Smashing Magazine
Infinity: A Free WordPress Theme
If you have been following Smashing Magazine for a while you know that we love high-quality freebies. Over the last years we’ve featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free — among other things we presented high-quality free fonts, free WordPress themes, free wallpapers and, of course, free icons. 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 Infinity — a free professional WordPress-theme. The theme has 3 fixed columns, thumbnails integration, Flickr, Delicious and Twitter integration as well as an attractive visual design. The theme was designed by Zhang Yichi, the creative mind behind Vikiworks Studio from Shanghai, China especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Download the theme 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 our permission first.
- Preview (0.56 Mb)
- Download the theme (.zip-package, 2 Mb)
- Download PSD-sources (.zip-package, 7 Mb)
Features of the theme and Development Kit
- 3 fixed columns design
- Thumbnail covers style
- Flickr, Twitter and delicious integration
- not widget-ready (see the development-kit below)
Currently Yichi is working on an extended version of the theme presented above which will have a style switcher, integration with social networks and a number of JavaScript-based animations. However, at the moment it is quite buggy and he needs your help to get the theme done.
The theme (which is called Mashup) works eventually, but has some strange bugs — for instance, sometimes it freezes for some reason. Please get in touch with him to get the theme done or modify the theme directly:
- Mashup development kit
(similar to Infinity, but widget-ready and with a style-switcher)
Motivation behind the design
Here are some insights about the design process and development from the designer himself.
“Thanks to Vitaly for this great opportunity! I have to admit that I’m not very good at telling stories, basically it’s always been hard to explain every detail on how I get it done and why I did this and that… Partly the idea for this theme is based upon my own theme which has a slightly personal touch and uses vibrant and appealing colors. With some rambling designs and fancy head imagery, I’ve tried to put all pieces together to make the theme literally stand out.

Among other things, the start page window of the Infinity theme has thumnails and offers delicious-integration.
I tried to keep it as simple as possible, unlike regular post entries style, with WordPress custom filed functions. I’ve used them to show off image titles next to the thumbnails. This design decision is intended to catch reader’s attention in a better way, and it could be a huge advantage for portfolios where designers want to present their photos or design works.
I hope you enjoy this theme and I would love to hear any comments you have about my new theme, and for more information please visit my website. Or feel free to ask any questions regarding the theme in comments to this post — I’ll do my best to answer them!”

Posting preview of the Infinity theme
Thank you, Yichi. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.
Special requirements
- The theme has no problems in modern browsers and also works fine in Internet Explorer 6.
- WordPress 2.5 or higher is required.
- Some plug-ins are required for the theme to work (all of them are included in the download-package).
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 may be interested in the following free WordPress-themes as well:
The team here at Smashing Magazine. Mostly Sven & Vitaly.
- 277 Comments
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January 19th, 2010 4:24 amDoes anyone know how to convert the thumbnails code to the new thumbnail feature in wordpress? Tried a lot of stuff but didn’t work :(
- 253
January 19th, 2010 6:00 amchange the back ground coior
- 254
February 1st, 2010 1:12 amany wan now how change the {0}
for nothing.:S
thanks.
- 255
February 3rd, 2010 3:54 pmTo do that you need to open index.php file in theme folder and, on line 20, delete:
P.S Experiment this this line if it doesn’t work. It work’ed for me.
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February 3rd, 2010 8:40 amHello,
I got a little problem with flickrRSS images.
1.I uploaded flickrRSS to plugin folder
2.I Activadet it throw plugin’s options in administration panel
3.I created set on flickr.com ant entered its number from url into flickrRSS setings, also ID Number from idGettr.Problem: images dont upear on blog, I tryed everything, even reinstaled all my wordpress blog, but nothing works…
Help me please.
- 257
February 22nd, 2010 4:30 pmhttp://eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/ -> This might help you. :)
It contains some instructions for editing the plugin. - 258
March 3rd, 2010 5:51 pmI am using the theme , and if you need help drop me a line …
- 259
April 30th, 2010 3:33 amHello!
maybe you can help me…
I would like to have the small thumbnails line at the bottom, like on the preview…have you got any idea how this works?
Thank you in advance!
Marlene - 260
June 29th, 2010 6:01 pmTo Christian Martell – How do we get in contact with you to get your advice?
I think this design is wonderful but I need help with replacing the background picture.
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March 1st, 2010 10:49 pmThis is a very beautiful theme..having almost 300 comments, this post speaks for itself. Like always great work.
- 262
March 6th, 2010 10:36 pmHow do i integrate a search functionality ? Thanks
- 263
March 23rd, 2010 1:46 pmDoesn’t seem to work on 2.9.2 :(
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March 27th, 2010 7:01 pmthanks, It is great design.
- 265
April 2nd, 2010 8:46 pmWow what a wonderful theme. I recently added it to my website and it looks stunning!
There is one problem though that I did search for on the net and I looked through these posts but have not found anything concerning the problem with posts right aligning instead of left align. How do I fix this?
For example, at my post page it will right align instead of left align – here is my website: http://csscandiez.com/2010/03/24/wp-coda/
If anyone could let me know how to fix this, that would be great.
- 266
April 29th, 2010 11:47 pmHi there, very nice theme!
i would like to have the line of small thumbnails at the bottom,
like on the preview…does anyone know some about it?
thanxx!m.
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April 30th, 2010 8:56 amHola !
By any chance anyone still have the theme package/ installer. I have been trying to find and all the package has faulty style sheet.
Love this style very much. Wld appreciate any kind help if you may e-mail to visualrhapsody@gmail.com
Many thanks in advance !
- 268
May 8th, 2010 8:22 amdoes no work for the new wordpress :(
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May 8th, 2010 4:38 pmCool theme!
How can i change the blue backgroundcolors of “categories”, “tags” etc.?
- 270
May 31st, 2010 9:18 amOiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, baixei esse tema, é lindo, eu amo este site! Principalmente porque é de graça os temas lindo que eu gosto, kkkkk. Parabéns e continue assim… Fuiiiiiii.
- 271
June 17th, 2010 1:04 amThanks for sharing this great theme. I used it for my online portfolio qriozoom.com. Only with few changes:)
- 272
June 29th, 2010 10:32 ami wus leeching ur feeds but they render so badly…… =P =))) helllo
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June 29th, 2010 10:32 amThe theme does look great …..thx a billion also check the psd’s at deviantart.com
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June 29th, 2010 7:00 pm的确很漂亮 。
很喜欢!
- 275
July 14th, 2010 5:01 pmI was wondering how do I reduce the number of posts displayed on index.php. From 10 to 6.
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July 15th, 2010 7:46 amHi Fellas
I’ve installed the Infinity template looks very easy to customize except the thumbnails on frontpage i’ve spent several hours to understand how i can ad pictures to the post to show them as thumbnails on front page how i can do it, im using the version of wordpress inferior of 3.0, i’ve downloaded an plugin called thumbnail post hunger to try to fix the issue of front page thumbnail but it still isn’t work
thanks for give me the quicksilver bullet to get this theme done easier and faster
thanks
cm- 277
July 29th, 2010 1:36 amHi Carlos,
I have the same problem than you. Did you find a solution for the the thumbnail in the front page?
I was trying different ways but nothing works, I used other wp template that have a plugin that automatic upload a picture and resize for the thumbnail and you could setting the size.
But for this template I don’t know what to do
- 277
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i dont know how to get the tag cloud working or how to change the bottom background color.