Free WordPress and HTML Themes — Drop Your Email and I'll Send the Zip

I've been quietly building WordPress and HTML templates on the side, and the first one is ready.

It's called Lumio — an editorial portfolio theme aimed at designers, photographers, and small studios. You get two flavors:

• lumio-wordpress.zip (~1.8 MB) — full WordPress theme, four Elementor home demos, demo content, twelve Pexels photos, and a buyer guide.
• lumio-html.zip (~15 KB) — pure static HTML/CSS. No PHP, no database, no WordPress. Drop it on any host.

Both are free. No upsell, no "pro version", no premium plugin you need to buy to make it look like the demo.

How to get it

This is the only place to get it — it's not linked from the homepage and not in the navigation.

Use the form further down this post. Drop your email, hit send, and the download links for both zips arrive automatically — usually within a minute. No reply-and-wait, no account, no portal. Subscribing also opts you in to new-post emails (one-click unsubscribe in every email, of course).

Why give it away

The honest answer: I don't want to run a marketplace.

I started this thinking ThemeForest. Then I read the rules — $13 price floor, weeks-long review queues, rebrand-rejection risk, mandatory branding rules, a 50% revenue cut if you stay non-exclusive. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for a side project.

So I flipped it. The theme is the gift. The newsletter is the relationship. If you like Lumio, you'll probably like the next one too — and I'd rather have your inbox than $7.50 net of fees.

What you actually get in the WordPress zip

This isn't a "starter" or a "boilerplate". It's a finished theme:

• WordPress 6.0+ / PHP 7.4+ compatible
• Theme Check: 0 REQUIRED · 0 WARNING · 0 RECOMMENDED — the same plugin reviewers run on ThemeForest submissions
• Translation-ready (lumio.pot included), RTL-ready (rtl.css), accessibility tags throughout
• Four Elementor home variants wired into the OCDI demo importer — pick one at install, it builds the home page for you
• Works without Elementor — the templates degrade gracefully so you're not locked in
• No premium plugins required — Elementor free + OCDI free + your favorite contact form plugin
• Twelve bundled images under the Pexels License (which explicitly permits redistribution in themes — Unsplash's post-2021 license does not, which is why most "free" themes ship with broken image placeholders)
• GPL v2 or later for the code. Fork it, rename it, ship it commercially — the license allows all of that. The names "makmel.info" and "Lumio" are trademarked, so a fork has to use a different name.

What you get in the HTML zip

The same designs, but stripped down to static files:

• Hand-written HTML/CSS — no build step, no framework
• Works on Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, GitHub Pages, S3, a USB stick
• 15 KB total. The whole thing loads before a typical WordPress site has finished its handshake.

If you want a portfolio up tonight and don't care about a CMS, this is the faster path.

Who this is for

• Designers who want a portfolio site that doesn't look like every other Squarespace template
• Small studios that want to own their site without paying $30/month for a builder
• People learning WordPress who want to study a theme that actually passes Theme Check
• Anyone who needs a clean static portfolio for a weekend project

If you're building a SaaS landing page or an e-commerce store, this isn't the right fit. Lumio is editorial — long-form portfolio work, project case studies, an about page, a journal. That's the whole scope.

What's coming next

Two more templates are planned:

1. A personal blog theme — opinionated typography, comments, RSS, the works
2. A vertical theme — probably healthcare or real estate, where the off-the-shelf options are particularly grim

Same model: subscribe, get the zip, no strings.

The catch (there isn't one, but read this anyway)

• Support is best-effort. I'll answer email, but there's no SLA. If you need same-day response, this isn't the right product for you.
• The footer credits makmel.info by default — editable through the WordPress Customizer (the GPL requires that it's editable). If you want to remove it, you can. I'd appreciate it if you don't.
• Bundled images are Pexels-licensed for use in the theme. If you spin off and redistribute under a different name, swap the images for your own to be safe.
• No tracking, no analytics, no phone-home code in either zip. I checked. You can check too — the code is right there.

Get it

The form is right below this section. Drop your email, hit Send me Lumio, and check your inbox.

If the email doesn't arrive in five minutes, check spam. If it's still missing, use the contact page and I'll send the link manually.

That's it. Go build something.