The Minimaliste theme as you can understand also from the name is a stylish minimalist theme. It is basically based on a grid category layout utilizing successfully the post thumbnail function.

Having also a featured category slider and a couple of widgetized areas, is a thoughtfully designed theme to enable you have a great blog where you can post plenty of photos, or use it as a personal website to showcase your portfolio, projects and ideas.

Pricing: $43+
Requirements: -
Source: http://www.vivathemes.com/wordpress-themes/minimaliste/

You can create a media and content rich SlideDeck on your WordPress powered blog or website without writing a single line of code! The SlideDeck WordPress Plugin works within the easy-to-use WordPress interface and allows you to post a slider live in minutes. Insert your SlideDeck into your posts, on your pages and even in your theme!

Adding content is easy, tweaking your settings is even easier! With the SlideDeck WordPress Plugin you have control over things like animation speed, dimensions reordering slides and more. Start a new post or page and click the “Insert SlideDeck” button. Pick which SlideDeck to insert and you’re finished.

Pricing: FREE – $49 usd
Requirements: -
Source: http://www.slidedeck.com/wordpress

Creative Zodiac Portfolio & Blog Wordpress Theme is preloaded with JQuery. It’s not just a simple minisite, it’s a fullblown Wordpress experience with all the bells and whistles. It’s suitable for all creatives and bloggers out there, but I can also imagine it as a stylish virtual business card.

The possibilities are endless, it all depends on your imagination and interest. Plus the whole theme is so simple and easy to use thanks to extensive theme options panel and custom write panels which makes everything quick and breeze!

Pricing: $32+
Requirements: -
Source: Grab Your Copy Now!

Though the name may be a little “edgy” for some, SexyBookmarks has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.

Our sole aim was to stray away from the “in the box” thinking behind most social bookmarking plugins, and add a little flair that would entice your readers, rather than deterring them with microscopic icons that get lost in pages heavy laden with content. Now with Official Google Buzz Integration as well!

Pricing: FREE
Requirements: -
Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/

Widescreen is a flexible theme for WordPress that features two optional homepage designs, a fullscreen slideshow, multiple interior page and post templates and a built-in video player. The new theme options panel makes customization dead simple, providing users with easy color selection and optional homepage design layouts. However, Widescreen requires PHP5 and is only available to paid subscribers.

Pricing: $49+
Requirements: -
Source: Grab Your Copy Now!

WordPress has become the most widely used blogging platform in the world, estimated to be used on a quarter of a billion websites online today. WordPress works as a blog, but also as a straightforward content management system, ready to use with search-engine-friendly URLs and fully valid HTML and CSS.

With so many sites using WordPress and only about 1,200 themes listed on WordPress.org, there are inevitably lots of sites looking exactly the same. You and your clients need to stand out, or end up being branded as “just another WordPress blog.”

In  the article: Create Your Own WordPress Theme from an HTML Template, Matthew Higgins will show you how to take an existing HTML and CSS site template and convert it into a theme for WordPress. Of course, WordPress theming is much too vast a topic to cover entirely in a single article, so he will provide you with some resources at the end to further your learning. This article serves as a good introduction and give you a solid foundation to start learning about creating your own WordPress themes.

Source: Create Your Own WordPress Theme from an HTML Template

Smooth is a widget-ready theme that is dedicated to writers. Its simplicity, light grey background and large fonts put the content ahead. Nothing useless, just fine typography and a touch of colors. Others translations have been released by users but aren’t included in the theme archive. You can download them directly on the page.

Pricing: FREE
Requirements: -
Source: http://www.my-tapestry.com/smooth/

Since 2003, WordPress has been demonstrating the power of community development as it becomes the dominant open source Web site platform on the Internet. It’s popularity has been propelled not only by its price (free), but by its quality. From an austere beginning, the platform has become one of the most full-featured, flexible platforms available on the Web today, but it continues to evolve. As WordPress nears its next major revision, many people are wondering where WordPress is headed. Here are five ways the WordPress may evolve in the future, many of which can be observed in current trends.

1. Beyond Blogging

Users around the globe are waking up to the fact that WordPress is much more than a blogging platform: it is a Web content management system (CMS) with the power to support Web presence in a variety of formats. Already, many plugins exist that help adapt WordPress into a CMS with a powerful backend. In the future, look for more CMS features to be native to WordPress, and the blogger features moderated to fit with the more general purpose. Already, WordPress is considered to be second only to Drupal in the market for open source CMS.

2. Premium Plugins, Themes and Enhancements

Casual bloggers probably won’t get very excited about premium WordPress items, but enthusiasts and professionals probably will. Premium features will serve two primary purposes: first, they will spur more innovation, something that is needed to keep WordPress from becoming stale. Secondly (more…)

The FBLikeButton Plugin for WordPress allows you to configure and display the FaceBook Like Button before and/or after each post and/or page, and whether or not you want the button to appear on your homepage.

The FaceBook Like Button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.

Pricing: FREE
Requirements: -
Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fblikebutton/