greybit

Magazine-style themes perfect for business

Posted on 15. Nov, 2009 by Maria Korolov in Featured

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

Tags: Featured