With thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available, it is very hard for beginners to choose the best WordPress theme for their needs.

Note: Some of these themes are even older than 2020, but they have remained highly popular due to their incredible design, features, and updates.

Selecting the right is a very difficult job. I struggled a lot when I started my blogging career in 2011. But now we have many awesome options where you can pick perfectly SEO optimized themes.

The Most Common Traits of All Popular and Best WordPress Themes

WordPress themes are either niche-based or multipurpose in terms of features and options.

You can use a niche-based theme for your industry (for example, a restaurant theme). Alternately, you can choose a multipurpose theme that’s designed to be flexible and works for any kind of website.

Regardless of the type, all the best WordPress themes have the following features and traits:

Mobile-responsive design: The theme designs are responsive and retina-ready, so your WordPress website looks great on all screen sizes and devices.

SEO optimization: The theme follows the best SEO practices, so your website can rank higher in search results.

Page builder support: The theme is compatible with popular WordPress drag and drop page builders. It helps you create custom landing pages whenever you need them.

Speed and performance: Your theme plays an important role in the speed and performance of your website. You should look for the theme with faster page loads and optimized user experience.

Selecting the right is a very difficult job. I struggled a lot when I started my blogging career in 2011. But now we have many awesome options where you can pick perfectly SEO optimized themes.

Here are some of the themes which I highly recommend if you want to start a professional blog.

#01. GeneratePress

GeneratePress has a free light version theme. It gives you awesome basic editing options to start your professional blog.

It is:

• Secure and stable
• Total size is less than 30kb
• Search engine optimized
• Easily customizable

#02. Astra Theme

Astra is another FREE WordPress theme which you can pick to start your blog. They have all the awesome features which any good theme should have. If you want more functionality, you can buy the premium version.

Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drop page builders seamlessly.

The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch a website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.

It has tons of amazing features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets.

Astra theme also offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme features infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.

Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help rank your website in the search engines.

#03. Divi Theme

Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes and an ultimate page builder. It has multiple visual elements and modules that help you create a beautiful website.

The theme comes with hundreds of free ready-made layouts for multiple industries and niches. It allows you to import a website layout with the 1-click demo importer which helps you quickly get started.

With the built-in drag and drop page builder, you can move elements, save and manage custom designs, and use global styles on all website pages.

Divi gives you complete control of the layout design, inline text editing, and custom CSS. It is highly flexible and easy to use.

#04. Themify Ultra

Themify Ultra is a powerful WordPress multipurpose theme built to help you easily make a website. It comes with dozens of ready-made sites for lifestyle, magazine, restaurant, photography, fashion, and more.

It also includes the Themify page builder that you can use for customization. It has several builder addons to add advanced elements like progress bars, counters, pricing tables, audio players, and more.

Other notable features include smart layout options, color choices, crisp typography, section-based scrolling, image filters, and portfolio options.

Themify Ultra is also an ideal theme to start a WooCommerce store. It is easy to set up and customize with the live WordPress customizer.

#05. OceanWP

OceanWP is a free WordPress multipurpose theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and hundreds of ready-made sites to launch a website instantly.

The theme has multiple extensions to add features to your website like a login popup, an Instagram feed, a sticky footer, a featured posts slider, and more. It is translation ready to create a multilingual website.

The OceanWP theme supports WooCommerce out of the box. It has built-in SEO features to help in improving your website rankings.

#06. Newspaper

#1 Selling News Theme of All Time | Loved by 100,000+

Newspaper is a WordPress theme that lets you write articles and blog posts with ease. We offer great support and friendly help!

Create a great news website with our newspaper template. This bestseller theme is perfect for blogging and excellent for a news, newspaper, magazine, publishing or review site.

It supports videos from YouTube. AMP and mobile-ready. GDPR compliant, the theme is fast, simple, and easy to use for a cryptocurrency, fashion, food, lifestyle, modern, personal, travel, luxury, viral, minimal, minimalist projects, web development, and more.

Integrated with Instagram, bbPress Forum, BuddyPress and WooCommerce, it uses the best clean SEO practices. Newspaper supports responsive Google Ads and AdSense.

#07. REHub – Price Comparison, Multi-Vendor Marketplace, Affiliate Marketing, Community Theme

#1 Multi purpose Moneymaking Theme

REHub is a modern multipurpose hybrid theme. Theme covers many modern Business models for profitable websites. Each part can be configured and used separately or you can combine them all in one site. We used most actual trends and the best unique SEO instruments to build advanced WordPress functions which you will not find in other themes. Models are:

• Social Community with submit option
• Business Directory with Locators, Custom Search filters, and custom specifications
• Price or product comparison theme with dynamic price updates (with help of Content Egg or bulk import tool)
• Product comparisons (supported dynamic comparisons for multi-category sites)
• Reviews with extended user reviews and table constructors, top review constructors
• Highest Conversion pages (versus pages, specification comparison, Offer hub, Top set pages, Price range pages)
• Multi-Vendor shops and simple shops, support for multi-vendor per product
• Deal sites and deal communities
• Magazines and News sites

#08. Newsmag – Newspaper & Magazine WordPress Theme

#Top Selling Magazine WordPress Theme, Engineered for Success | Loved by 15,000+ Happy Customers

Newsmag is a modern WordPress theme that lets you write articles and blog posts with ease. They offer great support and friendly help!

