To browse, preview, and activate these themes, simply visit the WordPress.com Theme Showcase, select your Jetpack site from the sidebar (if you have more than one), and scroll down to the all-new “WordPress.com themes” section.
It’s now also possible to manage and upload any theme to your Jetpack site from this very same interface. You can also search through the new showcase by theme name (Lodestar!), feature (like Sidebar), color (try Green), type (Restaurant or Portfolio), and more.
There’s more.
Although we’re announcing today that you can use 165 themes for free, we’ll continue adding more to our showcase. Last year alone, we added 11 new free themes, and we’ll be continuing that work to make sure that you always have a fresh look available for your existing or future sites.
Give it a spin. Try searching for a new theme and, as always, contact support for any assistance.
Pro Tip: Personal plan customers benefit from priority support and faster assistance.
Jetpack 
How will support work for the individual themes? Does it all go through Jetpack?
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Our Jetpack happiness team already support a lot of theme requests and Jetpack users can contact us directly, as linked to in the original post.
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This is really awesome! Some questions:
1. How will theme updates work? Are these themes on a shared update schedule like the core Twenty _____ themes?
2. I assume that the theme can be hacked/child themed like any other theme without restriction once installed?
3. Is there any way to download/preview the theme before use?
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Updates are not on a shared update schedule; they happen theme by theme, as we fix bugs and release new features for those themes.
Each theme can be hacked and customized like a regular theme; once you install it it is downloaded and added to the list of themes under
wp-content/themesin your dashboard. You can consequently create child themes for those themes as well.There are 3 main ways to preview a theme before to use it, all from the theme’s page in your WordPress.com dashboard:
Give it a try, and let us know what you think!
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Happiness leads the way. Teams that are happy work together.
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Beautiful thank you
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This is SO great. Thanks for the freebies haha ❤ JetPack!
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great widget, thank you!
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Please correct if I’m wrong, but aren’t those all from wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com? there are almost 340 themes there.
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That’s correct. Some of the themes listed in the SVN repository are already available on WordPress.org though, so they’re not new; the themes were already available to you under Appearance > Themes > Add New in your dashboard!
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How about SEO friendly?
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All our themes follow strict WordPress theme guidelines and code reviews and so are compatible with search engine best practices.
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Thank you for the generous sharing of these themes. I hope to find and make use of a nice one – in this selection – soonish. Thanks to everyone on your team who made this possible
Regards,
Scott
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Does this apply to self-hosted WordPress installs or only those on WordPress.com?
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It applies to both. You can use the themes on your self-hosted site once Jetpack is installed on your self-hosted site.
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Many many thanks!
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Would installing a new theme mean I need to create new pages. Or can I simply add the new theme and keep the same images and wording on them?
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Installing a new theme does not require you to re-create any existing posts or pages. They should all be automatically updated to use the new design.
The reverse is also true: if you install and activate a theme and you decide its not the right fit you can just as easily switch back.
You can also choose to Preview a theme before you activate it.
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Nice themes. I like them all. Great collection
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Well Done! Free access to the 165 themes great news XD, Thanks!!!
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Does Jetpack has a specific section to change the footer credits of the themes? Thanks.
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Jetpack doesn’t include an option to do that just yet, but we may add one in the future! Until then, we’d recommend creating a Child Theme to customize every element of your theme.
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Thanks Jeremy for the update!
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Trying to activate one of the free themes (Franklin) on my site (www.preining.info/blog) while being logged in did give me an error:
“Unable to activate theme. Contact support.”
Anything that has to be activated on the local installation (JetPack of course)?
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Could you send us more information about your site via this form, so we can take a closer look and help you get this fixed? Thanks!
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I think this is a good news for me. Great themes, I like it.. them all.
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I’ve never used the free themes that are available on WordPress.org. I was always told to use the premium themes because they are better than the free themes in all aspects, particularly the coding aspect. I want to know what are the differences between the free and premium themes available on Jetpack. Thanks.
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There are pros and cons to using free vs premium themes, but the code should not be a factor.
All themes — free or paid — that are approved as official WordPress themes (which includes all Jetpack’s free themes) are subject to the same coding standards and criteria.
The downsides of using free themes are related to the support you receive (most free theme authors don’t provide support; we do) and that they’re less unique (more people use them because they’re free).
