WordPress repository.
- High performance & mobile responsive
- Offers Header Builder and Footer Builder with designing capabilities
- Comes with additional Header Layouts to create custom site headers & page hero
- Has pre-installed native AMP support
- Offers 250 Starter Templates in the free version and another 200 in Astra Pro
- Advanced Grid Layouts for archive pages
- Supports Related Posts, Author Info Box, and Read Time feature
- Seamless integration with Elementor, Beaver Builder, Lifter LMS, LearnDash
- Advanced WooCommerce controls
Astra color customization comes with 3 global color palettes and 6 pre-style paired fonts. As a beginner, you don’t need to worry about heading, body, and content fonts.
Its advanced sidebar customization feature lets you easily design multiple widgets beautifully. Combining free and pro-starter templates, you get to choose from 450 starter sites.
With the premium version (basic) of the Astra theme, you can install Astra on unlimited websites, and it also supports the White label feature.
Astra theme pricing ranges from $49 to $249 per year.
Lifetime plans: Available
4. GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a lightweight super fast performing multi-purpose WordPress theme. All the themes mentioned in this post give you a score of 90 and above. But, GeneratePress guarantees a score of 99 and above.
Note:- Tests are done without page builder, and basic plugins installed.
It gives super fast performance but offers fewer features than Blocksy and Kadence.
The clean and stable code, with only necessary features available within the theme, generates a smaller web page size that requires a few HTTP requests to load. This guarantees faster results.
- Highly SEO optimized
- Clean and neat look on mobile devices
- Gives Header Layouts to create custom headers
- Custom Footers
- Separate Mobile Menu and Off-Canvas Panel customization options
- The Premium version adds Elements to create Page Hero, Pagination, Custom Sidebars, etc.
- Dynamic Content Block & Dynamic Image block lets you create custom content templates
- Allows you to create Custom Category Page and Custom Blog Posts
- A single license lets you install GeneratePress on 500 websites
- Extensive documentation & unbeatable support
GeneratePress integrates well with Elementor & Beaver Builder page builder and WooCommerce.
The free version comes with lots of limitations, and I would not recommend going for that. But, the premium version, GP Premium comes with a perfect balance of speed and customization.
GeneratePress does not come with any starter sites with its free version but offers 90+ starter sites with GP Premium. The best part about GeneratePress is that it offers a modular approach. All the features are modules that can be enabled/disabled as you like. Thus, giving you added performance for your site.
GeneratePress theme is priced at $59 per year. They have only one plan.
Lifetime plans: Available
5. OceanWP
OceanWP is a beginner-friendly, fully responsive, and highly customizable multi-purpose WordPress theme. Due to its simplicity and extended functionalities, this theme is highly popular throughout the world.
Although, you do not achieve website speed scores of 99 and above. But, this theme can get you to speed results ranging between 90 to 95.
OceanWP has got tons of features and customization options, making this theme easy to use for beginners. It was first released 6 years ago on WordPress and currently has more than 700,000 active installs.
This theme is created by Nicolas Lecocq and is free for everyone. You only need to pay if you need additional features and functionalities.
- OceanWP is lightweight
- Mobile responsive
- RTL and Translation ready
- Schema added for SEO optimization
- Basic Customizer with necessary settings
- Supports multiple sidebars on one page
- Offers advanced Post Meta elements like Modified Date and Read Time
- Ocean SVG Icons, Simple Line Icons & Font Awesome Icons within the customizer
- Native breadcrumbs and OpenGraph support
- Comes with Related Posts, Author Box & Social Sharing feature
The free theme also offers 7 crucial extensions required for site customization and work efficiency.
Site demos, royalty-free images, support, updates, 14 premium extensions, and Elementor Sections library come with OceanWP Premium Addon.
Premium Addons pricing ranges from $38 to $79 per year.
Lifetime plans: Available
Conclusion:)
Creating your own website from scratch can be a daunting task. That is why there are WordPress themes. Looking for the right theme that not only suits your requirement, but should also be fast, feature-rich, and budget-friendly is an important part of building your site.
I hope this post on the best WordPress blogging themes for beginners has given you a brief idea, of choosing the right theme that offers you great performance, is SEO optimized, and comes with lots of features.
Read also:)
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- 25+ WordPress Social Share Plugin: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!
So hope you liked this article on 5+ Best Free WordPress Theme for Blogging. And if you still have any questions and suggestions related to this, then you can tell us in the comment box below. And thank you so much for reading this article.