Best Premium WordPress Themes

[Updated: 10 October, 2011]

This gallery of WordPress themes is a collection of the absolute best premium WordPress Themes available. There are lots of great looking WordPress themes around, however to make it easier to find the best premium WordPress themes we have hand selected the very best WordPress themes out of the thousands in the marketplace and compiled galleries of the best WordPress themes currently available for each specific style of website. They are dynamic galleries which are continually updated with the best new high quality and professional WordPress themes.
Premium WordPress Theme Galleries
Best Magazine / News Premium WordPress Themes
Best Business & CMS Premium WordPress Themes
Best Video & Multimedia Premium WordPress Themes
Best Portfolio / Photo Gallery WordPress Themes
Best Blog Premium WordPress Themes
Best Premium WordPress Template Systems
Best Minimalist WordPress Themes
Niche WordPress Theme
Ecommerce WordPress Themes
Church WordPress Themes
WordPress Real Estate Themes
WordPress Music Themes

Best Premium WordPress Themes – Overview

Magazine WordPress Themes
Platform Pro WordPress Theme Framework
Platform Pro is a drag and drop WordPress theme framework from PageLines. The professional theme framework helps you built a custom WordPress site quickly and easily with drag and drop layout and content. Platform Pro features include BuddyPress and bbPress integration, child theme support, magazine & blog layout modes, full-width and fixed-width designs, advanced fonts, and ajax image uploading. The Section API gives drag and drop website control with layout builder options, drag & drop post types (feature slides, boxes, banners etc) and tons of comprehensive page by page options.

Drag and Drop Layout Editor

Fixed Width Magazine Layout Example

Features

• Drag & Drop Design Control – Create and customize your site by dragging and dropping ‘sections’ of content around your theme
• Design Modes – Choose from tons of design modes such as: magazine or blog layout; full-width or fixed-width site design
• Layout Builder – drag & drop layout dimensions and configure each of 5 different sidebar layout options on a page / post basis

• Sections – allow you to drag and drop pre-designed modules of HTML, Javascript and other code on your site (similar to widgets)
  • Plug-andPlay Sections – pre-designed pieces of web design (e.g. a feature slider, navigation, carousel, etc..) managed by the section API; so all you ever see is a simple drag and drop interface and options
  • Controls – Sections can be toggled on or off on a page-by-page basis and add their own post-types and options. This means total control of every page on your site
  • Performance – Sections load their code (eg, Javascript), only on pages where they are used and according to best-practices, greatly improving performance
  • Development – Can be created and modified by designers in the Base child theme, meaning designers can add or alter the drag & drop sections in seconds
  • Simple – Sections add standard html markup and custom hooks (for extending functionality). Cutting down on a lot of code while giving more functionality at the same time
• Meta Options – Customize everything on a page-by-page basis through meta options. For example, the number of boxes, items in a carousel, custom images, and more…
• bbPress and BuddyPress Integrated – supports integrations with BuddyPress and has a matching bbPress forum theme (developer edition)
• Child Theme Support – to help you customize Platform easily and with best-practices for building a website using “hooks” and custom CSS
• Advanded Fonts – Platform allows you to integrate the Google fonts API or Cufon based fonts in seconds
• Forms and Ajax Uploading
• SEO Tuned – Tuned code for optimal search engine performance and accessibility. Works with all major SEO meta plugins
• WordPress 3.0+ supports the coolest new WP features like custom post types, menus, and custom ‘taxonomies’ (i.e. custom categorizing)
• Try the theme demo and watch the tour video for more details

Price Platform Pro: $95, Platform Pro Developer: $175

Keyword: Best Business WordPress Themes, Best Magazine WordPress Themes, Best Premium WordPress Themes, Best WordPress Blog Themes, Premium WordPress Themes, Premium WordPress Themes Gallery

Premium WordPress Theme Frameworks

[Updated: 22 September, 2011]

