They say imitation is the best form of flattery. This is especially true in the design world. Elements from popular websites have been duplicated across the web. Some developers have gone one step further and attempted to duplicate the entire website design of a popular service.
You may be surprised at how great some of these imitation designs are. Some of them are so good it’s difficult to distinguish them from the original. If you have been searching for a good clone script you may have found that many of the clone scripts date back as early as 2007 to 2009. The scripts below, even the ones that are slightly older, should still work correctly with WordPress 3+. Bear in mind that if designs that were released in 2010 or earlier are unlikely to have many of the new features that WordPress has added over the last year, though this shouldn’t be a major problem for a clone WordPress theme.
Groupon Clone
With daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial valued at billions of dollars, it’s no surprise that many people are trying to get in on the action.
1. Daily Deal
Standard License: $89.95, Developer License: $179.00
The Daily Deal theme has everything you need to start your own Groupon style website. Users can submit their own deals and customers can buy deals using one of seven payment gateways. All deals are managed via the WordPress admin area.
Info & Download | Demo
RSS Aggregators
RSS Aggregator websites require very little time to start up and maintain yet they can be a good source of traffic. The success of AllTop and PopURLs has encouraged others to create websites that show the latest posts from popular websites.
2. Accumulo
Basic License: $59.99, Developer License: $149.99
A clean looking AllTop clone that comes with custom widgets for displaying RSS feeds. Social media widgets that display the latest updates from Twitter and Facebook are also included.
Info & Download | Demo
3. OneNews
Personal Option: $65, Developer Option: $149
Originally released in 2007, the OneNews theme was last updated in early 2021 so that it works on WordPress 3-0+ websites and above. A light and dark scheme are included in the package and there are widgets for displaying regular RSS feeds and updates from Flickr and video websites like YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion.
Info & Download | Demo
4. Aggegator
FREE
A great RSS aggregator theme that was released in early 2010 by Templatic for free. Similar to the other AllTop clones, it features a widget based layout for displaying the latest feeds and comes in two colour schemes (though they are very similar and share a white background).
Digg Clones
Digg is not as popular as it was a few years ago. This may be in part to the growth of social media services such as Twitter and Facebook. Social sharing sites are still popular and many sharing communities are still going strong.
5. Nominate
Basic License: $59.99, Developer License: $149.99
Nominate doesn’t imitate the Digg design though it does imitate its features. Visitors can sign up, submit articles and vote popular articles up and down the page. Spam protection is built in so you don’t have to worry too much about the submission form overwhelming your inbox.
Info & Download | Demo
6. Digg Like
FREE
Digg Like was built for normal blogs and websites. Rather than giving you social sharing functionality, the theme merely mimics the Digg design. The Digg design has changed slightly since this theme was released however it’s very close to the current design.
Info & Download | Demo
Fiverr Clone
The concept of Fiverr is quite simple. It’s a job board for people that are willing to do something specific for 5 dollars. Within the first year of its launch in 2010 there was over half a million jobs and tasks posted.
7. Pricerr
Single License: $69.99, Developer License: $149.99
Pricerr is one of the best clone themes available. Not only is the design identical to the one on Fiverr.com, it can do everything Fiverr can do. Users can post jobs and get paid via PayPal. The theme also has support for Google Maps, Twitter and Facebook and it has a private messaging service built in.
Info & Download | Demo
Newspaper Clones
With WordPress being a fully functional Content Management System (CMS), it´s no surprise that it clones news websites very well. The functionality for publishing a new website is already there, the clone themes simply change your design so that your content is published in a similar fashion to the news website it mimics.
8. New Yorker
Regular License: $39
A pretty good clone design of The New York Times website. The theme is WordPress 3.0+ ready and includes 7 custom widgets and integration with Feedburner and google Analytics.
Info & Download | Demo
9. WPSN
Regular License: $39
Another news clone from PressJunkie. WPSN is a great clone of the sports website ESPN. Like the New Yorker theme it has several custom widgets and support for Feedburner and Google Analytics.
Info & Download | Demo
Yahoo Answers
Yahoo Answers is the biggest Q & A website on the web. Questions range from practical DIY and computer related problems to completely irrelevant topics such as If the cow goes “Moo” and the sheep goes “Baah” what does the human say?.
10. WP Answers
Single License: $89, Developer License: $249
The WP Answers design comes in 6 colour schemes and is powered by a premium question and answer plugin to help you create a Yahoo Answers website. Visitors can register profiles manually or using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Members get points for answers questions and using the plugin you can pull content automatically from Yahoo Answers and display it on your site.
Info & Download | Demo
11. Answers
Standard License: $65, Developer License: $99
A beautiful question and answers theme that comes with 7 different colour schemes. It works in a similar way to WP Answwers though there is no option for importing data to your own site (if you don’t want duplicate content on your site this won’t be an issue).
Info & Download | Demo
Twitter Clone
A few years ago there were several Twitter-style themes available for WordPress though most haven’t been updated for years and look very outdated.
12. Live Twit
Free
Despite the demo not working any more on Templatic, Live Twit works well with WordPress 3.3+. It comes with 5 colour schemes and lets you publish updates for a specified keyword.
I’ve hope you’ve enjoyed this list of WordPress clone designs. I purposely left out many designs that I thought were too outdated though if you know of a good one that wasn’t included in this list, please feel free to share it in the comment area and I’ll add it to the list if it’s good 🙂
Good luck,
Kevin
