WordPress Websites to Inspire You

WordPress has been around for 10 years and continues to go strong as more and more people discover the many creative ways you can use it for to create the website you need and want. One of the best ways to demonstrate the many possibilities you can achieve with this free software is to see an actual WordPress website that is both beautiful and functional. Be inspired with these outstanding WordPress websites we’ve found:

WordPress is a pretty powerful tool you can use to create amazing and stunning websites with. Its tried and tested coding architecture makes it one of the most robust content management platforms out there today. The best part of it all is that it is available for free.

We hope these websites inspire you to imagine and create that dream website you’ve always wanted.

30 Creative Business WordPress Themes

For a successful business an outstanding site plays a major role, Today a lot of creative professionals have realized this and use Word Press as the engine for building an online site. The ease of use of WordPress, the high number of portfolio styled themes and plugins available for building a professional portfolio web site makes the decision easy.  (more…)

WordPress Themes: Flat vs Skeuomorphism

First it was responsive, and then it was retina-ready, and now it’s all about flat design. – mainstream design trends that have been embraced and integrated into a lot of current WordPress theme designs. Not exactly a bad thing especially if you are being sensitive to the demands of the target market you are servicing. Flat design (as seen in Windows 8) is the current design flavor as opposed to the more traditional skeuomorphic designs (as seen in pre-iOS 7 graphics). It is not exactly a “new” design style but it has received a lot of attention lately especially because of Apple’s recent decision to go “flat” in the latest iteration of iOS. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Skeuomorphism Defined

Skeuomorph, , or skeuomorphism – n. (Pronunciation: /?skyo?o??môr?fiz?m/)
Skeuomorphism refers to a design principle in which design cues are taken from the physical world. This term is most frequently applied to user interfaces (UIs), where much of the design has traditionally aimed to recall the real world – such as the use of folder and files images for computer filing systems, or a letter symbol for email – probably to make computers feel more familiar to users. However, this approach is increasingly being criticized for its lack of ingenuity and its failure to pioneer designs that truly harness a computer’s superior capabilities, rather than forcing it to merely mimic the behavior of a physical object.

The term skeuomorphism is derived from the Greek words “skeuos,” which means vessel or tool, and “morphe,” which means “shape.”
(source: Techopedia.com)

Flat Design Defined

Flat design is a minimalistic design approach that emphasizes usability. It features clean, open space, crisp edges, bright colours and two-dimensional/flat illustrations. In flat design, ornamental elements are viewed as unnecessary clutter. If an aspect serves no functional purpose, it’s a distraction from user experience. This is the reason for the minimalistic nature of flat design. (source: creativebloq.com)

Flat design is a technique that uses simple effects – or lack thereof – to create a design scheme that does not include three-dimensional attributes. Effects such as drop shadows, bevels, embossing and gradients are not used in flat design projects.
Some call the look of flat design simple, although it can be quite complex. The look itself is simple, direct and user-friendly, making it an increasingly popular option for mobile user interfaces as well as trendy web design. (source: designmodo.com)

The Debate – Old Ornate vs. The New Cool

Many designers argue for or against either one of these design styles. It is an ongoing debate in design circles and the discussion has sometimes been heated and enlightening at the same time. Aside from the obvious difference in looks, visual designers have taken to flat design in response to technology. Not only is it quicker to design but also the smaller file sizes of these design elements allow for faster loading and a more efficient UI experience. As the web becomes more mature and more distinct in its visual language, the use of these flat design elements will become more instinctive and less dependent on graphics that imitate real life.

WordPress and Flat Design

WordPress designers have already been incorporating flat design into many of the WordPress themes that are coming out. Minimalist, clean, simple graphic elements are common in several of the newer theme releases. Excessive shadows, real world things, 3D effects, gradients are a few of the effects that have been greatly reduced and have given way to cleaner, simpler, colorful, light and modern elements.

Which one is better?

Some people like log cabins while others prefer IKEA-styled homes. We can’t say one is better than the other because it is a matter of personal preference. As far as designing WordPress themes for a specific market goes, one market will prefer the minimalist look while another will be wowed by a 3D, parallax powered, visually stimulating theme. Some are even drawn to crowded design. The choice belongs to the consumer. And the consumer will buy whatever matches his or her preferences and meets his or her goals and objectives. What may seem beautiful to one client can look disgusting and awful to another.

WordPress professionals who create WordPress themes and sell them in the marketplace are subject to the whims of of the consumer. No one can really predict which theme will be a smashing hit once it is released. However, delivering a product to the market that is consistent with one’s design sensibilities and high standards of quality will always find its target market match somewhere along the way.