Premium WordPress theme frameworks are powerful theme systems with a lot of in-built features and functionality that make it easy for anyone to built a professional, customized blog or website. These WordPress template frameworks offer a huge amount of built-in control and flexibility allowing you to create many different styles and layouts, and easily customize the template to build a professional and unique looking website. These theme frameworks are for users of all levels.
Below are the best premium WordPress theme frameworks available. A simple screen shot of the basic homepage of these themes often does not do them justice, becase they have a lot of features, functions and layout options that can’t be fully shown here. So try the demos, watch the videos, and read the detailed features on the release pages to fully appreciate these premium theme frameworks.
Platform Pro WordPress Theme Framework
Platform Pro is a drag and drop WordPress theme framework from PageLines. The professional theme framework helps you built a custom WordPress site quickly and easily with drag and drop layout and content. Platform Pro features include BuddyPress and bbPress integration, child theme support, magazine & blog layout modes, full-width and fixed-width designs, advanced fonts, and ajax image uploading. The Section API gives drag and drop website control with layout builder options, drag & drop post types (feature slides, boxes, banners etc) and tons of comprehensive page by page options.

Drag and Drop Layout Editor

Fixed Width Magazine Layout Example

Features

• Drag & Drop Design Control – Create and customize your site by dragging and dropping ‘sections’ of content around your theme
• Design Modes – Choose from tons of design modes such as: magazine or blog layout; full-width or fixed-width site design
• Layout Builder – drag & drop layout dimensions and configure each of 5 different sidebar layout options on a page / post basis

• Sections – allow you to drag and drop pre-designed modules of HTML, Javascript and other code on your site (similar to widgets)
  • Plug-andPlay Sections – pre-designed pieces of web design (e.g. a feature slider, navigation, carousel, etc..) managed by the section API; so all you ever see is a simple drag and drop interface and options
  • Controls – Sections can be toggled on or off on a page-by-page basis and add their own post-types and options. This means total control of every page on your site
  • Performance – Sections load their code (eg, Javascript), only on pages where they are used and according to best-practices, greatly improving performance
  • Development – Can be created and modified by designers in the Base child theme, meaning designers can add or alter the drag & drop sections in seconds
  • Simple – Sections add standard html markup and custom hooks (for extending functionality). Cutting down on a lot of code while giving more functionality at the same time
• Meta Options – Customize everything on a page-by-page basis through meta options. For example, the number of boxes, items in a carousel, custom images, and more…
• bbPress and BuddyPress Integrated – supports integrations with BuddyPress and has a matching bbPress forum theme (developer edition)
• Child Theme Support – to help you customize Platform easily and with best-practices for building a website using “hooks” and custom CSS
• Advanded Fonts – Platform allows you to integrate the Google fonts API or Cufon based fonts in seconds
• Forms and Ajax Uploading
• SEO Tuned – Tuned code for optimal search engine performance and accessibility. Works with all major SEO meta plugins
• WordPress 3.0+ supports the coolest new WP features like custom post types, menus, and custom ‘taxonomies’ (i.e. custom categorizing)

• Web Typography Tool
  • Choose from over 50 font options (including Google API Fonts)
  • Select font weight, styling, spacing, transform (e.g. uppercase) and variant (e.g. small-caps)
  • Preview your custom typefaces live, using the live preview panel
• Try the theme demo and watch the tour video for more details

Price
Platform Pro: $95
Platform Pro Developer: $175

Keyword: Affiliate Theme, Flexx Theme, One Theme, Premium WordPress Template Systems, Premium WordPress Themes, Thesis Theme, WordPress Framework, WordPress Theme Framework, WordPress Unlimited Theme

Thesis 1.7 Premium WordPress Theme

The lastest release of the Thesis WordPress theme is version 1.7 which has lots of new functionality and increased efficiency. Thesis 1.7 is noticeably faster, more comprehensive, and way more detailed than previous versions.
About Thesis
Thesis is a powerful, high quality premium WordPress template system that makes it easy for anyone to run a professional, customized blog or website. Thesis comes with one of the most comprehensive Option Panels that allows you to easily control and customize almost every aspect of the framework with ease. You can select the font style and sizes, colours, the number of columns (1, 2 or 3 columns), the order of those columns and the exact width of each individual column – all without having to dig into the pages of code. Thesis also boats the strongest SEO of any WordPress theme on the market. Some very well know internet personalities and SEO “gurus” use Thesis.

