It’s been a crazy run, but we’re finally at the very end of Theme Madness. After six rounds, nearly 200 submitted brackets, and a collective total of more than 30,000 points, it’s finally time to name the winners.
Five rounds of voting eliminated 62 impressive WordPress theme shops from the running, including some of the largest businesses in the …well, business. This last round brought Elegant Themes against ThemeFuse in one of the more intense rounds that we’ve seen. We have the results of the voting, as well as the bracket winner, just after the jump.
Elegant Themes vs. ThemeFuse
As we’ve done many times, we totaled up the number of votes in the polls, the number of tweets on Twitter, and the number of comments on their respective blogs. We ended up with two totals that blew our earlier point totals out of the water. The results are:
- 15. ThemeFuse: 968 points
- 3. Elegant Themes: 1,416 points
Which means Elegant Themes is the winner, and they will play again on—wait, that’s it. We’re done. Elegant Themes is the winner!
Congratulations to both Elegant Themes and ThemeFuse for making it all the way to the finals, as well as all of the other teams that competed. It was a lot of fun to watch each round happen, particularly because everyone was such a good sport about it all. Thanks to all the theme shops for playing along, and congrats again to Elegant Themes, the Theme Madness 2011 champion!
Bracket Winner
Nearly 200 brackets were submitted, all taking stabs at who would be here in the finals and win the trophy. In the end, though, the bracket scoreboard looks like this:
| First Name | Last Letter | R 1 | R 2 | R 3 | R 4 | R 5 | R 6 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan | I | 27 | 11 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 46 | |
| Eric | H | 27 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 45 | |
| Brian | R | 28 | 10 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 44 | |
| Troy | C | 28 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 44 | |
| Syed | B | 28 | 11 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 44 | |
| Tan | YC | 25 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 45 |
| Baris | A | 26 | 11 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 43 | |
| Steven | G | 26 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 43 | |
| AJ | C | 25 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 42 | |
| Pavel | C | 26 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 42 | |
| David | M | 27 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 42 | |
| Ashley | H | 26 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 42 | |
| Aaron | K | 24 | 9 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 41 | |
| Sandra | C | 25 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 41 | |
| David | M | 27 | 9 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 41 | |
| Prapassorn | P | 24 | 11 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 41 | |
| Jerry | T | 25 | 10 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 41 | |
| Jared | A | 28 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 41 | |
| Joe | M | 24 | 11 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 41 | |
| John | G | 25 | 11 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 41 | |
| John | B | 25 | 11 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 41 | |
| Peter | A | 29 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 42 |
| Dave | B | 26 | 11 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 41 | |
| Cliff | S | 25 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 40 | |
| Dumitru | B | 25 | 11 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 40 | |
| James | B | 26 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 40 | |
| Bryce | J | 26 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 40 | |
| Ed | B | 26 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 40 | |
| Noel | T | 26 | 9 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 40 | |
| John | M | 27 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 40 | |
| Aaron | L | 27 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 40 | |
| Maria | C | 23 | 11 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 39 | |
| Hein | M | 24 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 39 | |
| Charlie | J | 25 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 39 | |
| Cristopher | O | 25 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 39 | |
| Jon | B | 24 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 40 |
| Conor | P | 27 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 39 | |
| Patrick | D | 26 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 39 | |
| Travis | N | 25 | 10 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 39 | |
| Josh | B | 27 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 39 | |
| Paul | K | 28 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 39 | |
| Mike | 20 | 11 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 39 | ||
| Stephen | B | 22 | 9 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 39 | |
| Peter | N | 22 | 10 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 38 | |
| Jesse | D | 23 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 38 | |
| Kate | P | 24 | 9 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 38 | |
| Tom | C | 23 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 38 | |
| Jeremy | O | 25 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 38 | |
| Craig | H | 26 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 38 | |
| Austin | P | 26 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 38 | |
| Ed | G | 25 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 38 | |
| Joachim | K | 28 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 38 | |
| Mark | K | 23 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 39 |
| Scott | W | 23 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 37 | |
| Maxim | T | 20 | 10 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 37 | |
| Justin | V | 22 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 37 | |
| Mike | M | 22 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 37 | |
| Josh | p | 24 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 37 | |
| Paul | d W | 21 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 36 | |
| Lars | H | 21 | 10 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 36 | |
| Daniel | T | 22 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 36 | |
| Leon | A | 22 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 37 | |
| Maria | T C | 24 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 37 | |
| Sumon | S | 21 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 37 |
| Jon | B | 23 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 36 | |
| Craig | A | 23 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 36 | |
| Travis | S | 22 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 36 | |
| Sasha | R | 24 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 36 | |
| Dre | A | 24 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 36 | |
| Mark | M | 25 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 36 | |
| Gerad | T | 25 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 36 | |
| Jason | H | 26 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 36 | |
| Richard | P | 19 | 9 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 36 | |
| Janice | S | 20 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 36 | |
| Jackie | D | 21 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 35 | |
| William | C | 21 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 35 | |
| Arif | I | 24 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 35 | |
| Bradley | D | 21 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 35 | |
| Shubhojyoti | B | 20 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 36 | |
| David | C | 22 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 35 | |
| Jared | E | 20 | 11 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 35 | |
| Costa | F | 22 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 36 | |