The Newsmag template is excellent for news, newspaper, magazine, publishing, or review site. It also supports videos from YouTube and features a rating system.

It uses the best clean SEO practices, and on top of that, it’s fast, simple, and easy to use. In addition, News mag supports responsive Google Ads and AdSense.

#09. JNews – WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme

JNews is a theme designed to provide an “all-in-one” solution for every publishing need. With JNews, you can explore endless possibilities in crafting the best fully-functional website. They provide 50+ demos that perfect for your News site, Magazine site, Blog site, Editorial site, and for all kinds of publishing website. Also provided automatic import feature to replicate one of the demos you like just by one click.

Customizing your website with JNews is easy & fun. You can lively see the change you made and create a landing page with ease by utilizing drag and drop Header Builder, WPBakery Visual Composer, Elementor & Customizer. They fully integrate all elements of WPBakery Visual Composer, including Frontend Visual Composer Editor. You also can use JNews theme with the free version of Elementor or Elementor Pro.

Optimized & lightweight codes to load blazingly fast and make it Google-friendly. Tested with top cache plugins, so it’s possible to get a high score on several website speed tester including Google Page Speed through right setting and content. For the mobile device, JNews fully support Google AMP and Facebook Instant Article that will make your website load faster on all mobile devices.

SEO performance becomes one of our main concerns. They show that commitment by utilizing JSON LD which is recommended by Google for the best SEO result. Not only that, but we also provide compatibility with many SEO Signal. The deal is to create a platform for your SEO content performance fly.

They also provide several ways in which you can generate revenue from JNews. From advertisement with Google Ads & AdSense, Online Shop with WooCommerce, or you can also use Marketing Affiliate link or referral using JNews Review system. With a fully responsive Google AdSense feature that ensure your ads will display properly across on all devices and screen sizes.

#10. Gridlove – News Portal & Magazine WordPress Theme

Gridlove is a creative WordPress theme with a focus on news, newspaper and magazine websites. With many predefined grid & masonry layouts and templates you’ll have an extraordinary website up and running in no time – no coding required!

• Hundreds of beautiful layouts – Choose from a wide range of predefined layouts to match your personal taste, all with a few clicks
• Build a highly flexible homepage – Display unlimited number of post groups chosen by specific criteria, and easily organize them on the page with our drag and drop modules system
• Highlight posts and widgets – Give accent to most popular, sponsored or any other special posts – make them stand out by displaying them in a different styling
• Multiple header layouts – Make your website unique with one of our carefully designed header layouts
• Diverse categories – Each category on the website can have its own layout and color
• Customizable single post layouts – Give your articles a personal touch with many different layouts available
• Unlimited fonts and colors – Gridlove provides options for unlimited fonts and color combinations, as well as dedicated sections to upload your logo and icons
• Monetize your website – Easily place a banner ad on the homepage, archive pages or single post. Usefull for adsense advertising or affiliate marketing website.
• Optimized for high speed – Built-in performance options will ensure that your website loads fast, and runs smoothly
• Responsive design – Your content will scale seamlessly on all of today’s modern devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.
• Advanced theme options panel – Setup your website in 5 minutes with our easy-to-use theme options panel
• Support for Co-Authors Plus WordPress Plugin – Now you can easily set multiple authors for a single post
• Inject custom content in post modules – Replace posts in modules with content like text, ads, newsletter forms and more
• Support for custom post types in modules – If any public custom post type is registered it will be automatically detected in modules
• Unlimited sidebars – Add as many sidebars as you need. Then assign specific sidebar to any post, page or a category.
• Sticky sidebars – Widgets placed inside sticky sidebars will always be visible while you scroll through the website content.
• Infinite scroll loading on single posts – Posts content loads continuously as the user scrolls down the page, eliminating the need for pagination.
• Four Pagination Types – You can have a classic Older Posts/Newer Posts navigation, Numeric Pagination, Load More buttons or Infinite Scroll. This feature is not limited to a global setting either, you can apply different pages with different pagination types wherever you like.
• Custom Widgets – Alongside the standard WordPress widgets, Gridlove features several custom widgets that further extend its functionality.
• Post formats support – This theme supports Video, Audio, Image and Gallery Post formats. Most common WordPress embed features are also supported.
• Paginated / multi-page posts – For maximum monetization potential via ads on your new website, Gridlove includes a very intuitive design for Posts which are split into multiple pages. A great way to boost your page views with ease and increase your passive earnings!
• Post views support – Gridlove also supports Entry Views WordPress plugin, which is used to count views for each post. Smart options are also available so your Posts can be filtered by number of views.
• Shortcodes – Add complex elements to your content easily with 12 flexible shortcodes. Shortcodes are small pieces of code that you can insert into any Page or Post to create beautiful columns, separators, highlights, dropcaps, buttons, pull quotes, progress bars, social icons, tabs, toggles and accordions with minimal fuss.
• WooCommerce support – Add a fully functioning shop to your new website, with the advanced features offered by the WooCommerce WordPress plugin!
• bbPress support – Need to run a forum? Your new website will run with the industry standard Forum Plugin bbPress, seamlessly integrated and tested to run smoothly.
• RTL support – Gridlove fully supports Right-To-Left oriented reading which is an essential requirement when you are running a website with global reach! Simply turn this option on in the Theme Options Panel.
• Built-in translation – Easily modify or translate any text on your website through the theme options panel.
• One-click demo content import – Demo content is included, so you get a website similar to our demo, ready to start tweaking!
• One-click updates – You can connect your website with the Envato official API to be notified about upcoming updates through your Admin Dashboard. Every time a Gridlove update is released, you can update with a single click, just like you would for any other theme hosted on the official WordPress repository.
• Setup guide – Learn step-by-step, how to setup Gridlove and all of its options, quickly and easily with our comprehensive documentation.
• Get help from WordPress experts – Do you have questions, issues or feature ideas? Do not hesitate to contact us! We usually respond within 24 hours.

