35 Beautiful Commercial And Free Joomla Templates
Joomla is one of the most powerful, robust and feature-rich content management systems out there. Besides being open-source, Joomla is capable of some really stunning designs through the use of modules and built-in display customizations. Below, we present a list of 20 35 of the coolest, slickest, most eye-catching Joomla template designs.
Also consider our previous article:
- Joomla Developer’s Toolbox, which outlines some of the most useful tools when working with Joomla.
Commercial Templates
Mynxx | Demo | Support
This theme incorporates the popular Joomla ecommerce / shopping component, Virtuemart. This integration is applied in a variety of platforms, such as modules, a custom virtuemart theme and template coding. The custom Virtuemart theme allows us to override the core output, which results in a more seamless integrated with the Virtuemart shopping component.
Akiraka | Demo | Website
One of RocketTheme’s finest templates. The fully transparent design gives you complete control over the color of the website.
Lightfast | Demo | Website
The definition of a light and fast template. Joomla is powerful, but it is also big. Because of all the possible features to take advantage of, templates are often bloated with tons of code. Lightfast is Joomlashack’s response to this problem. The entire file is only 13k and is SEO optimized right out of the box. Template costs $39.95.
Simple Praise | Demo | Website
A very smooth rotating content module and lots of module positions makes this a very versatile Joomla template. Club membership costs $75 for 1 year.
Social Praise | Demo | Website
SocialPraise is built for community collaboration. It is templates like this that really show what Joomla! can do as a content management system. SocialPraise integrates completely with the most popular Joomla community building components like Community Builder and Fireboard forum. Club membership costs $75 for 1 year.
NewsPro | Demo | Website
A sliding content module crams headlines into this easy to navigate template. The small body text and expansive menu suggests this template would work well as a magazine layout. Club membership costs $99 for 1 year.
Periphelion | Demo | Website
One of the best grunge-themed templates for Joomla. Multiple color styles make this template incredibly versatile.
City Portal | Demo | Website
A clean, smooth template, perfect for a magazine or portal.
News Link | Demo | Website
As the name states, a great news template with built-in news rotator with tons of features.
Gridiron| Demo | Website
A simple but elegant alternative to the clutter of a typical Joomla template.
Vertigo | Demo | Website
A template with “Paralax Motion” built in. Check out the demo, because this template is about as cool as it gets.
Small Robot| Demo | Website
Another simple design for websites with less informaiton to display on the front page.
CelebsPlazza | Demo | Website
An eye-catching design with four styles built right in.
The News | Demo | Website
Another slick news template with a smooth image slideshow.
Jet30 | Demo | Website
A Web 2.0-style template for a blog or information portal.
Free Templates
Brown Kick | Download | Demo | Website
A cool coffee-themed template with unobtrusive navigation and nice blog styling.
Optimus | Download | Demo | Website
A straightforward Joomla template that could work for almost any kind of website.
Novus | Download | Demo | Website
An incredibly versatile template, ready for complete customization.
Simplify | Download | Demo | Website
Three color combinations and a block design make this template great for a professional presentation.
Contaminated | Download | Demo | Website
Another cool grunge theme with nice touches, like full typography options.
RokWebify | Download | Demo | Website
A Web 2.0 template with many color options and a simple interface.
EMagazine | Download | Demo | Website
As the name suggests, a good magazine template without being too heavy on bandwidth-eating images.
Portfolio | Download | Demo | Website
One of the best portfolio options for Joomla, perfect for artists and Web designers.
Jakarta Times | Download | Demo | Website
A super-simple news and blog template that loads fast but can hold tons of information.
VJ-08 | Download | Demo | Website
This simplest of simplistic designs provides one big header image to get your message across fast.
Nova | Download (free registeration required) | Demo | Website
This “pure CSS” template is great for a blog because of the front and center main body content. Three module positions are available for pushing RSS, a quick blurb or a login module.
Jamba | Download (free registeration required) | Demo | Website
Ten module positions and five preset color settings make this a truly versatile template. A newsflash module position lets you highlight important information.
