One of the many things I love about WordPress is the ease in which a gallery or a portfolio can be placed online. There are tons of options available for Portfolio Themes. In this post, we are going to take a look at FREE themes. All these themes have good documentation available online and make use of the latest features available in WordPress. For more information about the theme, click on its image.
Minimatica
This is one of my favorites. The theme has a very clean, slick, professional feel to to it. And, it is relatively easy to set up and use. A beautiful image gallery slider spans the home page, with each image expanding/collapsing upon rollover. It also includes a text overlay, introducing the viewer to that post/image.
The theme has two view modes: a gallery view and the more traditional blog view. The image above is the gallery view.
The theme also easily handles audio and video.
Portfolio Press
This theme quickly showcases photography, art, web sites, and other projects with an eye-catching home page. Each thumbnail on the home page takes you directly to the corresponding post.
After this theme is installed, there is a Portfolio option on your dashboard. Images are managed through this portfolio option. For items to show up on a Portfolio page (as shown in the above image), they must be entered as a Portfolio item (vs a post). Images can be posted into different portfolios by using portfolio tags. There is a bit of a learning curve to this theme, but there is a very helpful video on the theme’s webpage.
Also, I didn’t see this in the documentation anywhere, but some of the theme options (uploading a logo image, updating footer text, changing menu position, etc.) are dependent on the Options Framework plugin being installed.
View demo.
F8 Static
- F8 Static
This is a clean, straight forward theme. It includes an option for a slideshow on the home page, with or without text overlays. The slideshow content can be specified by category. Images are easily placed into galleries. This theme is also known is F8 Lite.
Photoria
This theme has a professional, high-quality feel to it. The home page quickly showcases any type of Creative Work. You can designate the slider contents by category or by tag. The most recent posts are shown below the slider area. This theme does a great job of showcasing wide-angle shots.
View demo