Fervens: A Free WordPress Theme
If you have been following Smashing Magazine for a while you know that we love to release high-quality freebies. Over the last years we’ve featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free. You can find many of them in our section Freebies.
Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.
Today we are glad to release a fervens — a free professional WordPress-theme. The theme has 3 columns of fixed width, comes in 3 flavours and is supposed to be a starting point for your projects. The theme was designed by Elena Gafita especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Main features of the theme
- 3 columns of fixed width
- widget-ready — two sidebars (both sidebars are supporting widgets, but I recommend to use the smaler one.
- the theme is using 3 plugins; 2 of them are integrated into functions.php, so there is no need to install them. These plugins are Gravatar, Recent Comments and FlickrRSS. You can use the last one to present your Flickr images in a Flickr Photostream (see the demo).
Motivation behind the design
We have provided Elena with the freedom to explore her creativity and asked her to create a fresh WordPress-theme which could be used and extended for a variety of different projects. Here is how Elena explains what prompted her to design the theme the way it is released now.
“Fervens is the name for the new theme I made for my friends from Smashing Magazine. But what is Fervens and what does it mean? As you might know, I give Latin names to all my themes simply because I believe they are more practical, more brandable and they just feel right to me.
Fervens is supposed to stand for freshness. Summer is my favorite time of year as it always amazes us with a rainbow of sensation and colors, making this time of year the best of all. The green of the plants and trees, the blue of the water… It’s just amazing and beautiful. And this was the reason why one of the sidebars was chosen to be designed with different variations of green.
The sidebar of the theme was chosen to be designed with different variations of green.
With this new theme I have tried to get something out of that “summer freshness” and deliver it to the Web in a form of a WordPress-theme which is easy to use and to extend. Because I couldn’t agree with Vitaly regarding the column positions we decided to make 3 versions of it:
- Fervens A (Sidebar 1, Central Column, Sidebar 2),
- Fervens B (Sidebar 1, Sidebar 2, Central Column) and
- Fervens C (Central Column, Sidebar 2, Sidebar 1).
I hope you enjoy this theme as much as I enjoyed making it. Thanks Vitaly for the opportunity!
The Fervens Theme is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This means that you may use it for your personal and commercial projects and you may also make any changes — just don’t remove the credits from footer. ;-)”
Elena has also designed a small button for Smashing Magazine and all Smashing readers out there. Thank you, Elena. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.
Download the themes for free!
You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission — please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you are planning to release your modification, please ask for a permission first.
- Demo
- Download PSD (.zip-package, 0.3 Mb)
- Download the theme (.zip-package, 0.1 Mb)
- Support and Feedback
- Demo
- Download PSD (.zip-package, 0.3 Mb)
- Download the theme (.zip-package, 0.1 Mb)
- Support and Feedback
- Demo
- Download PSD (.zip-package, 0.3 Mb)
- Download the theme (.zip-package, 0.1 Mb)
- Support and Feedback
Last but not least…
We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.
If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a WordPress-theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please contact us — we would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine).
You can also subscribe to our RSS-feed 
, we are going to release more free WordPress-themes in the future.
Paul
August 5th, 2008 1:28 amVery nice. Thanks a lot for this one.
Nico
August 5th, 2008 1:42 amNice!
However, it phones home without noticing the user (see trackTheme in functions.php), which is not such a good idea in my opinion… especially when the files (ie.css) are read-only, the theme sends a mail on every page request…
Eli
August 5th, 2008 1:44 amAbsolutely beautiful! Just like every other theme Design Disease has done so far. I’ll have to find a use for this beautiful theme.
Ben jacob
August 5th, 2008 2:00 amWow nice theme, simple yet beautiful
Daniel
August 5th, 2008 2:00 amReally nice design! Thanks!
You can really see the similarities with the current Design Disease homepage, which they have just redesigned.
Dresah
August 5th, 2008 2:08 amExcellent work. Congratulations!
Kevin
August 5th, 2008 2:12 amIt’s like I’m looking at another same DesignDesease design. It’s all so similar…
Dave Miers
August 5th, 2008 2:30 ambeautiful!