Back to Nature | Download | Demo | Website
This 3-column template is an out-of-the-box option for blogging or an online community.
Praise Corp | Download | Demo | Website
An incorporated login form and search field compliment the boxy style of this template.
Contest Entry | Download (free registration required) | Demo | Website
This template was JoomlaPraise’s entry into the Joomla 1.5 template contest. With no shortage of module positions this template was good enough to be considered for part of the Joomla core.
Enchanted | Download (free registration required) | Demo | Website
Several module styles let you customize this template to fit your needs. Incorporation with the fireboard forum is a bonus feature of this template as well.
Pluralism | Download | Demo | Website
This simple template is one of the rare Joomla templates with a right sidebar. A big header draws attention to the content quickly.
Epic | Download | Demo | Website
This template can be customized in many ways. The free version comes with one color option but also a smooth image slideshow with a transparent caption feature. PRO Version available for $25.
Webmedie | Download | Demo | Website
This rounded template has glossy module styling and an oversized header.
ContentPortal | Download (free registration required) | Demo | Website
An incorporated search field fits nicely in this template. A large module position on top is perfect for a large banner or newsflash.
Further Resources
Check out some of these template resources:
- RocketTheme Template Club
- Official Joomla Template Documentation
- Announcements of new Joomla templates and extensions
- A Web-based template builder for Joomla
(al)
Eddy Munn
April 11th, 2009 5:29 amThey’re very good templates; although I don’t use Joomla, I can see some of these being good inspiration for my WordPress templates.
DKumar M.
April 11th, 2009 5:39 amWell, This list never gonna complete as there is so many good designs available for joomla. I personally think there is a need of more good free designs as all the free themes available is not very good or atleast good.
I using joomla for 2 of my projects and i made my own themes for that purpose.
Thanks for the collection Cyrus….Nice Overview !!
DKumar M.
Xander
April 11th, 2009 5:52 amVery nice post! :)
I keep noticing that Joomla has a big choice of templates for portfolios. Does anyone know where I can find some for WordPress (just got into it)?
Manuel
April 11th, 2009 6:12 amHmm, the commercial ones are nice.
But the other templates…
bs.kishore
April 11th, 2009 6:12 amJust the right stuff I was looking for.
Sinan
April 11th, 2009 6:35 amGood work. Nice to see that Smashing likes joomla !
Eric Garland
April 11th, 2009 7:01 amWhat a great resource – inexpensive web design is becoming sophisticated very quickly. I’ll pass this on to other developers!
DAvor
April 11th, 2009 7:06 amGreat choice of commercial templates, as for the free ones, these are truly the best out of free, unfortunately. Rockettheme.com guys are my favorites.
David Das
April 11th, 2009 7:14 amNice selection. Many of these are RocketTheme, who are deservedly one of the best Joomla template sites. It would be nice if some of the other major players (Shape5, etc.) were featured, as they do have some nice templates.
Those of you searching for similarly excellent WP templates should do searches at Smashing Magazine and you’ll find lots of links to “Best x number of free WP themes” articles.
Danish Refai
April 11th, 2009 8:01 amThat’s one hellova resource !!! Keep it up smashing !
scott
April 11th, 2009 8:39 amgreat work, as always, but a drupal list would be AMAZING!
Doc
April 11th, 2009 9:39 amI think you missed some YooTheme interesting theme…
Dennis
April 11th, 2009 9:44 amExcellent! Thank you!
SarahJames
April 11th, 2009 10:05 amCan’t wait to see your wordpress templates again… you guys always come up with good ones like LINK
MS
April 11th, 2009 10:59 amIt’s interesting that the commercial Jet30 template is simply an almost unchanged adaptation of the free Jet30 template from Template World. See http://www.templateworld.com/free_templates.html.
At least the person acknowledges the source for the design in the footer, but still…
Arda
April 11th, 2009 11:20 amIf this article was published in another site, I would think that it’s a sponsored article. Because it’s very surprising that there is no template from Joomlart.
