Every now and again Smashing Magazine release a free WordPress theme. Normally with free WordPress themes, I approach them with limited expectations. After all the theme is free – there’s got to be limitations right? Surely it can’t be on a par with the level of quality we expect from commercial theme shops? Well, not so with Smashing Mag themes. Time and time again they hire some of the best theme developers to produce fantastic quality WordPress themes that meet and often surpass the quality of that which are sold commercially.
Today’s new release is no exception. In fact it’s got me quite excited. Yoko is a free WordPress theme produced by Elma and Manuel from …

So I’ve been dabbling in a bit of HTML5 of late and have been reviewing how things have progressed in the WordPress development community with HTML5 themes in the past few months. Previously we looked at the Toolbox theme and the reasons why you should start using HTML5 in your theme development.
There’s a few very interesting HTML5 themes starting to pop up for WordPress and we particularly like themes based on the HTML5 Boilerplate project, including:

BoilerPlate by Aaron T. Grogg
NakedCompass by Andre Deutmeyer (based on Starkers and the Compass CSS frameworks and also has a slightly modified version of the very nifty Boilerplate build script)
WP-theme-html5-boilerplate by Jeffrey Sambells (see related blog post here)

But the one …

We’re looking forward to 2011 and the emergence of HTML5 and CSS3 as the backbone of modern WordPress themes.

So I was having a few brews over in the WordPress Tavern earlier today when I stumbled across a new wordpress theme called Portfolio.
The full details of the theme can be found on the main Portfolio Theme details page.
After taking Portfolio Theme for a quick spin in the themesforge labs I must say I’m impressed.
Devin from wptheming.com has put together a really solid WordPress theme that utilises the new WordPress 3.0+ custom post types functionality to create a slick Portfolio manager that incorporates a featured image feature.
I could see many different uses for this WordPress theme but I think it will particularly suit any freelance designer or web agency who wishes to create a simple …

Something interesting popped up today in the twittersphere with the release by Ian Stewart of a new free HTML5 WordPress theme called Toolbox.
Ian is one of the smart guys in the wordpress community and it must be said that having taken a quick peek under the hood of Toolbox, it really is an excellent start theme for anyone looking to get their hands dirty with HTML5 wordpress themes.
So what’s a starter theme?
A starter theme is not an all singing all dancing full featured wordpress theme with widgets, theme options etc. It’s a stripped down bare bones starting point which is more suited for a developer or designer looking for a rock solid starting point for …