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I have already spent $35 on my current theme, now I am happy that I don’t want to spent money on WordPress theme,now I can use 165 themes without any cost,thanks to jetpack
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Well done WordPress Team, These themes are awesome 🙂
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Thanks Jetpack. Awesome! Well done WordPress Team.
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I feel that blogging has had its day and no amount of free themes will make the slightest difference.
I spend 10 hours a day 7 days a week writing original weather and climate articles for my xmetman blog, but typically get around 60 views each day.
Is it me and what I write not being if interest, or is it my apathetic audience? I obviously think it’s the latter!
More free themes is good news, but I feel that the tide has been on the turn as far as blogging is concerned for some years now.
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Themes are just one part of many things that contribute to making a site successful. And its worth noting that a lot of our themes are useful not just for bloggers but for any site type like small business sites, portfolios, restaurants, and many more.
If you’re having trouble with traffic to your site I would encourage you to look at other avenues for improving your situation.
For example, looking at your site I notice that it is not optimized for mobile which is something that nowadays is a huge factor in both audience engagement as well as Google and other search engine rankings.
You can also look at some free (and paid) SEO tools to help you work out whether you can improve your keywords, article length, and linking approaches.
The above things are not ones Jetpack can help with directly but some features of Jetpack can also assist with promotion and traffic generation, in particular features like automated promotion, related posts, and sharing tools. You can read more here: https://jetpack.com/features/traffic/
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Thanks for the advice Richard – is optimising for mobile part of the theme? Does it cost you turn it on and where are the settings?
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The free themes built by WordPress.com and mentioned in the post above are all responsive, which means that they’re optimized for mobile out of the box, and will look good regardless of the device you’re using.
If you’d rather not change your theme just yet, you can use another free Jetpack feature, Jetpack’s Mobile Theme. This feature can be enabled by going to Jetpack > Settings in your dashboard. Once you’ve enabled it, your readers will see a different, mobile-optimized, theme when they access your site from their smartphone.
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I can’t find download option. I would love to try some of the themes on localhost…
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Since your local development site is not publicly accessible you won’t be able to connect it to WordPress.com. You consequently won’t be able to install WordPress.com themes on your site in one click, from the WordPress.com interface.
However, you can still download each theme thanks to the “Download” button you’ll find at the bottom of each theme page on WordPress.com, like here. You will also find a download link in the sidebar of the theme info page, like in this example.
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As a Cabinet Design firm we have a Houzz.com profile and would love to have that included in our social media buttons. Is this possible? I’m really liking the Dara free theme… 🙂
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Dara’s Social links don’t support Houzz.com out of the box, but we can help you add an extra button with some CSS. Send us an email and we’ll help!
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Awesome! Thank you!
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Thank you very much!!! I’m deffinitely looking further into it…
And btw congrats, is a wise move
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Hi, I don’t see the “WordPress.com themes” section. Only the uploaded themes… And yes: I’ve updated the WordPress and Jetpack plugins.
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Could you check on this page? If you still do not see any WordPress.com Themes, it could be because you are not allowed to install new themes on your WordPress site, either because you are not an admin or because your site is part of a Multisite network where only super admins are allowed to install new themes.
If you’re an admin on a single WordPress installation and still experience issues, don’t hesitate to contact us via this form and give us more information about your site, we’ll help you figure this out!
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Hi, is this offer still valid? Or is there any deadline?
Thanks
Pavel
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Pavel, there’s no deadline. They will always be free.
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I have a network install. If I go to the “All Sites” part of the menu I get the ability to access the extra themes but when I try to activate them it gives me a dropdown with only one of the subsites on it and the activate button does nothing.
If I go to the sub sites within the network then the extra themes aren’t available – it only shows me what I’ve already got installed.
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That seems to be a bug, thanks for the report. We’ll track it here, and see about getting this fixed!
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Wow! This is nice! Thanks Jetpack Team! More power to you!
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You should state that the premium themes can ONLY be used on wp.com sites.
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Premium themes should not appear at all in the theme picker if you’re managing your Jetpack site on WordPress.com. If you do see Premium Themes in there, you’re most likely managing a WordPress.com site, not a Jetpack site. Could you check and let me know if you still see Premium themes when managing your Jetpack site?
Thanks!
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i received email form jet pack stating try free themes. is that applicable for premium theme available in wordpress?
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No, only the free WordPress.com themes are available for installation on your Jetpack site.
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