If you think the base Thesis layout pictured above looks a bit basic, you’re probably right, so check out some of the awesome Thesis customizations here.
Thesis Design Options Page

New Features in 1.7

• New SEO controls and details
• Options Manager – allows you to backup, save and restore custom Thesis settings
• Completely reorganised options page – now five main pages under the Thesis Options: Site Options, Design Options, Page Options, Custom File Editor, and Options Manager
• Increased efficiency
• Includes more JavaScript libraries – Add jQuery, jQuery UI, Prototype, MooTools, and others with a single click
• New homepage controls
• Flexible new comment system
• Easy 301 redirects for affiliates
• New hooks and headline filter
• Ready for internationisation
• Improved core element defaults
• Dramatically improved code quality

Key Features

• Thesis Options Panel – one of the most comprehensive theme options panel in a premium WordPress theme. Allows you to easily control and customise almost any aspect of the framework with ease. You can customise everything including, font styles, what you want to appear in the navigation menu, page titles, your RSS feed, what meta data shows on your post / page, how your archive page shows up etc.
• Layout Options – Thesis gives you a multitude of column and width options to choose from. You can select the number of columns (1, 2 or 3 columns), the order of those columns and the exact width of each individual column – all without having to dig into the pages of code.
• Features and Teasers – Thesis gives you an option called ‘features and teasers’ that allows you to have a front page that is more of a magazine style showing featured posts and short excerpts of other posts with thumbnails.
• Colour Control – Thesis allows you change the colour of virtually every element of theme. Easy change text, border, link, background colours etc
• Automatic Thumbnail Generation – Thesis will automatically resize pictures and generate thumbnails for your posts.
• No coding experience required – The Thesis option panels allow you to command your site with ease without requiring detailed knowledge of HTML, PHP or CSS.
• Future Proof Customization System – Allows modifications with a custom style sheet meaning you can modify your theme and protect it against any future upgrades.
• Less Plug-ins Required – some of the capabilities that you would normally use plug-ins for are built into the theme. For example SEO options, Google analytics or other header and footer code, navigation menu options etc can all be managed in the theme options panel.
• Pixel Perfect Typography – Thesis has polished typography with finely-tuned geometrics for maximum legibility. You can select what type, and size, of font you want in all the different sections of the theme.
• Hooks – Thesis has a custom hook architecture that allows you to add to, subtract from or modify the functionality of your Thesis installation. It allows you to isolate all of your custom changes to just two key files. This makes your Thesis installation easy to customize, and easy to upgrade.
• Rich Style Classes – Thesis features built in classes to help you make important content stand out, and add some pizzazz to your site. You can add a drop-cap, alert box, a note box, or even wrap text around adsense ads etc.
• Customisable Multimedia Box – Thesis includes an optional fully customizable multimedia box which can be used for rotating random images, video, advertising or your own custom code.
• Search Engine Optimization – Thesis boasts the strongest SEO of any theme on the market today thanks to its expertly-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework.
• Support – Access to documentation and a great support forum managed by talented and helpful staff
• Continuous Improvement – Thesis is continually being upgraded and improved and new featured added. When you purchase thesis you get access to lifetime updates.
• Much More – read about more Thesis features here

Price:
Personal Licence: $87
Developer’s License: $164

Keyword: Thesis, Thesis 1.7, Thesis Theme

Headway WordPress Theme Version 1.5

Headway version 1.5 has been released and includes numerous improvements and additions including: new photo gallery option, drag and drop header, auto thumbnails, a completely new interface and more. Check all the new features here.
Headway is an extremely sophisticated, flexible and easy to use premium WordPress theme system which enables average WordPress users as well as developers / designers to create unique, great looking WordPress sites. The Headway theme system features a vast amount of options including an amazing visual layout editor that allows you to arrange elements on the fly using simple drag & drop to create anything from a standard blog, to landing pages, to membership sites, to e-commerce sites. The custom design editor allows you to customise just about every design element of the theme including the items and order of the navigation menu, colours, fonts, favicon and more. The configuration panel also allows you to edit everything behind the scenes including the most thorough SEO controls of any premium theme.