| Daniel | 23 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 36 | ||
| Will | S | 21 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 35 | |
| Jacob | D | 23 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 35 | |
| AJ | M | 24 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 35 | |
| Kim | P | 24 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 35 | |
| Artur | K | 22 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 35 | |
| Andrew | C | 22 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 35 | |
| Jan | B | 25 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 35 | |
| Brian | K | 25 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 35 | |
| Ben | C | 25 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 35 | |
| Jesse | F | 20 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 36 |
| James | Y | 22 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 34 | |
| Steve | F | 21 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 34 | |
| Gary | J | 21 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 34 | |
| Justin | T | 24 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 34 | |
| Jacob | H | 21 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 34 | |
| Robert | M | 19 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 33 | |
| Alex | G | 21 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 33 | |
| Kathie | W | 23 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 33 | |
| Dirk | P | 23 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 34 | |
| Erlend | H | 23 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 33 | |
| Boris | K | 21 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 33 | |
| David | P | 20 | 8 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 32 | |
| Beth | A | 18 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 31 | |
| Ole | H V | 20 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 33 |
| Muhammad Azrain | K | 21 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 31 | |
| Jillian | W | 19 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 31 | |
| Kesava | B | 19 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 32 | |
| Lawrence | A | 23 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 32 | |
| Laurie | L | 21 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 31 | |
| Lori | B | 20 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 31 | |
| Dave | R | 21 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 30 | |
| Shannon | R | 22 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 30 | |
| Brad | M | 23 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 30 | |
| Siobhan | A | 19 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 29 | |
| Kirby | W | 20 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 29 | |
| Glen | P | 22 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 29 | |
| John | W | 20 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 29 | |
| JT | K | 17 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 29 | |
| Dale | R | 21 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 28 | |
| Chris | A | 19 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 30 |
| Jayvie | C | 21 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 | |
| Jake | S | 19 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 27 | |
| Nichole | K | 18 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 27 | |
| Michael | D | 14 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 23 | |
| Michele | S | 18 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 24 | |
| Patrick | P | 11 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 22 | |
| Chad | P | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | |
| Chris | W | 11 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 21 | |
| Eric | G | 9 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 19 | |
| Fellipe | S | 13 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | |
| Michelle | g | 2 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 15 | |
| Richard | J | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 14 | |
| Derek | H | 8 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 14 | |
| Nurudin | J | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 8 | |
| Evelyn | F | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | |
| David | R | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 | |
| Olziibat | N | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 8 | |
| Rafal | T | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | |
| Jason | W | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | |
| Don | L | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | |
| Karen | A | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Ray | A | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Juan | F | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Merrin | R | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Kenton | C | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Chad | P | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Mariken | d R | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| Dominika | D | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| Jaime | A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| FM | R | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Giorgos | A | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Mike | K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Waqar | K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
So there were a number of folks that did a great job guessing. I’ll field the obvious joke that’s in there: my own submitted bracket did come out on top (Ryan I). Obviously I won’t be awarding myself the trophy or anything silly like that. Eric Hamm will win because he’s the first legitimate winner on the scoreboard. I only left my own score on there so that you all know I will always be better than you.
Congrats Eric, and everyone else who came very, very close to winning the bracket. To the rest of you, well, there’s always next year.
Reflecting on Theme Madness
I honestly had a lot of fun, myself, just watching the proceedings from week to week. It was fun watching the cheering, some of the jeering, and the creative ways different teams rallied together their audiences to show support. I was also continuously surprised by the overall response to this Theme Madness thing, and how much attention was paid to it. I considered counting up how much approximate time was wasted, both via the submission of brackets and the voting, but didn’t want to bum myself out about our collectively lost productivity.
Although Elegant Themes won in the end, the real winner here is obviously the WordPress user, who has so many awesome theme shops to choose from when setting up a website. I hope that along with being harmless competitive fun, this game also made everyone aware of a few theme shops they didn’t know about before.
Thanks to everyone for participating and having fun with this. The trophies will be packaged up and set to Elegant Themes and to Eric Hamm, and their names recorded and saved forever in the WPCandy Hall of Fame. As soon as we get a Hall of Fame. As for the rest of you: what did you enjoy the most from Theme Madness 2011, and what do you hope to see next year, for Theme Madness 2012?
Congratulations to Elegant Themes !!
And it was very helpful to be introduced to the other WordPress theme providers through this competition. Best wishes to all.
Congrats to Nick! And yeah; that was a heck of a lot of fun. Thanks for putting it on, guys.
Congrats to ET! I voted for them in all the rounds… Proud to be an user of their themes!
Pro
Actually, I believe Tan should be the winner, especially if you do a weighted scoring system like many/most march madness brackets. He got the most right in Rounds 4, 5, and 6, when it matters, and the possibility of that happening is a lot less likely. Just my two cents…
That was really something, huh? He got 3 points total in rounds 4 and 5. Everybody else in the top 20 got exactly ZERO in those rounds! Serious comeback. A real dark horse.
