I wanted to run some more interesting queries against the themes on wordpress.org, so earlier this evening I pulled down the theme data into a local database. Eventually I want to “feature” some nice but maybe not super popular themes, so I’ve run a few queries to find out how things are rated, what the number of downloads is, etc. So, here are some interesting results.

Bouquet, by Automattic, is the “best” theme — it has the highest rating/downloads combo.

Catch Everest, by catchthemes, is probably a better “best”, with the highest rating/number of ratings/download combo. Sequel, by ZGani, is the “best” child theme.

Interestingly, removing number of downloads doesn’t affect which themes are in the top ~5, just the order. Since number of ratings should correspond to downloads, this isn’t too surprising.

The average theme is rated 8 times, with a score of 60 (3 stars), and downloaded 47,957 times. If I remove the themes with no ratings, the average rating jumps to 88. So… is everyone too nice, or are wp.org themes just that great?

Automattic has the highest number of themes, at 54, followed by tskk (32) and InkThemes.com (27). If I remove child themes, Automattic is still in the lead (though only 48 now), followed by InkThemes.com (still 27), and ThemeZee (23).

The scatterplot above was just thrown together quickly, I wanted to see if the number of tags on a theme affected the number of downloads or rating. The chart has rating on the x axis and downloads on the y, with number of tags controlling the hue (red, fewer tags, blue/purple, more). It doesn’t seem to though, since most of the dots ended up green everywhere- which is about average.

Anyway, that was my exciting night (need to do something while Mel hogs the TV for Dragon Age :) ) - look for some future posts on lesser-known awesome themes!