Site Configuration Panel
The Site Configuartion Panel allows you to control the blog’s header, posts, comments, and footer settings, plus site dimensions. Features include:

• Easy uploading of your own header image
• Turning on or off the display of elements such as your blog’s tagline or navigation links
• Switching between a fixed-width header vs. a fluid one that spans the width of the browser window
• Rearrange header elements by simply dragging them on the screen
• Finely control post meta options, such as the publication date, author name display, number of comments, and more
• Set the number of featured (full) posts for the blog’s main page compared to excerpts or just headlines
• Choose normal or small excerpts (full-page width vs. a smaller “box”) — or no excerpts at all
• Choose to display comments on pages or not
• Choose to show commenter Gravatars or not, enter a URL for a custom default (blank) Gravatar, and set the avatar display size in your comments
• Set fixed or fluid width footer
• Choose to show or hide various footer elements, such as copyright, go to top link, login link, and more
• Set site page dimensions and page margin

Navigation Panel
The Navigation Panel lets you control and fine-tune the navigation bar. Capabilities include:

• Show or hide subpages (also known as child pages) in your navigation bar
• Hide the Home link, in case you don’t need it because you’re using the blog header only as the home link
• Make any links in your navigation bar inactive so they don’t show (but the pages still exist)
• Drag any link in the navigation bar to any position you want, until you have the link order you desire

Leaf Panel
Headway’s Leaf Panel in the Visual Layout Editor gives you unprecedented control over the visual placement and dimensions of page content. Each leaf is a content box. You get to decide what goes into the box, where the box goes on the page, and how big the box is. You can add leafs, arrange them, resize them, delete them, and edit their settings. The kind of Leafs you can add to any page layout you want in Headway are:

• Content Leaf: displays posts according to settings you choose, such as including or excluding certain categories and the number of posts to be displayed
• Widget Ready Sidebar: add as many sidebars as you want in your layout—including the ability to have special “sideways sidebars” in the footer (which has, until Headway, always been a weak area in WordPress theme design)
• Text/HTML/PHP Leaf: put custom content of any kind you want into this leaf: regular text, XHTML, PHP, and JavaScript (such as for email opt-in forms, for example), it can take just about anything
• Featured Post Leaf: featured post leafs allow for animated transitions between a series of featured posts on your blog all within the same box
• RSS/Recent Posts Leaf: grab any RSS feed from any source (including your own, of course) and display a specific number of recent posts from it with this powerful Leaf
• Image Rotator Leaf: create an animated slideshow of images that gently fade one into another with this super-easy Leaf, and put it anywhere on the page you like
• About Leaf: create a highly detailed “about” box on your page with text, an image (you control the size of the picture), and a “more” link
• Photo Gallery Leaf: create amazing photo galleries for your blog with no extra WordPress plugins required—you have total control over every detail of the gallery, from thumbnail settings to slideshow animations

Visual Design Editor
The Visual Design Editor allows you to fine-tune the visual design by changing fonts, margins, and other aspects universally of the leafs, sidebar widgets, and other WordPress blog elements. Some of the properties you can control for selected elements include:

• Colors: you can use a visual color picker or enter a hexadecimal color code
• Font/Typeface: choose from a list of nearly universal web fonts (found on all Macs and Windows computers)
• Font Size: set the size of your text in pixels
• Line Height: set how much vertical space is in between each line
• Font Weight: set text as bold or normal
• Text Transform: set text as being normal, uppercase, or lowercase
• Font Variant: choose a “small caps” effect
• Letter Spacing: adjust the amount of gap between the letters of words to wider or more narrow

Configuration Panel
The Configuation Panel lets you get at settings that are “behind the scenes,” so you can change what you want.

• General Tab: Contains main blog settings for feeds, Google Analytics or other scripts, and more.
• Styling/Features: If you want to disable the Visual Design Editor, then you can change your style and font settings here, via drop-downs and checkboxes.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tab: Headway has the most thorough SEO features of any premium theme… all without any additional plugins. Here you can manage various kinds of page titles, description meta tags, nofollow settings, noindex settings, and more to boost your search engine rankings.
• Social Networking Tab: You can integrate your Twitter account into your blog without extra plugins to bog down your blog’s page load times. You can have your tweets automatically appear in a leaf on the blog, and automatically tweet your new blog posts to Twitter as soon as they’re published.
• Headway Permissions Tab: Have a multi-author blog or a team of designer/developers? Set their permissions for how much of Headway’s power they can access. You get to choose what type of user account (administrator, editor, etc.) has permission to see and use the various Headway tools, such as the Visual Design Editor or Headway Configuration. No other premium theme has these capabilities built in.

