Free WordPress (Portfolio/Personal Blog) Theme: Happy Go Try

After recent discussion about the future of free WordPress themes and some criticism of the quality of said free themes, today I’m releasing a free WordPress theme that I think looks quite good. Why? Because I didn’t design it! The design comes from SmashingMagazine – a design by Tyler Dawson. It’s called ‘Happy Go Try’ which is an anagram for Typography, which the theme is based around.

The theme is based upon my framework, Biblioteca, but is a standalone theme (ie you don’t need Biblioteca installed) and it inherits all of Biblioteca‘s advanced features – a nice theme options page, in post SEO options, threaded comments, a ton of widget ready area etc.

The theme would look great on a personal blog or a portfolio and now joins the mass ranks of free WordPress themes out there. It’s licensed under the GPL and so can be used without restriction.

Using the theme

It should work out of the box (apart from your RSS feed and the title – go to the options page to change them!), just a couple of things to know. The text pulled on the front page – that’s the excerpt. The image used can be put in place as with Biblioteca, as the screencast shows (link if you can’t see it):

There are four widget ready areas in Happy Go Try. The footer right, footer left and intro widgets are only suitable for text widgets without a title. You should have ‘automatically add paragraphs’ unchecked. The only other thing that might cause you trouble is the header – you might find that it flows down if you have a long title or too many categories. If so, you’ll need to head to the options page and follow the instructions in the screencast below:

Download and Demo

Download the theme here. Theme is offered ‘as is’ and no free support offered. For paid support, drop me an email. Check out the theme live here. Enjoy!