ThemeForest Yearly Roundup! The Best WordPress Themes of 2011

If you’ve followed WebDesignTuts+ throughout 2011, you may have seen I have had the pleasure to present, on multiple occasions, the best ThemeForest themes from that month. Now, as we enter 2012 here on WPTuts+, I have the opportunity to share with you a bunch of the best WordPress themes from 2011 on ThemeForest.

Before I get started, I want to point out that there’s a ton of great themes on ThemeForest – too many for this roundup to accommodate. I’ve picked out a handful based on preference and some metrics like buyer rating, but even the newest, unrated themes could fit your purpose perfectly.

U-Design

U-Design is a very clean themes that’s incredibly adaptable to many different website types. As with a lot of WordPress themes, it contains a large slider on the homepage with six different options for powering it. You’ll also enjoy the custom widgets U-Design includes to fill the eleven widget areas the theme accommodates.

U-Design has already sold over 7,600 copies since it’s June release. It’s available from $35.

King Size

King Size is a photography profile theme that’s already sold more than 4,500 copies and garnered a full five star buyer rating. King Size looks great, featuring a fullscreen slideshow of your photos as the background. If you like a lot of options, King Size has five different gallery systems for you to choose from, including Fancybox, Galleria and prettyPhoto.

You can grab it yourself on ThemeForest from $35.

Classica

Classica is a beautiful, minimalist portfolio theme by Orman Clark that I myself want to snap up at some point because it looks fantastic. Featuring a minimalistic style and serif typography, Classica is one of the best looking themes in this roundup in my opinion. It’s already sold over 3,100 copies on ThemeForest with a full five star buyer rating.

You can pick it up from $40 on ThemeForest.

Core Minimalist Photography Portfolio

Core Minimalist is another photography-oriented theme but this time with some awesome horizontal scrolling. Not only does Core Photography accommodate images, but the horizontal galleries work naturally with video if you’re more of a videographer than a photographer.

The theme has already sold more than 2,900 copies with a five star buyer rating. You can buy it from $35 on ThemeForest.

Invictus

Photography portfolio themes have been a big trend on ThemeForest in 2011 and Invictus is another popular one. Featuring a fullscreen background slideshow of your images and/or videos, Flickr integration and more, Invictus has sold more than 1,700 copies with a full five star buyer rating.

Invictus is available on ThemeForest from $35.

Big City

Big City is a nice WordPress theme with some great use of typography and a significant level of customize-ability that allows you to adapt the theme in quite a number of ways. It has a five star buyer rating on ThemeForest with over 1,300 sales.

Big City is available from $40 on ThemeForest.

WordPress Aid

WordPress Aid is a unique theme that’s aimed directly at charity websites. It’s very much focused on fundraising with large call to action messages and a fundraising counter in the sidebar. If you’re looking to setup a charity website, WordPress Aid is a great choice of theme.

WordPress Aid has sold more than 1,100 purchases and achieved a five star buyer rating. It is available on ThemeForest from $35 where 10% of profits go directly to the UN Foundation fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Avenue

Avenue has proven to be a very popular magazine theme on ThemeForest, selling over 1,700 copies since it’s release in June. Avenue accommodates reviews, videos, music and galleries in a skin that’s incredibly customizable with your own schemes.

This five star theme can be had on ThemeForest from $35.

Folioway

Folioway is a portfolio theme with minimalism taken to a more extreme level. Folioway is a clean and elegant presentation of your work that allows your content to be showcased with no additional surrounding clutter. It’s already sold more than 1,800 copies and got itself a four star buyer rating.

Folioway is available on ThemeForest from $35.

Garnish

Garnish is a similar minimalist theme to Folioway by Orman Clark, the author of the previously mentioned theme Classica. Like previously mentioned themes, Garnish’s design is mainly based around your own content without any additional clutter. Garnish’s theme homepage features your portfolio items which, when clicked, slides in more information and any associated images or videos.

Orman Clark’s Garnish has sold more than 1,800 copies with a five star buyer rating. It is available from $40 on ThemeForest.

Delight

Delight, a fullscreen photography portfolio theme, deserves to be on this list for a number of reasons, including it’s 1,900 purchases number and it’s five star buyrr rating. However, I particularly wanted to include it because of it’s beautiful, cross-platform nature. Not only does Delight, which is much like the other fantastic photography themes already showcased in this roundup, look great on your computer, but it’s fantastic on your iPad with it’s enhanced compatibility. Load up the demo site on your iPad and give it a whirl!

Delight is available from $35 on ThemeForest.

Village

Village is [yep, you guessed it] a fullscreen photography portfolio theme, and it’s another one of my personal favourite themes of the year. It has some fantastic typography and an awesome page template called “The Wall”. I’ll leave that to you to go try out, however, since a description probably wouldn’t do it justice.

Village has a full five star rating and, at the time of writing, has a perfect 2,000 sales. It is available on ThemeForest from $35.

RockWell

RockWell is a blog, fairly unique portfolio theme that screams power and weight. It has some fantastic typography that I really love, as well as a nice slider, all inside a grunge-style theme. RockWell features 43 category templates, 20 post templates and 10 page templates as well as FreshPanel theme options panel.

RockWell, as you can probably tell, is a theme I really like and it’s sold over 2,100 copies on ThemeForest where it is available from $35.

SuperSkeleton: Responsive WordPress Themes

Wrapping up our list is the SuperSkeleton family of responsive WordPress themes by our own Brandon Jones. He released the responsive framework earlier in 2011, and has since been releasing about one new one a month integrating the tricks in new and interesting ways. Try resizing your browser when you view the
demo. This is the original basis for his other themes, Reaction and ShapeShifter, and both seem to compliment each other nicely as they target slightly different layout paradigms.

SuperSkeleton has sold over 2,000 combined copies across the entire family of themes and achieved a full five star buyer rating. It is available on ThemeForest from $35.

2011 has hosted some fantastic WordPress themes and let 2012 bring on more of the same quality stuff!