Share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

Flat Design WordPress Themes You Can Flaunt

Design trends come & go. Some rise to the top like a shooting star and stay there with the rest of the stars while others burst like comets and fade into the night sky. One so called design “trend” that has actually been around for the longest time has been getting much attention only recently. In fact, even Apple has finally embraced it and has incorporated it in their latest iteration of the iOs. Say hello to the flat design. And it has found its way in many of the newest WordPress themes being released. Here are some examples of WordPress themes that have gone “flat”. Check these out.

Nova Flat & Clean Responsive Theme

If you are looking for a WordPress theme that can be used for multipurpose applications and for diverse types of websites, check out Nova Premium WordPress Theme, a clean, flat design multipurpose premium theme that will surely amaze you. It’s got a sample content importer, 14 homepage options, 9 premium sliders, unlimited header options, a page builder, fluid layout, a skin manager, and a short code editor just to name a few. The flat graphics are integrated nicely and they add to the overall professional look of the theme.

Showy Bold and Flat Portfolio

Impress your clients with this ultra minimalist, boldly simple, flat design WordPress portfolio theme, Showy. Design agencies, creative professionals, and freelance artists will love the simple, uncluttered look of this premium theme that will surely put their creative work in the spotlight. Less is more, indeed. And if it’s a portfolio showcase you want, you have everything you actually really need in this excellent theme.

Flat Responsive Portfolio Theme

If your’re looking for a fresh new way to present your portfolio in step with the latest flat design trend, Flat Premium WordPress Theme is worth a peek. The horizontal scrolling action gives visitors the feeling that they are going through a glossy high end design magazine. You get a choice of 2 homepage options, flat design interactive social media buttons, AJAX pagination for quicker load time, collapsible side menu, tons of other features, plus it is retina ready (great for images) with an optional retina logo upload field feature.

Revusion Flat Corporate Theme

Revusion Premium WordPress Theme is a flat responsive, modern and very professional looking corporate theme packed with features for today’s modern business. Revusion integrates Pixeden flat icons into its design as inspired by the current flat design UI trend. This premium theme gives you several different layout options via its page templates. You can choose to add a testimonial page, a team page, a services page, an FAQ page, a gallery page, aside from the usual blog, portfolio, and contact pages to ensure you can pick exactly what you want to add to your site. This retina display ready theme also comes with the Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin.

Sistina Flat Multipurpose Shop Theme

Sistina Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and modern WooCommerce theme, designed with a fresh flat style and with a great responsive and retina-ready design. The cool flat graphic elements, modern typography, and streamlined layout give this theme that modern flair that will appeal to today’s modern shopper. This WordPress theme includes several premium features like the Wishlist and the Compare Products features, the Product Enquiry form (for catalog use sans the shopping cart), the Ajax layered filter, and also a Popup plugin to show offers and news.

Tech WordPress Themes July 2013

Technology has one of the fastest turnovers in terms of design and features. If you are into technology and the latest tech products out there, show them off on your website on an equally tech-savvy looking theme like these WordPress themes we’ve found:

Host Depot

Host Depot is a theme designed for modern hosting and server services. It has a built-in layer slider that allows you to do 170 3D and 2D hardware accelerated transitions to catch the eye of visitors. The theme also has a hassle-free and easy to use pricing table editor. Host Depot integrates well with WHMCS to give you seamless processing of your financial and logistic transactions. You can easily set-up forums on your site with the bbPress plugin. HostDepot is indeed a great solution for those in the web hosting business.

Elegant Hosting

Elegant Hosting is a sleek WordPress theme designed for web hosting services. The main strength of this theme is the easy to manage hosting plan tables. This theme has a special feature to add hosting plans right at the admin panel. With the plans displayed side by side, comparison may conveniently be done by potential customers. You can customize the theme with shortcodes to create the look most appropriate to your marketing efforts. Theme also comes with a slider which will be useful in marketing.

Appland

Appland Premium Theme is a WordPress theme designed for promoting your hottest app. Built on the powerful Twitter Bootstrap, this theme is designed to work well on mobile devices incorporating touch gestures that works even on the Flexslider. Appland also has amazing eye-catching 3D parallax effects to help you keep visitors glued to your site. Customization is easy with the plethora of design options and features such as using the shortcode generator, available Google fonts, the quick uploader feature, awesome icons, and so much more. Appland is responsive fitting for a theme designed for mobile.

