This is unfortunately another one of those common annoyances related to your hosting provider’s server configuration that can take you off guard and lead to plenty of confusion. Fortunately, it’s easy to fix (or work around).

Try changing the permissions of the theme files that you want to edit to 666. If that doesn’t work, just use an FTP or SFTP client and a plain text editor to edit them remotely.

Of course, if neither of those methods are working out for you, please stop by the WordPress Support Forums for further assistance.

3-columned, search-engine optimized, widget ready, highly customizable WordPress theme with an emphasis on usability.

SEO Blog

Three column gravatar theme with widgetized sidebar and footer, customizable header and with twitter integrated.

GreatIdeas

Three column, fixed width, widget ready theme

TDAge

TDAge is a light-blue two column theme with big, bold feed and “about” images, and large-font headers. TDAge also has easy access links to a blog’s pages and categories from the headers, and has a clean-cut pre-defined template for use as an archive summary page.

Garden consists of a fluid three column outfit with widgetized bars and columns, featuring an custom fields enabled news slider jQuery powered, built in are recent comments with gravatars, related posts, social bookmarking enabled.
The frontpage shows the latest posts followed by footer action. Flickr, Delicio is enabled in the themes options panel.

iEleg

iEleg is a 2 column widget ready wordpress theme. Theme uses 2 small images for faster download. Feel free to get back if you face any problem. I would be very happy to help.

Simple Brown

Two column, widget ready and search engine optimized with a different style for the latest article.

SpotOnSEO

Two Column, fixed width, widget ready, SEO Friendly, AJAX tabbed theme

3 columns fixed width, widget ready, gravatar ready theme

Vegan

Vegan consists of a fluid two column outfit with eight widgetized bars and columns, built in are recent comments with gravatars, related posts, social bookmarking enabled. Flickr, Delicious is enabled in the themes options panel.

Clockwork2

Two columns fixed width, widget ready, gravatar ready theme

Misanthropic Realm

6 Column consisting of the main content, 2 sidebars and 3 footer sections, widget-ready fixed width theme with minimal images for fast loading and easy customization featuring an author box, author info page, gravatars and highlighted author comments in the comments section along with Custom Archives, Custom Intro Box, Sitemap and full width No Sidebars page templates.

Color Paper

Two column, image rich theme with a stylesheet switcher

Contender is a three column, fixed width, adsense ready theme.

NeeWee

Fixed width, three column, gravatar and widget ready theme.

Pink Orchid

A clean simple SEO optimized three column template in soft pink colors. The theme has two widget ready sidebars, gravatar support and is ad ready. The theme features a bio box that can be edited independently of the side bars and is unaffected by the use of widgets.

Grey Matter

Grey Matter is an two column, gravatar & widget ready, free and easy to use WordPress theme.

Fluid Blogging is a very light weight theme, with less than 36KB. It uses almost no images and is fully optimized to make your blog fly like the wind. Fluid width, works fine in resolutions from 800×600 up to 1024×768 pixels, two columns, widget ready, gravatar ready, Adsense ready.

Retro

Back to a time when mainframes ruled the computing world and amber and green CRT’s were the only access to these beasts. Retro is based on the Sandbox theme with the Blueprint CSS framework added to give it a grid design if one chooses to modify the theme to their liking.

Pemuda

Two column, fixed width, widget and gravatar ready theme with inbuilt space for ads.

Aapna Theme

Fixed width, three column theme best for Personal Blog with Dynamically Rotating Album Pictures.

Dark and light, two column, gravatar ready theme

Glucent

Two column, blue theme with support for FlickrRSS and Page Navi plugin

Classic Modern

A classic old style theme with a modern look. I think the brown color is a symbol of the old and classic style while the blue is the modern color.

Check out more WordPress themes by the same author.

PlainWarrior

PlainWarrior is very simple-looking, clean and elegant two column widget, gravatar and tag ready theme

Fervens Remix

Two column, green and white theme with a wide content column for wide pictures

EcolutionWarrior

Two column widget, gravatar and tag ready theme inspired from the dark side of our environment.

Chrono Press

Three column theme available in ten flavours

Modern Girl

It is a two column, fixed with, widget and gravatar ready, pink and brown theme that uses absolutely no images.

Blue Tech

3 columns, widget and gravatar ready with the middle column for an ad box (eg. 120×600 skyscraper)

Negatendo

Widgetized, gravatar ready, three column theme with post images being displayed on the index page

Two column, widget ready, gravatar ready theme with a 300×250 AdSense unit integrated on top of the sidebar

Soho

Soho consists of a fluid two column outfit with widgetized sidebars and footer columns, built in are recent comments with gravatars, related posts, social bookmarking enabled. CSS drop down menue, flickr is enabled in the themes options panel, tabbed sidebar and extensive footer.