Abdel Faiz
August 5th, 2008 3:43 ammassive thanks !!
Illusiv
August 5th, 2008 3:49 amNice color scheme!
Johan
August 5th, 2008 4:15 amBeautiful design. I’m using it on my blog now. Although I can’t seem to be able to change the default About section on the main page. Where is that located?
Tom
August 5th, 2008 4:24 amLovely work, well done.
I like the possibility to choose between 3 layout versions.
Andrea_R
August 5th, 2008 4:27 amBeautiful theme. :)
The only thing I woudl like to see with variations like this, is have it all bundled with an options page for the theme, so there’s only one to download, not three.
And yes, it can be done fairly easily.
kiwiki
August 5th, 2008 4:28 amWhat do you mean by the theme phones home?
Are they using this to track people who is using their theme?
Is it fair to remove this function?
It would be great if you explain this a little more.
Thanks
ThemeLib.com
August 5th, 2008 4:30 amGreat! I love this theme :)
crazyleaf
August 5th, 2008 4:40 amThat is a really beautiful theme.
elena
August 5th, 2008 4:47 am@kiwiki
That is not true. The theme send just on single email once is installed. After that no email and “no phone home”.
Fouad Masoud
August 5th, 2008 4:55 amnow this one is good.
thumbs up.
kiwiki
August 5th, 2008 4:59 am@elena
Thanks for the clarification.
Evan
August 5th, 2008 5:20 amWow, excellent theme – is there any way to make the entire sidebar the color scheme of the search section?
manu
August 5th, 2008 6:53 amHi my favorite is fervens-c, but I really love the redesign of Design Disease, is haunting me, i wish someday to make one alike, thanks Elena & Smashing Magazine!
wellblog
August 5th, 2008 6:55 amGreat theme! Thanks! I was looking long time for a clear theme…the post was to late:) now I have taken the blogging-pro theme – take a look: wellblog
Alex
August 5th, 2008 7:01 amLook like VIMEO !
Reiji
August 5th, 2008 7:11 amI just installed it, but had to change that green…now its blue/grayish…Take a look…looks beautiful.
Angel
August 5th, 2008 7:19 amThe about section is hardcoded into sidebar-2.php for some reason.
Julien
August 5th, 2008 8:35 amExcellent theme.
I wish the sidebar could easily be moved by the user, or could disappear when on a page… As the main column is not large enough for “big” articles, and makes it hard to read.
Cheers,
Julien
ferre cinq
August 5th, 2008 9:00 amgreat favicon!
Biscuitrat
August 5th, 2008 9:05 amActually, fervens, ferventis means something more along the lines of seething, burning, and ardent. Like the word “fervently.” The Latin word you’re looking for is probably closer to viridis, which means a green freshness.
Sorry, that’s the Latin half of my brain acting up. Lovely theme (as usual). Keep it up :D
Ultimate Blogging Experiment
August 5th, 2008 9:31 amI will be using this for my new blog. Thanks a bunch for showing us! This is one of the best free WordPress themes I have seen in a very long time! I absolutely love this web site and I’m sure going to come back daily. Thanks again.
Lahure dai
August 5th, 2008 10:18 amthis theme looks quite cool. thankx.
elena
August 5th, 2008 10:20 am@Biscuitrat
fervens : glowing, hot, heated /(character) heated, fiery. You are right. Next theme will have that name “viridis”. :D
nana777ing
August 5th, 2008 10:41 ami’m using his theme, gossipcity, for a year and I love it. I will try this one. Thanks.
Kurt
August 5th, 2008 10:49 amNice theme. I’ve been using Smashing Theme for my blog ever since it came out, but I must admit that its starting to get on my nerves… the colors… so many colors… all I see is a horrible rainbow!! I like Fervens-A and will give it a shot, customize it and hopefully not completely blow up my WordPress install… that would upset the total of two people who read my blog.
Mike
August 5th, 2008 1:12 pmFYI, this theme goes into a fatal error when combined with the Gravatar plug-in. Just delete the wp-gravatar folder from your directory to fix the error.