Support
Headway includes tutorials & documentation in plain English and a friendly and helpful support community
The power and flexibility of Headway Theme System can be a little difficult to comprehend with just words. To really appreciate the theme watch the video tour.
Price:
Personal: $87
Developer: $164

Keyword: Headway, Headway Theme, Premium WordPress Theme, WordPress Template System, WordPress Theme System

Headway Premium WordPress Theme System

Headway is an extremely sophisticated, flexible and easy to use premium WordPress template system which enables average WordPress users as well as developers / designers to create unique, great looking WordPress sites.
The Headway theme system features a vast amount of options including an amazing layout editor that allows you to arrange elements on the fly using simple drag & drop to create a newspaper layout or blog design with any content/sidebar arrangement. The custom configuration panel allows you to customise just about every design element of the theme including the items and order of the navigation menu, colours, fonts, favicon and more. The configuration panel also allows you to edit virtually everything SEO related down to titles, meta tags, noindex-ing, etc.

The power and flexibility of WordPress template systems are always a little difficult to explain in words, so the best way to appreciate the theme is to watch the video tour of the Headway theme. The key features are outlined below:
Layout Editor

• Rearrange the site layout with javascript drag and drop (no code editing required)
• Vast Amount of Leafs – add as many ‘leafs’ as you want (Leafs are elements similar to widgets, gadgets, etc and can be easily added to your pages in Headway)
• Content Leaf – to display the main “loop”, display the category archives, etc, but also build a custom loop outside of the blog page.
• Sidebar Leafs – add sidebars “on-the-fly” and have as many as you want
• Add a sidebar specifically for one page or system page
• Ability to flip a sidebar horizontally to make a widgetised footer
• Resize each leaf using simple handles – just as if it was a window on your computer

Design Options

• Change the colour of virtually every element on the theme by interacting with a simple colour picker.
• Preset colour schemes included
• Customisable header (fluid or fixed, choice location of header, breadcrumbs, logo uploader)
• Topography – modify fonts with a simple drop down menu
• Simple Post Meta Customization – choose exactly how you want the post meta to display without any code

Configuration Panel

• Quickly and easily change theme options
• Add JavaScript to the header or footer
• Drag and drop navigation – easily order and rename page for the navigation
• Social network integration

Search Engine Optimisation

• Clean code yet large amount of flexibility
• Ability to edit virtually everything SEO related down to titles, meta tags, noindex-ing, and more.
• Meta Tags – modify every meta tag
• Canonical URLs
• In-Post (or Page) Options – change titles, noindex posts/pages, nofollow links etc

Other

• Twitter integration – automatically tweet blog post entries
• Vast amount of hooks and filters (including easy hook editor)
• Printer friendly
• XHTML Strict valid code
• Custom stylesheets
• Much more

Price:
Personal: $87
Developer: $164

Keyword: Headway Theme, Premium WordPress Template Systems, Premium WordPress Theme, WordPress Template System, WordPress Theme System

iThemes FlexxTheme Version 2.1 Mega Blog WordPress Theme

iThemes have released an updated version of their “mega WordPress blog theme” – FlexxTheme. Version 2.1 includes some new features including: multilevel drop down menus, and threaded comments. Read about all the features here.

FlexxTheme is a powerful, flexible and easy to use WordPress template system. The theme features 1,056 possible layout combinations which you can pick and choose with a mouse click, allowing you to build almost any kind of WordPress site you want, from simple landing pages to complex blog sites. The Flexx series comes in a variety of pre-built colour styles, and also features rotating header image, Plug and Play Graphic Changes, a Menu Builder allowing you to pick and choose what Pages you want in the menu navigation, including subpages, and lots more. Read about all the features here.

Keyword: Blog WordPress Theme, Flexx Thme, iThemes, Premium WordPress Theme