Best Responsive WordPress Themes and Frameworks

WordPress is really an amazing open source eco system. Just looking at how many different free and paid responsive themes and frameworks there are already is mind-blowing!

The new WordPress default theme Twenty Twelve is an elegant, readable, and fully responsive theme that makes your site content look its best on any device, but having tested it on mobile devices myself, I can confirm that e.g. the main navigation styles are very basic and early beta IMHO.

Although I would prefer to build sites based on the new default theme, I thought it might be worth looking at other free (as in Open Source) responsive WordPress themes out there and I was not disappointed. Although there are many more, this article presents a small selection of responsive WordPress themes for developers and frameworks that are actively being developed.

Click on the title to get redirected to each project. The latest update date will give you a good idea on how active the project is being developed. The following listing is in chronological order.

Roots

Roots is a starting WordPress theme based on HTML5 Boilerplate & Bootstrap from Twitter.

• License: MIT License
• Latest Update: December 26, 2012

Bones

Built around the HTML5 Boilerplate, Bones is a rock solid foundation to start any WordPress project. Keep what you need, remove what you don’t. It’s totally up to you.

• License: WTFPL
• Latest Update: December 26, 2012

Responsive

Responsive Theme is a flexible foundation with fluid grid system that adapts your website to mobile devices and the desktop or any other viewing environment.

• License: GNU GPLv3
• Latest Update: December 24, 2012

Foundation, for WordPress

Foundation, for WordPress, is a blank starter theme built on ZURB’s Foundation Framework.

It features clean semantic code, smart use of WordPress functions and the WordPress Shortcode API.

• License: MIT License
• Latest Update: November 2, 2012

Whiteboard Framework

Whiteboard is not like most other WordPress Frameworks out there. While most other WordPress Frameworks include a mess of styles, functions, and content areas that have to be cleaned out for nearly every project, Whiteboard remains a true WordPress Framework. Whiteboard includes only the core WordPress structure and does not get fancy with unnecessary functions. While Whiteboard does include Less Framework and a minimal theme, these can be easily removed with the exclusion of a line of HTML each.

• License: GNU GPLv3
• Latest Update: September 12, 2012

Reverie

Versatile HTML5 Responsive WordPress Framework also based on the Power of Foundation.

• License: MIT License
• Latest Update: July 3, 2012

I have looked at the demos of all of these themes and frameworks and like most of them. Yesterday, I tested Reverie with WordPress 3.5 and had problems with the main navigation which made me conclude that a project that has not been updated in more than 6 months cannot really be relied on and is questionable to be used in production.

If you know of any other responsive WordPress themes and/or frameworks that are actively being developed, please leave a comment below.