They have many beautiful templates, which fits to any need, and each of them has a lot of color, layout options.
In my opinion, Joomlart is the best template provider on the internet. And one of their templates is already coming with the default Joomla distribution.
You can see their demo templates , and decide on your own.
As a footnote, I am not a Joomlart shareholder, employee, reseller or partner.
Custom
March 21st, 2010 5:00 pmNO! A business with absolutely no contact information, no information who is responsible for that biz (law), no telephone, no street, even not a country or location CAN’T be ‘…the best template provider on the internet…’! Serious guys are not hiding contact informations in the wild.
Thierry
March 27th, 2010 2:08 amCustom, what a stupid thing you just said. What’s the importance if you have address or not, it’s important if they offer good products and services. Anyone can write a fake address, and you will think that it’s serious business right?
Deontée
April 11th, 2009 11:41 amWow. Joomla designing has come a LONG way. I was a fan and user of Joomla (dating all the way back to the Mambo days) and these designs are leaps and bounds above what was being offered back then.
Michael Luna
April 11th, 2009 11:45 amI feel you all left out some great websites.
They also have great tools for free and commerical that are quite excellent.
http://www.joomlart.com is also a great site.
TJ
April 11th, 2009 5:34 pmYootheme.com has one of the most amazing themes for Joomla !
Anyway, good list – can’t wait for more Joomla inspired posts.
DrM
April 11th, 2009 9:10 pmwhile i saw the templates i just though… all this can be done in WordPress, what more have Joomla to offer? im talking about the design area, i dont know the system specs or capabilities, that would be good to know… some kind of WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal maybe!?
kadaffy
April 11th, 2009 11:09 pmI totally agree with – arda –
Rockettheme and Yootheme maybe look nice in demo on IE but when you start working with theme, all things change. They have serious IE bugs, and if the developers don’t know how to resolve them, how can a usual joomla user…. Anyway, I strongly recommend joomlart . I’m not a joomlart staff member or something, just is just my point of view.
Artur
April 11th, 2009 11:15 pmYou should add here one more template club: http://www.gavick.comThis guys have very nice and pro templates.
I don’t understand why the admins publush only tempaltes from the Rockettheme. (cash?)
PrfFrost
April 11th, 2009 11:52 pmwe see .. the best Templates for Joomla comes from Rockttheme … and this for a nice Price
Jorge Linares
April 12th, 2009 12:02 amNice templates, I’ve seen many more that work like a charm for any type of website niche you might be working on. Joomla might not be the smartest piece of of programming but it does a damn good job and it’s been improving every time a new release version comes out. *thumbs up*
MarcoBarbosa
April 12th, 2009 1:49 amNice list. Though you missed some nice templates but it’s hard to keep up with joomla – there’s something new all the time!
Cyrus
April 12th, 2009 6:17 amThank you everyone for the great feedback!
To the people concerned that their favorite wasn’t listed here, there are tons of template providers, and this is just short list. Hopefully there will be more Joomla posts in the future, so we will get to see more of them.
Also, both Gavick and Shape5 are listed.
Thanks!
Allahverdi
April 12th, 2009 7:50 amreally cool templates… better than WP
nic
April 12th, 2009 9:57 amWould agree, where’s YooTheme? Only templates I’ve ever bought for Joomla.
Good list otherwise.
frejik
April 12th, 2009 1:18 pmYou people at smashing magazine always astonish me !! I’ve just started working with Joomla and the need for a great theme arised.. This article is very helpful…
Thank you a lot..
:-)
Arda
April 12th, 2009 2:03 pmI know that it’s hard to write such articles, because you can not include every template in the market. And anyway, someone will be always angry about why you included or not included something in the list :) I hope that you will include some Joomlart templates in the future posts. Because they really deserve it much more than some templates in this article.
And finally, Best of Joomla! is a great resource for people who search for a free or commercial Joomla template. (This is not the one which is mentioned in the ‘resources’ section of this article.) Here is the link : Link
dogi
April 13th, 2009 12:24 amNice article! The link of `Back to Nature` is incorrect. This template is made by themza.com and not by joomlashack.