Mega Host

Mega Host Premium WordPress Theme is an impressive and modern theme designed for virtual hosting services. Although primarily designed for web hosting, this theme includes all the necessary features to build a corporate website as well. A notable feature of this theme is that it is built on twitter bootstrap, making it more mobile device friendly. Its advanced admin panel and its CSS design make it easy to customize. Mega Host is also built for retina-ready devices giving you sharp stunning images on these devices.

Rocking Parallax

Create that interactive effect with this stunning WordPress Theme – Rocking Parallax a WordPress theme especially designed to showcase your iPhone apps. This theme makes a great one page solution to your marketing needs. This theme’s awesome parallax 3d effects will definitely make your apps shine. It features many design elements that allow you to create countless mix and match combinations and layouts that will match your design aesthetics. Rocking Parallax Premium WordPress Theme is the perfect tool for marketing and promoting your iPhone apps.

Apley

Mobile apps are one of the hottest ways to make it big in the market. The influx of free and paid apps flooding the market is an indicator of what people are interested in nowadays. Apley Mobile WordPress Page is a clean and modern theme designed to showcase mobile apps. The elegant black, minimalist features suggests the theme’s affinity to most mobile devices. It has an easy to use WordPress customizer to help you tweak the theme according to your preferences. Apley also has a fully working blog, a custom homepage, a custom subscribe form, a shortcodes plugin to help you customize in minutes, and many more features.

Cloud Hoster

Cloud Hoster is a professional looking WordPress theme designed to promote your web hosting and server services. This theme is equipped with the popular Revolution Slider so you can create stunning slideshows with different and customizable transitions to grab the attention of casual visitors. Cloud Hoster also has a unique two color blog which can be configured at the backend. Shortcodes give you the power to customize and stylize this theme with ease.
This responsive theme is also built on twitter bootstrap with advanced API features to help your site look good on mobile devices and ensure a pleasant browsing experience for your users.

Back to Blogging Basics – Cool WordPress Themes for Your Blog

Even before it became the highly stylized content management system that it is today, WordPress has always been and still is the blogger’s choice platform for personal blogging. WordPress themes have come a long way since Kubrick as more authors and developers churn out beautiful themes to fit all types of users. Here are some of the latest WordPress themes for today’s modern blogger:

Clipboard Tumblog Style WordPress Theme

If you are into microblogging Twitter or Tumblr, check out Clipboard Premium WordPress Theme – an awesome tumblog style WordPress theme that comes chock full of style and customisation options. Customization and styling options is easy using the WordPress Live Theme Customizer. The Visualkicks theme translator allows you to translate a single line of text or the whole site. Clipboard’s intuitive and responsive Masonry design allows you seamless transitions while maintaining that minimalist look. Clipboard also supports all of the core WordPress post formats and has been built and designed with simplicity in mind.

Pilcrow Ajax Powered WP Blog Theme

Pilcrow Premium WordPress Theme is a simple yet elegant and responsive WordPress blog theme that will surely inspire you to write. This robust premium theme not only presents your content in an engaging way but because it is also powered by AJAX it provides users an enjoyable experience with its smooth transitions while reading your content. This theme supports custom WordPress post formats giving you maximum flexibility on how you can present your content. You also get several templates such as: a password protected posts template, comments template, and a template for pingbacks and trackbacks. All these and more AJAX powered goodness. Minimum clutter for maximum pleasure.

Keilir Responsive WP Blog Theme

Keilir Premium WordPress Theme is a bright, typographically bold, and beautiful responsive theme designed to make your blogging experience as pleasant as possible. Armed with superb visual design and great support for mobile and tablet devices you can easily reach all your readers wherever they are. This premium theme has 6 custom styled blog formats, 8 bootstrap shortcodes, 6 custom social media widgets (facebook, twitter, instagram, mailchimp, and more), 10+ specially made shortcodes, 600+ google fonts, and a customizable theme options panel, to make your blog your very own.

tdFuture WP Theme

tdFuture Premium WordPress Theme is a dynamic, responsive WordPress blog theme ideal for personal blogs where you can share your articles, images, videos, music, quotes and much more. The big bold design and typographic choices will definitely make your content stand out from the crowd. If you are a blogger who wants your readers to focus on your content without the clutter of sidebar widgets, etc., then tdFuture is the theme for you. This theme can also double up as a portfolio to showcase your creative work. This theme supports WordPress Theme Customizer that gives you an ability to do changes with a real-time preview. tdFuture is a fully responsive theme and will adjust to any screen size.

