greybit

Magazine-style themes perfect for business

Maria Korolov — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:34:57 +0000

Most of the themes available for Wordpress (or, for that matter, for Drupal) as blog-style themes. Any Website that uses them will look like a blog. Maybe a nice blog, but still a blog, with the front page just composed of the latest entries, arranged in reverse chronological order, with maybe some ads or links in a sidebar.

A company website, by comparison, typically has several blocks on the home page. One common element for the central block is a large graphics image or slideshow, featuring the top services that the company offers.

Smaller blocks may include sections with service details, press releases, case studies, product announcements, or other pertinent information, usually with a heavy use of graphics.

Here is a round-up of our favorite themes:

The Stars

This is my current favorite theme. The Stars at first glance might seem a little too … neon … for a company site, but once the colors are toned down, it makes a fantastic, professional-looking site with lots of content and graphics on the home page and archive pages. This is the theme we use for our Hypergrid Business publication — follow the link to see how the theme comes alive with a new color palette.

Official site | Demo | Download The Stars Theme

Mimbo

Like most magazine-style Wordpress themes, this theme uses categories to create different sections on the front page. Expect to spend a little time tweaking the theme files to get just the right categories to display, with the right number of entries per category. You will also need to replace the header, and maybe change the theme colors to match your company’s palette.

Official site | Demo | Download Mimbo Theme

Brightness

This was the first theme we discovered and used here at our company, though we’ve since moved to Mimbo and to The Stars. I still like its warm, inviting, uncluttered design.

Official site | Demo | Download Brightness Theme

The Unstandard

This is a clean, very professional theme, with plenty of images on the front page.

Official site | Demo | Download The Unstandard Theme

The Morning After

This theme is used as the basis for the Cambridge University Press blog, though they don’t take advantage of the magazine-style functionality.

Official site | Demo | Download The Morning After Theme

Wynton Magazine

I’ve considered using this theme a few times, and still might in the future. I don’t like the color scheme here, but, of course, that is normally the first thing you’d change when you install a theme.

I particularly like the double menus — the top menu lists the main pages of the site, and the menu line directly underneath it lists categories. Both menus have drop-down lists for sub-pages and sub-categories.

Official site | Demo | Download Wynton Magazine Theme

Branford Magazine

From the same designer as Wynton Magazine, Branford has an airlier, crisper design and though it still features plenty of images, focuses a little bit more on text. I can see using this for a site that focuses on customer case studies, white papers, or other written materials and doesn’t require as much content “above the fold.”

Official site | Demo | Download Branford Magazine Theme

Notepad

This is a wonderful, minimalist theme for an individual or a small business to provide quick, key information in a compact and clean way. This isn’t actually a magazine-style theme, since the content isn’t grouped by category, but I love the theme for its simplicity — and the fact that it doesn’t look like a standard blog page.

Official site | Demo | Download Notepad Theme

Lean Magazine

A clean, spare template. The same designer has dozens of other free themes in a similar style.

Official site | Demo | Download Lean Magazine Theme

Featured Theme: Meta-Morphosis

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:01:53 +0000

Meta-Morphosis is a free theme offered by Woo Themes, a premium theme service. The clean design was what first sparked my interest in the theme, and the easy maintenence is what let me decide to use this theme for this website. The navigation bar has both the pages and the categories, which makes finding things easier. This theme has a very simple GUI to adjust the settings, and it certainly makes customizing a lot easier.

Meta-Morphosis

Reccomended Program: Hippo OpenSIM Browser

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:12:02 +0000

Hippo Browser is set up a lot like Second Life, with similar controls so those who have experience with virtual worlds should have no trouble switching over. On my slow laptop (slow, depsite the Ubuntu), it doesn’t work, but on the slightly faster desktop (also with Ubuntu) it works acceptable. On a somewhat recent desktop it should work really well.

The controls are easy enough, and building with it is something you can definitely attempt even if you’re just a beginner. Making blocks of raw matter is easy enough, and then attach a texture and you’ve got an actual thing, regardless of what that thing is. It’s definitely worth trying out, and opens up a world of possibilities.

Download

Documentation

Review: Ubuntu 9.04

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:04:50 +0000

I had high hopes for this version, and they were pretty much met. Not a lot changed on the surface, although my sound problem did disappear. The menus are a bit different, but other then that there’s no visible change. I must say, however, that one thing that got to me was how the bugs in the Sound Recorder haven’t been fixed yet. Or perhaps they’re new bugs? One thing’s for sure: It’s worth upgrading, even if it’s just because of an insatiable need for the newest technology.

OSGBC

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:51:22 +0000

Open Sim Grid Business Center formally Open Sim Grid Business Welcome Center

OpenSIM is where things are happening these days. OpenSIM; a free and opensource form of Second Life. The Business Center is an actual place you can visit within OpenSIM, and it’s pretty neat. You can walk around in it and talk to people. It’s great for meeting, and very easy to build stuff in.

The Business Center website, not open yet but almost there.

OpenSIM wiki

Hippo Browser, the way to navigate around OpenSIM. Very similar to the Second Life browser.

“OpenSim worlds lure Second Life’s outcasts” An article about OpenSIM.

“A Gentle Introduction to OpenSim” Exactly what it says — an introduction to OpenSIM, by the same person who started the Business Welcome Center.

Ubuntu 9.04

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:04:52 +0000

I’ve heard about Jaunty, which is supposed to come out at the end of April. Right now it’s still in beta, so I’ll wait until it’s properly released before upgrading. I looked at the page for it, and it seems to be an improvement. Currently I’m using 8.04, Hardy, and I was considering upgrading to 8.10, Intrepid, but I did that before and something went wrong with my sound, so I re-installed 8.04 from a CD I had. Of course, all the programming advantages that come with Linux are somewhat subdued by the fact that almost everything is edited online now.

Image Editor: Gimp

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:00:01 +0000

Public domain images are all very well, but they never come out quite right. I use Gimp to edit photos and various pictures, since it’s layer-based. The filters are very useful, and it’s GUI is quite simple to use. I used it back when I had Windows, and I still use it now that I have Linux.

www.gimp.org

Featured Theme: Brightness

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:36:32 +0000

I’m not a particular fan of this theme, there aren’t really any distinguishing features, but I like the general layout of this. The colours it came with were a bit weird, so I fixed those up, and I also changed the header, and changed it so it didn’t repeat. I changed some of the other graphics a bit, and I like the way they turned out. There’s a few issues with mysterious colours that I don’t appreciate, but I hope to change them to something less vile periodically. I think this theme has a lot of potential, and I hope that after I’m done with it it looks like a professional, clean, usable site.