Regards!
hira kumar maharjan
April 13th, 2009 12:32 amsuperb deisgn collection of joomla
Brunofs
April 13th, 2009 4:46 amWonderful!
Post about Joomla are always welcome!
James Kelly
April 13th, 2009 5:49 amDoes anyone else around here use Umbraco? I’ve poked my head into Joomla and Drupal, and while I can see them as being very powerful and flexible, they don’t seem to have the grace of Umbraco. Or maybe it’s that I don’t go down the theme road..ever.
James.
Matt
April 13th, 2009 10:24 amSweet themes, but I prefer making my own theme. I love being an artist with these themes. My clients usually love it too.
ILLUMINZ
April 13th, 2009 11:00 amGood Templates. But not the best.
myDevWares
April 13th, 2009 12:23 pmI really gotta start learning how to code Joomla and Drupal. Would love to see a smashing post about that….
jackparsons
April 13th, 2009 6:52 pmThis article was illustrative in one unintentional way for sure: people can see what I’ve said before is true, and that Joomla’s community is paltry in comparison to WordPress. You can fall ass-backwards into great looking, free templates for WordPress, but the options for Joomla are increasingly barren (and what the hell is with that double top “navigation” and left or right column “menu” that Joomla template makers so adore? Has anyone ever felt that two blocks of links for finding your way around was a good idea?)
And for the record: I don’t use either, so the Joomla Jihadis can shout out their OPEN SOURCE MATTERS fatwas at someone else.
In any case, the gulf between pro Joomla templates and free ones is HUGE. I’m curious, outside of the staggeringly large base of WordPress vs. the small one of Joomla, why that is. Certainly there’s some enterprising students just messing around that want to share their creations with the world in every format.
Robert Heine
April 13th, 2009 11:05 pmSeems, they forgot two WordPress-Template conversions for Joomla: Imprezz and Magazeen ;-)
http://deltatech-v2.de/downloads/191-joomla-15-template-imprezz
http://deltatech-v2.de/downloads/185-joomla-15-template-magazeen
James
April 14th, 2009 12:34 amI think this article is poorly researched. So many good Joomla template designers are missing. Looks a little like the author is PRO Rockettheme. No doubt, they make greate templates, but not to mention all the other great Joomla designers is a shame.
I ask myself if Smashing Magazine is not reading over the articles. Or let someone of the Joomla community read it before publishing. It is obvious that this article is not really objectively…
Carlos Rojas
April 14th, 2009 5:04 amWe need more post like this !!!! Tanks
Necesitamos mas posts como este !!!! Gracias
dani
April 14th, 2009 5:53 amthank you so much for this post…I wish there were more joomla connected posts in the future
David Bennett
April 14th, 2009 8:52 amA post about how to create Joomla templates (tips and advice on best practice for creating templates) would be useful.
Cyrus
April 14th, 2009 9:23 amRobert,
Thanks, I hadn’t seen those conversions. So many times I’ve seen a great WP theme I wish was converted to Joomla.
James,
It’s a short article, only 35 of thousands of Joomla templates. Nowhere did it say it was an “Ultimate” or “Comprehensive” list of templates.
If anyone was offended that I left off their favorite template, I apologize. If I was asked to select one template from every commercial provider, the article would have looked a little different. Instead, I was asked to compile a list of some of my favorite Joomla templates. Rockettheme just happens to have created a number of my favorites.
Also, I take accountability for my article, by publishing my article SmashingMagazine did not endorse any particular template creator. That is why my name is under the title, not theirs.
George
April 15th, 2009 2:10 amsorry, should be joomla-monster instead of “joomla-monseter” :)
imaginepaolo
April 15th, 2009 2:21 amGreat Article…
What about this Web Design Agency?
Thank…
Rakesh S
April 15th, 2009 6:41 pmGood listing of Joomla templates, specially those given in the beginning.
abed el salam
April 18th, 2009 7:38 pmWow,Thanks
Link
festa
April 20th, 2009 1:10 pmNice one. Some great templates there.