Conclusion:

I hope you got a lot of tools by reading this article, which you can use to build your business.

If you found this article helpful, please share it with your friends so that they can also use some of these tools and make their blogging journey better.

Check out some best articles related to this

• Best FREE Blogging SEO Tools to Amplify Your Growth in 2020
• 2020’s Most Popular and Best Responsive WordPress Themes (Expert Pick)

Thank you for reading, and let’s connect!

Thank you for reading my blog, feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter, and ask questions and give your valuable suggestions.

The social media share buttons are a very important part of your website. They allow you and your users to quickly share your content across social media, expanding your audience in seconds with just a few clicks. While it is a small feature to be implemented, you can be creative with it and make the social share buttons interactive in a way that adds a unique experience for your visitors.

One of the ways of doing it is simply using the CSS hover feature. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do that.

You can use any kind of image file you want for your icons such as PNG or SVG. In this tutorial, we wanted to keep things simple and used an icon font, FontAwesome.

This method saves time as you don’t have to individually download icon images and set their sizes individually. It also cuts down the lines of code on your HTML or CSS file. With FontAwesome, you can simply add the CDN below to add icons to your website.

We’re also using Bootstrap to organize our grid layout. Please insert the external links below on your HTML file to get started:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.3/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-MCw98/SFnGE8fJT3GXwEOngsV7Zt27NXFoaoApmYm81iuXoPkFOJwJ8ERdknLPMO" crossorigin="anonymous">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

HTML

The code below is straightforward.

We have a ul list that contains each of the social media links as a list item. If you’d like to add more social media links, all you have to do is create another li item and add your icon inside the i tag.

We’re using Bootstrap’s list-inline class which automatically makes a list horizontal so we don’t have to add additional lines on the CSS file to make our list items inline.

<div class="col-sm-5 col-md-4 col-lg-3 social-links text-center">
    <ul class="list-inline mt-5">
        <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="#"><i class="fa fa-facebook social-icon" aria-hidden="true"></i></a></li>
        <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="#"><i class="fa fa-twitter social-icon" aria-hidden="true"></i></a></li>
        <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="#"><i class="fa fa-linkedin social-icon" aria-hidden="true"></i></a></li>
        <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="#"><i class="fa fa-envelope social-icon" aria-hidden="true"></i></a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

CSS

After we’re done with building the structure of the social media share list, let’s get to how we can display them beautifully with interesting hover effects. Copy and paste the code below in your CSS file:

.fa,
.fas {
    font-family: 'FontAwesome';
}

.social-icon {
    color: #fff;
    background: #221B14;
    font-size: 1em;
    border-radius: 50%;
    line-height: 2.2em;
    width: 2.1em;
    height: 2.1em;
    text-align: center;
    display: inline-block;
}

li:hover {
    transform: translateY(-4px);
    transition: 0.3s;
}

FontAwesome comes with the default .fa or .fas classes. We need to select those classes and set their font-family as “Font Awesome”, otherwise, the icons will show up as blank squares. 

In order to put the icons in a circular border background, we need to give a specific value to the icon font-size, line-height, and the circle width and height. First, we make the border circle by giving setting its radius as 50%. The icon font size is up to you. Just make sure that the line-height, width, and height values are about as twice as big as the font-size. That way your icon will be well placed in the center, both horizontally and vertically.

Once we ensure that every element in our list is aligned nicely, we can get to the fun part, the hover effect. We’re making each of the icons move up 4px on hover. All we need to do is select each list item add a :hover after it and write transform: translateY(-4px).Then, while this is optional, we set the transition to 0.3s to so that when we hover over the icon, it will move up gradually in a smooth way rather than move up abruptly.

There we have it. You can hover over the icons on JSFiddle below to see how they move on hover:

Thank you for reading, and let’s connect!

Thank you for reading my blog, feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter, and ask questions and give your valuable suggestions.