10+ fastest free WordPress blog themes for personal bloggers
If you are a personal blogger and you are using WordPress to run your website then this must be one of the best choices you have taken so far. We must know that blogging is not all about writing articles and sharing them with the people.
A good blog needs a cool looking design, responsiveness, speed + performance, user-friendly articles and most importantly a good SEO to bring people from their search queries to read what you are delivering to them.
We have a lot to discuss these topics. Normally, I write in the category of WordPress performance and Search Engine Optimization. However, in this post, I want to mention some of the great free WordPress blog themes which are fast and fully customizable.
I hope these themes will help you build a faster and better website. These themes are fast in the sense that they have been tested in an environment of entry-level shared hosting without any caching plugin enabled. I have taken this step to make sure that whatever I am going to list down should be really fast, not just because of the fast server or the caching plugin.
One more advantage is that these free WordPress blog themes are fully customizable. This will provide you with the ability to create your dream design for your website.
Disclaimer: All these listed themes are containing links to their free source and paid source as well. We haven’t published any kind of affiliate links with these themes. However, you can always buy the premium version of them from the original developers or their organization.
Here’s the list of Ten best free WordPress blog themes for 2019:
1. OceanWP
OceanWP is a very popular blogging theme. The appearance is very clean and nice looking. OceanWP comes with tons of premium like features.
This theme is lightweight and highly extendable which enables you to create almost any type of websites such as a blog, portfolio, business website, and WooCommerce storefront.
However, the most suitable choice is to use this theme for your blog. The remarkable features of this theme are Fast, Responsive, RTL & translation ready, SEO enabled and very beautiful in design. On activation of this theme, you may activate their extension and suggested page builder Elementor.
However, oceanwp also supports other most popular page builders as Beaver Builder, Breezy, Visual Composer, Divi, SiteOrigin, etc. You will get multiple layout options, dual widget sidebar, custom sizes, customizable footers, custom logo, colors and lot more.
OceanWp Demo | Download OceanWP
2. Modernize
Modernize is another flexible WordPress blogging theme. Lots of new premium like features are available on modernize. Supported by the drag & drop builder you can customize the appearance almost in any design as you want.
Customizable color options are also added in the new version of modernize. Unlimited sidebars are enabled + custom font designs are also available in this theme. Modernize is an extremely fast and light theme.
Built-in codes are SEO optimized and design of the theme is very clean. Due to its lightweight, the number of requests made by a browser is extremely low (9) without any kind of caching plugin enabled. That’s makes it one of the best free WordPress blog themes you may choose in 2019.
Modernize demo | Download Modernize
3. Evolve
Evolve is a dynamic and eye-catching WordPress theme you can use with your blog. Evolve is optimized for both performance and sweetness of a website. Evolve is based on Twitter Bootstrap and kirki framework.
Evolve consist of one inbuilt custom builder and a wide range of customization options. Almost every section of your blog can be fully customized with the free version of this theme.
Evolve is responsive and good looking in boatmobile and PC version. It also provides good usability to the users. Evolve is fully SEO optimized and very fast, lightweight in nature which takes only 12 requests to load all the default contents of this theme. The average performance score of evolving is 91.
4. Cenote
The Cenote is a very clean and beautifully designed WordPress blogging theme. Cenote is responsive, flexible and SEO friendly theme. Various layout option, typography option, color options are available in this theme.
You can use this theme for various blogging purpose chassis photography, food blog, journey blog etc. Cenote provides 4 major widget areas but you can always extend it to more with custom widgets.
Sticky menu settings are available to improve website navigation system. Along with these fishes, there are more User experience element available to improve the usability of your blog to make sure users remain engaged and love to read there.
Also, the team has a great support team who will always answer to any difficulty or queries you rise. The cenote is also very fast and lightweight like the previous themes. This theme is supported by various browsers so that you won’t find any difficulty to reach your visitors. This is one of my most favorite free WordPress blog themes ever used.
5. Radiate
Radiate was developed by Themegril back in 2014. This theme is built for blogging purpose. Radiate is clear, responsive and well designed as well as light retina-ready theme.
You can use parallax image under hair which makes any blog looks so cool. If you want you can also put some information about your blog with a nice clean perfectly sized banner image.
The top menu remains sticky to make the site navigation easier. You can use the custom featured box to mention more details about you or link to any previous page.
Typography is well optimized with the content background show that reader can easily read the staff you have written.