But still I say it’s a tie.
This year we decided not to weight the scoring system, so that didn’t come into play. We’ll definitely consider it next year though.
This was a really great experiment to participate in and to watch. Elegant Themes is a worthy winner.
Hey BTW, it says Tan has 45 points too but he’s listed below the guys with 44 points? Have fun making a third trophy this weekend. LOL
My bad, should have explained that submission dates came in to play there. I just didn’t have the energy to move all of the rows in the table down one to make the order correct
With the tie, the first person to have turned the bracket in one, and in this case it was Eric 
Sweet! I’ll showcase that trophy with pride!
And congrats to Elegant Themes for showing some seriously dominating votes from an obviously strong and supportive community.
Eric
My votes went to CatalystTheme, StudioPress and lastly to Elegant Themes. I wasn’t surprised when some of the ‘big names’ made an early exit, but I’ll admit I was very surprised when ThemeFuse beat StudioPress; ThemeFuse clearly has an impressive community. Congratulations to the final big winners, WordPress, Nick Roach and Elegant Themes. Great fun, thanks Ryan.
Woohoo! Thanks to the ET community and every else for the awesome support
everyone*
Absolutely you and your team deserved to win this contest
You guys just deserved it! Congrtullations Nick and ET Team!
Indeed it was fun to be part of it and even to await the results! You must have gotten a lot of traffic over this Ryan. (?) Well done and congrats to ThemeFuse for this final round! … Not to forget all the other great theme sites and developers a like.
Way the go Elegant Themes for your great services, designs and workmanship!… glad to be one of your fans! :]
Seriously laughed out loud at this one, even had to read it aloud to my wife. You sir, take the cake!
Congrats to Elegant Theme on winning the award, you guys deserved it!
Wonderful! Congratulations Elegant Themes. You truly deserve it…
Congrats ET. And congrats to WP Candy for such a great successful event. The best thing about the contest was I came to know several new theme shops due to it. Next year you can also try having a Best Theme from each shop (self nominated by each theme shop).
Pro
I love how the last 2 rounds got everyone, haha.
[...] compete, and it was especially satisfying to see the Elegant Themes community pull together and take home the gold! My favorite part about running this website has always been watching our community grow, and this [...]
Great contest boys and many congratulations to Nick and his team.
Whose theme do I use – the one and only Elegant Themes.
Nick – does this mean that you will be increasing the annual subs? LOL
This was a mighty contest. I’m not shocked that ET won in the end, those are some high quality themes and they offer a much nicer extended Admin/Theme editor than most of the competition out there.
nice to see ET win …
Congrats to ET.
I know, You will be the winner always.
[...] WordPress Theme Madness competition ended last week when WPCandy pronounced the finals between ElegantThemes against Themefuse. I wasn’t surprised at all that ElegantTheme made it to the first place, it’s the [...]
I got 42 points. I would liked to win, but not so bad…Congrats Elegant Themes!
[...] you are hardcore WordPress theme then you’ve probably been following the WP Madness over at WPCandy. For those of you who weren’t following the WP Madness it was similar to March madness where [...]
Great, Elegant Themes won ! congrats
Congratulations Elegant Themes!!!
Congratulations to ET! I preferred it from the very beginning..glad to see it’s a winner
Congratulations Elegant Themes
Best ever!
Congratulations Elegant Themes. My quest for a theme provider is now final.
Quick thought. Rockettheme.com seems to have some serious looking themes. I wonder why they were not included in the contest?
I want to preface my remarks by saying I am not trying to rain on the parade, but the following is just what I think.
I was shocked a couple of times in the preliminary rounds at seeing some well known names defeated. But most of all I was shocked in the semi final round at Themeforest losing to Elegant Themes. Nothing against Elegant Themes – I am sure they are nice people – but essentially Elegant is one theme spun in different looks, whereas Themeforest is over 1000 completely different wordpress themes by hundreds of different theme authors Themeforest is a true marketplace. Its really stretching it to say the same of Elegant themes since it is just one framework and one seller.
Furthermore, I can take one of the top selling Themeforest wordpress themes – Striking comes to mind since it is the Themeforest best seller in the last 8 months, and not only duplicate the look of almost every iteration of Elegant, but blow them away in a head to head feature comparison. Even a free wordpress theme such as Weaver can duplicate most of the Elegant looks, and provides far more customization flexibility.
With those facts working against Elegant, they did a great job of rallying their troops. Once I saw them take down Themeforest I knew they would win. The owners of Elegant obviously have a mighty marketing machine in place. But truly I was flabbergasted at the results as this contest progressed.
The fact that the wordpress community can now entertain such contests is obviously the other big story. WordPress is now on its way to becoming the dominant choice in the CMS/Blogsphere communities – more and more of my design clients now bring up WP in initial contacts then any other system – the word is out there, and reflected by the increasing choices designers and end users have for theme selection, as evidenced by this contest.
But it may all come to a management interface. I would prefer a framework environment where I can universally control the designs and codes. It seems only a few offer this option (catalyst, thesis, studiopress, elegantthemes). My guess is themeforest may have lost because of this one factor?