Literary WP Blog Theme

Literary Premium WordPress Theme is a beautifully crafted blog theme that will delight authors, writers, and publishers. If you’ve been publishing books and you’ve always wanted a place to compile them all for your readers, Literary is the blog theme that can do that for you. This premium theme comes with a post type for showcasing your books and even a post type for your portfolio. Literature often comes with specific illustrations made especially for specific books. Many times, it is the cover that entices people to buy a book. Now you can showcase both books and illustrations on your own website and give readers a chance to enjoy your work both visually and intellectually. Increase your market reach by adding all of your books and linking them to Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you sell them. This theme is built “mobile first” for speed and flexibility and looks great from mobile to large desktops.

Quickly Handcrafted WP Theme

Quickly Premium WordPress Theme is a beautifully handcrafted WordPress theme that focuses on user-experience, usability, and beautiful typography. This Masonry styled theme comes with four predefined color schemes, optional homepage sidebar, post formats and many more design options. This theme also allows you to: mix up content on the homepage with widgets and dynamic post formats, enable or disable sidebar in a click, choose from the predefined patterns and color schemes, change header position, change the thumbnail position, and choose from any of the theme’s predefined custom fonts. Quickly is fully responsive, touch enabled, and comes with a sleek and powerful theme options panel to help you set the blog without having to change any code.

Milli Responsive WP Blog Theme

Milli Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, graphic, 3D inspired WordPress Theme designed for professional or personal bloggers. Choose between light and dark styles, full-width or two column layout, 5 accent color schemes, and you can upload the background pattern of your choice. This premium theme also features super cool sliders with multiple slider effects that can be embedded within posts. Milli also supports custom WordPress posts. This fully responsive theme is designed to look beautiful whether you are using a desktop computer or a mobile phone.

Pravda WP Blog Theme

Pravda Premium WordPress Theme is a bold and colorful modern WordPress theme fit for today’s hip and cool blogger. This customizable, ultra responsive, retina-ready WordPress theme has got that young vibe, combining favorite features from Pinterest and Instagram with social networking features, that will appeal to digital millennials today. This premium theme can be configured for business/work, for blogging, or both. It was developed on Bootstrap and is powered by the SMOF Options Panel, which provides multiple options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme – for both beginners with no coding knowledge and also seasoned developers. Features include 10 custom widgets, 8 widgetized areas, 5 post formats (image, audio, video, gallery, standard), 6 Home page layouts, and tons of custom theme options.

25 Excellent WordPress Tumblog Themes

Tumblr is a popular micro blogging platform where people can make small posts, share links and images with others, reblog the posts of others, etc. It is a platform that sort of combines the features of a blog with social networking.
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Elegant Themes Releases Their 84th Theme

Never underestimate the impact of a good story. Better yet, the impact of great visuals to enhance a good story and make it as engaging as possible. Elegant Themes has done just that with its 84th premium WordPress theme, Fable.

Fable Premium WordPress Theme is every writer’s delight. If you’ve ever wanted to publish your own writings to reach and influence an audience with your ideas and thoughts in a way that will engage them, Fable is the ideal theme for you. This latest theme from Elegant Themes is beautifully designed with its carefully chosen color styles and typography that will magically frame each post or article. Professional bloggers and serious writers will enjoy the way their posts are put in the spotlight and brought to the fore. Telling a story has never been as easy and as beautiful.

Fable was built with a Post Formats UI that’s a breeze to use. Its minimalist approach, wide and spacious layout, full width and long-format style, and overall relaxed design aesthetic makes for easy reading. Tablet and mobile users can simply grab a cuppa Joe, sit back and relax as they scroll through every post and get lost in your stories.

Fable is more than just fluff. This theme also contains other powerful features like a portfolio, an image gallery, shortcodes, and more. It comes with 4 different post formats – Article, Video, Gallery, and Quote – to support whatever literary whim you have at the moment. These different post types are individually designed to bring prominence to your post by giving it the “stage” that it needs. Its carefully chosen typography sets the tone of the whole theme, however, users can also select from the many font options to give their own sites the character that they want.

Features:

  • Responsive Design
  • Theme Options
  • Shortcodes
  • Page Templates
  • Unlimited Color Schemes
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Complete Localization

Fable Premium WordPress Theme includes perpetual updates, unparalleled support, and access more than 80+ high quality WordPress themes included in every Elegant Themes membership.

Get 80+ WordPress Themes For $39!