Also, the content is separated from each other which will give your content a clear point of view. Being responsive and beautiful this theme also make sure that you will have a lightweight and fast web page. SEO friendly codes make Radiate to be one of the best free WordPress blog themes for any blogger.
Radiate Demo | Download Radiate
6. Ace Blog
Ace blog theme is a child theme of Adventure blog. The ace blog provides an awesome premium like look to your blog. You can customize the colors, widgets, header image and custom menus.
Moreover, you will have slider options where you cam setup beautiful sliders to the whole website or any custom page. Custom layout options are available to make your website flexible and responsive.
Advanced featured post configuration and stylish pagination are also available in Ace blog theme. Custom footer settings are available to design your blog footer with text or HTML code.
The ace blog is super fast and performance optimized theme, especially useful for photography websites, bloggers and writers. Similar to the other mentioned blog, the ace blog has a very lightweight to perform faster enough.
Ace Blog demo | Download Ace Blog
7. Type
Type is good for creating a professional blog or an online magazine. Type provides beautiful layouts with various personalization from logo and menu customization to color and accents color.
The clean looking layouts with sweet headings and global buttons make this theme looks so elegant. The customization panel is very friendly to the beginners and all elements are available to modify the complete look.
Type is SEO optimized and has all the features like the featured image, custom headers, and footers, schema markup etc. You can create outstanding sliders anywhere on the website using their default slider option. With four different layouts type make sure that the website is responsive and flexible.
Despite having all these features Type still remains one of the fastest free WordPress blog themes you may install on your website. This theme is translation ready and compatible across various browsers as well.
8. Typecore
Typecore is a responsive high-resolution theme for blogs and magazines. Typecore have unique toggle sidebars which give a great browsing and reading experience on both tablet and mobile.
Typecore have a various feature such as Unlimited top bars, customizable header and footer, and accent colors, unlimited widget areas, maximum 2 sidebars to the left or right that can be uniquely specified for each page or post, custom sidebar width can be defined as well.
Typecore have footer widget columns, various image layouts, related posts and post navigation, and 10 featured post formats. Typecore is SEO optimized and responsive along with flexible custom area designs. It has localization support, social links, logo upload, and many more useful admin panel features.
Typecore is lightweight and fast, generating almost the same results on the top three-page performance tester tools gtmetrix, Pingdom and page insight accordingly. The average score of this theme without the caching system is 98.
Typecore Demo | Download Typecore
9. Generate Press
GeneratePress is a popular lightweight WordPress theme built with a focus on speed and usability. Performance is important while making the content readable and keep the design clean & beautiful is more necessary.
GeneratePress full-fills both the requirements of your blog. GeneratePress is compatible with various plugins and well-coded theme. This theme can be combined with all major page builders, including Beaver Builder and Elementor.
GeneratePress is fully responsive, uses valid HTML/CSS and is translated into over 25 languages. It includes various microdata integration, 9 widget areas, 5 navigation locations, 5 sidebar layouts, responsive drop-down menus (click or hover) and navigation color presets.
GeneratePress is fully SEO optimized and extremely lightweight theme which adds only 15 KB to your web page. The average performance score of GeneratePress is 99 and the fastest one among all these themes in this list.
Generate press demo| Download GeneratePress
10. Personal Blogily
PersonalBlogily is a responsive blog theme made for personal bloggers and lifestyle bloggers. Its beautiful and minimalistic look gives this theme a perfectly stylized image whether you’re a food-, fashion-, travel- or lifestyle blogger.
This theme is developed by ThemeEverest with the main focus on performance and responsiveness. In PersonalBlogily you’ll find a stylized and highly optimized theme with swift load times across the board without any loss of performance and responsiveness.
Personal Blogily has a wide layout with a beautiful mid header which gives a cool look to any blog. The contents are margined with a visible outline and applicable to the widgets as well. Various custom options from header, logo & placement, widgets, menus to the footer are available on Personal Blogily.
This theme provides faster & smoother experience to the user and has the ability to engage them with your contents as well. Blogily is supported by a wide range of browsers and devices. Blogily is another good choice for you if you are thinking about creating a forum as well.
Personal Blogily Demo | Download Personal Blogily
Now let’s check what are the performance score I have got for these free WordPress blog themes on GTmetrix, Pingdom and Page Insight accordingly.
Conclusion: There are many other themes which are free to use and well optimized for your WordPress site. To know about them you need to test them yourself and find the best one which looks great on your site. While these ten themes are my most favorite collection which you can utilize for better performance, better look and better engagement.
If you find any more don’t hesitate to mention in the comment box below.