Tiago Sá
August 5th, 2008 2:48 pmI don’t get it. His themes are pretty much all the same, and this one’s not really that cool…
Anyway, I did my very own interpretation of illacrimo: http://nocontinues.net/
A bit more colorful, and I think it looks very cool.
Muhammad Hakim
August 5th, 2008 8:21 pma very nice theme!
that’s why i love smasingmagazine, great contents!!!
Mark Ford
August 5th, 2008 10:09 pmI’m obviously missing something, how do I activate the Flickr RSS?
Great theme by the way.
Mark Ford
August 6th, 2008 1:21 amI’ve looked in functions.php and there’s no mention of flickr, so I’m assuming that’s why the flickr plugin isn’t working? How do I fix it?
Help please!
sayohmygod
August 6th, 2008 2:24 amTiago Sá (August 5th, 2008, 2:48 pm)
better the original.
Cecep
August 6th, 2008 3:23 amsimple, elegant theme :)
Mark Ford
August 6th, 2008 4:44 amNever mind, I figured it out. If anyone else is wondering how to get the flickr feed to work, you need to install the plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flickr-rss/
JadiysonTaki
August 6th, 2008 5:33 amGreat ! wonderful wordpress theme !
psycholq
August 6th, 2008 6:44 amVery nice theme but it doesn’t work on my wordpress (2.6). When I try to activate f-b or f-c wordpress shows only white screen.
elena
August 6th, 2008 7:09 am@psycholq
The theme is tested in wordpress 2.6 and it works. I don’t know what to say regarding your problem.
Gabe Diaz
August 6th, 2008 10:13 amVery nice theme, thanks for sharing!!
odguela
August 6th, 2008 4:55 pmIs there any possibility that a blogger version will be released? Teehee.
Rakesh.S
August 6th, 2008 8:08 pmI always look around to see nice wordpress theme. and this one is great. Nice, simple and elegant in style.. Thanks for sharing :-D
annots
August 6th, 2008 8:29 pmwhat a nice theme, thanks!
aravind
August 6th, 2008 10:03 pmdesigndisease and smashing magazine are known as trendsetters.. but the theme is NOT at all look impressive
transparent_opacity
August 9th, 2008 3:06 pm@psycholq
Agreed, same here, view source and I just get:
“”
I tried disabling at cache and also check for the closing HTML tag. No dice.
skapiso
August 11th, 2008 6:00 amI found a bug on IE6 and i don’t manage to fix it.
When you post a comment, each comment has it padding left decreasing and after 7/8 comments, they are on the left border. Has someone seen it?
m.o.m.
August 11th, 2008 1:45 pmVery nice and harmonic!
tintin
August 12th, 2008 1:26 ami try this themes but it’s not supported with bryan threated comment
somebody got a clue ..?? :(
Raj
August 15th, 2008 5:46 pmvery nice theme. Thanx a lot for releasing free.
Sharjeel Ahmed Qureshi
August 22nd, 2008 10:29 amFantastic! Thanks a lot :)
hangman
September 23rd, 2008 5:51 amvery nice theme, doesn’t work in IE6 though :(
Martin
October 6th, 2008 2:02 pmI’m having some problems with it suddenly being reverted to the WordPress Classic theme. Works at first and then gives up at times when I hit refresh.
hombertho
November 2nd, 2008 12:38 amGreat Theme and work. Thumbs Up :-)
AdamK
November 14th, 2008 7:54 am#60, Martin : are you hitting refresh while the stylesheet hasn’t finished uploading? That can do it…
Andi
December 12th, 2008 5:53 amHi! Great work! Is the template compatible with wordpress 2.7? Best, Andi
dalidas
January 2nd, 2009 10:46 amI’m writing from Turkey. I like your Thema. It’s very nice that you ive writing the subjects about seo.
Bingo
January 8th, 2009 8:46 amWicked. Thanks a lot!
Fish
February 9th, 2009 4:39 pmDoes this theme work with the latest WP2.7?
Thx
Fish
hulaha
February 20th, 2009 1:53 amplease, does anybody know how to fix that padding bug in IE6??
stylish
June 9th, 2009 10:43 amabout section give me an error, i can change the text that say “This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. “. but, it’s nice template