DailyPress

DailyPress comes with widget-ready sidebars, tabbed content, banner ads, minimalistic color scheme and social bookmarking options. The theme is compatible with all versions of WordPress including the latest 2.6 version and has been tested with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Firebug

Firebug is a dark (but colorful) theme with two widget-ready sidebars, space for 125×125 banner ads, social tagging options at the end of each post, Gravatar ready comments, feed subscription options, WordPress 2.5+ Gallery feature, and much more.

Gridblog

Gridblog is a fast loading theme (only 36Kb in size) that has very little design elements but compensates with its functionality. It lets you display your front page blog entries uniquely by dividing them into two columns. The theme has different layout for pages, single entries and the archives section. Gridblog is fully CSS & XHTML compliant and has been tested with both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Orange consists of a fluid three column outfit, with widgetized sidebars and footer columns, built in are recent comments with gravatars, related posts, social bookmarking enabled and Flickr is enabled in the themes options panel.

Emphasis

Emphasis is the newest WordPress theme release from Jasonetics. It is a very simple theme, with subtle colors. The posts are bordered with a very light grey, and the links are green and hover orange. This theme is called emphasis because almost all of the focus is on the content and posts.

Helium

Three column, widget ready, gravatar ready theme with ability to post images to index page automatically

Blue Grace is a simple three column WordPress theme with a rotating header image

Fancy

Two column WordPress theme which really lets your blog stand out from the crowd. Make your blog unique by changing the main blog color (pink, yellow, green), background pattern (available over 20 background variations), banner etc through an options page. In addition you have the ability to choose the color of sidebar blocks (violet, yellow, green).

Acosmin v4

Two column, white and grey, gravatar theme with ad ready stops with psd files included

Hello Red

Hello Red is a 2 column red, white, and black, widget ready WordPress theme.

Retrospective

Three column, widget ready, fast loading, search engine optimized theme

On the subject of themes, Matt has a tutorial Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7.

Today we are proud to release our very first freebie Crafty Cart – a free theme for your WordPress e-Commerce store. It’s a fresh flavoured retro style for selling t-shirts and handmade items, designed to be a starting point for your online shop.

daffodil

Fixed width, three columns, widget ready green and yellow theme

Desert Grass

Two column, fixed width, widget ready theme

StayPressed is a free WordPress theme, with a double-column right hand-sidebar and a magazine style – kept simple, to let your blog content do the talking

Case

Case is a dark WordPress theme with blue accents. It has an Ajax box in the sidebar that allows you to switch between categories, tags, recent comments, and recent posts without reloading the page and without taking up a lot of space, which keeps your blog nice and clean.

Iris

Iris is a a two column WordPress theme with Iris like colors. The theme is mostly purple, with pink, and blue, with nice gradients and textures. It has nice rounded corners on every post to separate them and drive focus to the content. It is widget ready and ready to demo and download.

Designredux

Two column, black and white theme

Jin

Two column gravatar and widget ready theme  with ability to post images directly to the frontpage

Free Autumn

Three columns autumn theme with simple illustration for the header and maple leaf icon for the sidebar title.

PassionDuo

Three column blue and white theme with a right and left sidebar

Ships Ahoy

Ships Ahoy is three column, widget-ready theme.

With the impending release of WordPress 2.7, Otto has written a very nice article explaining how to get a theme ready for 2.7 to take care of the comments enhancements.

Three column, blue and white theme with a fluid later, designed for higher resolutions.

Talian Reloaded

Talian is a 3 colomn premium theme with several new features (Post styling options, mini social bookmakers) and option pages e.g. custom sitemap, custom archives and custom link pages

WP Foto

Wp Foto theme is single layout theme designed for photo blogger. It uses custom fields for displaying thumbnail in home page, archive page, category and tag page.

Mediterranean

Mediterranean is a two column, widget ready WordPress theme, with right-hand sidebar, from an original XHTML template by DemusDesign.

Simple two column WordPress theme

Alpen 3column

Three column, gravatar ready theme with two right sidebars

PClean

Two Column widget enabled minimalist wordpres theme

Clean News

Inspired on Wired Magazine look, Clean News is a theme with a large content area, but it also has a wide sidebar that allows to display even a 300px width ad. Home and single sidebars are independent, both widgetized, so you can easily choose what and where to display. A lot of white space to make your content stand out, low weight and no plugins required. It will load in the blink of an eye.

Two column fixed-width WordPress theme, with lefthand sidebar, enabled for widgets…

WP Strict

WP Strict is a real Magazine/Blog/Webfolio hybrid with two different page templates, custom fields and four different widgetized areas.

SEO Basics

Orange, black, and gray combined to create a clean, great-looking theme. Supports rotating 125×125 sidebar ads, widgets, gravatars, and microformats.

It’s a Boy

Two column, fixed width, widget ready green, black and white theme.

Red Lite

Red Lite is a simple 2 column red and grey WordPress theme.

Portfolio Press

Two column, black and grey theme with gravatar functionality with an exteremely small size.