You love themes, I love themes, we all love themes. With millions of sites running on the state-of-the-art WordPress software and over a half-billion people visiting the Automattic network every month, there is a now a need more than ever for unique themes. Themes that make your site, your content, and your voice stand out from the crowd.
Along with this extraordinary growth we’ve been thrilled to watch a thriving marketplace of commercial themes drive innovation and quality in theme design while producing an amazing variety of theme choices for self-hosted WordPress sites.
Now we want to bring the same level of theme choices to the WordPress.com community—it’s time to give you a chance at not only more themes, but a chance to showcase your site with beautiful designs that will blow you away with their style and quality.
I am proud to introduce the very first two premium themes on WordPress.com: Headlines and Shelf.
Headlines is a sophisticated magazine theme from WooThemes with a Featured Post slideshow, multiple menus, and 15 beautiful color schemes. It’s available now for a one-time price of $45.
Shelf, from The Theme Foundry, is a unique tumblelog style theme featuring a fluid and responsive design. It’s available now for a one-time price of $68.
Learn all about these two themes by visiting our Theme Showcase, or purchase and activate a theme by going to Appearance → Themes in your dashboard—look for the “Premium” link next to “Recently Added.”
Along with the distinctive features and a gorgeous design purchasing a premium theme like Shelf or Headlines for your WordPress.com site also gives you full access to dedicated support on the WordPress.com forums. The premium themes forum there will be accessible only to site owners who’ve purchased a theme.
We hope to expand the collection of themes on WordPress.com in a big way in 2011. Look for a significant number of both free and premium themes coming your way this year. And, thank you to our WordPress.com community for helping the Automattic network reach the mark of 500 million unique visitors per month. We couldn’t do it without you!
WordPress.com News 
Awesome themes.
Both of them look nice. Maybe not now, in future I may consider to use one of those.
Well done my friend, well done. They seem to have a totally professional work 🙂
They are way too expensive. People get bored with themes pretty easily. I can’t imagine paying $45-$68 every time I fancy a theme. $10 would be a more reasonable cost. A better idea would be to sell a license to use, say, 10 premium themes.
Does it mean, by the way, that premium themes are the future and we’re not going to get any (or many) new free ones anymore?
Wow! Sweet but expensive.
These are super nice.
I love the idea of a premium theme, I just wish there were more to choose from. I think paying to have the look you want is definitely worth it. But I’d like to see more minimalist themes available—at a premium level. For me, the range of themes are extremely limiting and frustrating. Other than that, love WordPress and how user-friendly it is. Thanks!
Just in case you missed it, we launched a Theme Showcase recently that exhibits all our 100+ free themes. Here’s an look at Minimal themes: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/styles/minimal/.
I like them both! And Shelf is really something…
Too bad they’re not for free. I hope WordPress won’t stop coming out with more awesome and free themes.
While the Featured Posts aspect is nice, I think that by paying a price for a premium theme, you should be able to have more customizable features. For example, it seems like a customizable header image should be a bare minimum.
Maybe next time, I am going to buy this. Thank you. 🙂
What a nice theme! But why pay when you can get others (maybe even better ones) for free? LOL.
If I purchase a premuim theme, is there a window for a refund in the event that I do not like it as much as I thought I would? If this has been answered previously, I apologize. I looked through all the comments and on the forum first with no luck. Thanks in advance.
Premium themes have the same 30-day refund policy as our other premium features.
Very impressed by these, especially “Headlines”. If anything would inspire me to drop $45 on my blog, that would definitely be it. Very nicely done, WP folks.
The larger issue I see beyond cost (and this, of course, has NOTHING to do with WP) is that I’ve developed a branded look and style via the Pilcrow theme and I’m apprehensive about ditching it for a shiny new toy.
Very nice!
Is there a way we can preview it (see it in action – just like we do with the free themes) before we purchase it?
Yes, premium themes can be previewed right from your dashboard like free themes. You can also go to the Theme Showcase and click the “See it in Action” button in the sidebar to view a live demo.
Yeah! Nice themes… Looks professional.
Good move. Look forward to seeing more premium themes added.
I wish I could afford these….maybe in the next year or so. 🙂 I’m on an extreme budget until I’m debt free. Haha!
Meh. There are enough themes without spending money on more.
Not so brilliant as it may seem at first glance… Give people FTP access or some sort of interface so that they can install themes they designed themselves. Now that would be very very cool!.
Cool! Wish I COULD buy it but I can’t, thanks though.
I thought it would be $6-7, it’s too much to pay $45.
A tad pricey for one theme. I think the closest to Headlines is Fusion, and I think I would rather get that. There is only so much money one would pay for something. Thank you for the themes that are actually free.
I like these themes. It’s for very useful for us. Thank you.
Finally, glad that premium themes are available without self hosting… at least a couple to start. Great job WP!
I have to agree with some of the people speaking out against the current offerings. While I have nothing against the idea of premium themes, I don’t think these two themes at this price point is worth it. I expect a lot more out of a theme for $45 or $65. If I were to buy a premium theme than I would want something a lot more impressive than what I’m seeing here, something that makes my site look as amazing as many of the self-hosted websites that use WordPress as a base as opposite to the effort I’m seeing here.
It’s my /hope/ that the pricing on these themes came from the theme creators, and that WordPress is merely acting as an intermediary, getting the theme authors to sell their work through WordPress.com at a price they set. Maybe the theme author’s price will come down once they’ve realized they’ve set their price point way to high for their offerings.
I think it’s great to have the option of premium themes with WordPress.com sites. This may allow some people who want more exclusive themes to stay with wordpress.com rather than navigating over to a self-hosted wordpress.org site. Paying for a theme is still less-expensive than paying an annual fee for hosting a site. I would love to see even more themes added. The more options the better! (Of course, free is always better but it’s good to have options!) 🙂