I’ve used RocketTheme loads in the past and heavily modded some of them. They are very easy to use once you know how. Never too keen on the YooTheme ones, I find the designs are a bit on the ott side for my liking.
Vernon Decossas
April 28th, 2009 4:31 amGreat list, some of the templates are really nice. Thanks
Jane
May 17th, 2009 3:03 amThanks you very much for thissssssssss
benn
May 26th, 2009 11:06 pmhere is a nice one that should be on this list
http://joomla1.5.youjoomla.info/youmovies/index.php
anamario
June 23rd, 2009 5:34 ami serch a free template like commercial “NEWS LINK” ?????
help me please
dood
July 1st, 2009 1:04 amNice theme, i mean about graphic… but most of them got usability issues. Don’t use it for popular websites.
The blob
July 11th, 2009 10:46 amBackhander from RocketTheme anyone? lol.
alberfinder
July 13th, 2009 7:47 amoj that s was a nice joomlas templates, thanks very much for your resourses, smashingmagazine is on my number 1 Bookmarks.
greetings
Pierluigi Rotundo
August 4th, 2009 12:04 amamazing!!!!!! really great and useful post!!
Pierluigi Rotundo
bob ahmed
August 28th, 2009 5:08 pmwow…great Thx Allah for Joomla
jo
September 11th, 2009 2:40 amfucking mess
teban
September 21st, 2009 3:38 pmsesion validated :) great links
croustichoc
October 8th, 2009 8:16 amNice list !
There’s a good one, less popular, but they create minimal & clean beautiful templates : http://www.joomlabamboo.com/
David
November 27th, 2009 4:30 pmGreat post! Thanks Cyrus. I love Joomla and it has I lot of great templates.
If you want to look at it free and commercial ones you should visit http://www.bestofjoomla.com . This website is very useful for joomla users.
jason
December 4th, 2009 2:37 pmit says free templates. The very first one isn’t free. how am i suppose to download with out it linking me to a site where i have to sign up for over 50 bucks
OLIVIA26
February 9th, 2010 9:07 pmIf you try to find locality where you can get resume writing services here is very absolute place for you about this good post, which accommodate examples and gives an befalling to learn how make great CV resumes . But this site is more amusing, and more effectual.
Shooter
February 19th, 2010 1:24 amThe Best Extension To Create Forms For Joomla 1.5
http://creativeshooter.freehostia.com/wordpress/the-best-extension-to-create-forms-for-joomla-15/
raFF
March 18th, 2010 3:34 pmwell, I also like rocket theme, but I still think that gavickpro is the best.. I found great templates on http://filegraphic.com that handles my requirements. thanks
Jones
April 2nd, 2010 7:22 amYou wouldn’t be caught dead, where?
Tonya
April 11th, 2010 11:57 amWho were your best friends? What were they like?
Mark Ho
May 10th, 2010 7:50 amfrog cms is great. very simple, if that’s what you need. i use wordpress and frog cms, depending on the needs of the site. imo joomla isn’t a good choice at all – if you want to learn something other than wordpress i wouldn’t go with joomla. i’ve downloaded expression engine and cannot wait to try it out. everyone i know that uses it says it’s worth the small price (the download is free, though, to get started).
Mathews Nicole
July 23rd, 2010 4:06 amHi
I used http://www.joomlart.com template for my website dedicatedservershub.com . But i don’t find any template from joomlart above in your list. They have good templates. I tried another template from gavickpro.com but the some of my custom css not worked well in IE 8.
Thanks for your list.
Robert
November 24th, 2011 7:13 amHow comes nobody mentioned the templates from http://www.freshjoomlatemplates.com/ ? For example I have used the template called Freshock and I really like it.
Shawon
January 16th, 2012 10:36 pmWow! Coding.smashingmagazine.com is very beautiful web site because the web site is very Commercial and gives many joomla! templates. THANK YOU Coding.smashingmagazine.com