Please help me find a suitable Wordpress theme, and possibly a plugin.

March 20, 2009 11:28 AM

Please help me find a Wordpress theme suited to a website that will be composed mostly of static pages! And possibly a plugin, too.

I'm seeking a Wordpress theme to use in constructing a website for a small family business. I'm new to Wordpress and so am hoping for specific theme recommendations from those who are more familiar with the many options out there.

I am looking for a theme that:

--is well suited to using "static" pages, since the site will mostly be composed of these; preferably offers more than one layout option
--has a nav bar at the top
--has two columns, one of which will contain a graphic and brief introductory (static) text
--fluid width (negotiable)

[The second column--I hope--will be headed something like "Recent Events at Company X" and will contain snippets of posts from the company's blog. I would like each one to include a thumbnail graphic from that post. I believe that Neutica, for example, does something like this automatically, but from what I have read, you can also use an RSS feed and/or plugin. So I would also be interested in tools that can help me achieve this.]

The blog will also be accessible from the nav bar, as will the rest of the site, which will be simple: an "About Us" page, a FAQ, a "Contact Us" page, and a page featuring the product line. The company makes concrete objects (um, not literally concrete, you understand) and there aren't a lot of them; they're specialty items mostly bought by institutions. Eventually each product will have its own subpage.

I expect to have to do some customization, and acquire some new skills, but I'm trying to limit that and/or stick to what I know best. I'm decent with CSS. Haven't touched PHP for years, except for some recent reviewing, and have never used Javascript; but I can acquire enough of either to cut, paste, and edit code, and even write some clunky stuff. However, my graphics skillz are minimal, so although ideally I would like a theme with some visual interest, I have to be able to use any non-photo graphics without major alteration. Anything with a "watery" look (blue, flowing, pictures of water) would be a bonus.

I'm still learning, so please be gentle. If I'm asking for too much, I'd be happy for suggestions of themes that fulfill part of my needs. Or maybe this is simpler than I think. I've searched a good amount in the themes on the Wordpress site, though, and somewhat elsewhere, and all my candidates seem like they'll require a lot of work.

Although everybody loves a free theme, I'd consider themes costing up to $100, perhaps more depending on how well-suited it is to our purposes.

Thank you!

posted by Herkimer to technology (5 comments total)

I've had good luck so far with Mountain Dawn from this author.

Easy to customize. It lacks a sidebar as-is but the code for it appears to still be in the theme.
posted by odinsdream at 11:44 AM on March 20

You might try looking through the two-column section of BestWPThemes.com.
posted by aheckler at 11:54 AM on March 20

Try the following links.
1, 2, 3
posted by WizKid at 1:07 PM on March 20

Please use caution when downloading themes from outside of the official WordPress Theme Directory. Some themes include malwear or link spam; the Theme Studio themes above are an example of this. To comply with the licensing agreement, you need to leave in the existing footer links, which read "Designed by Online Attorney for Free Home Makeover." This is designed to artificially inflate those site's page rank. Google does not like those sites, and more importantly, does not like the sites linking to them, either.

For a business, you might consider an inexpensive premium theme, like Kongo from Natty, which will turn your pages into homepage content and is already setup to list pages across the nav bar, and includes a designated, built-in blog section with recent posts pushed to the home page. (It also comes in 9 colours, thank God - because that brown is revolting.) It's $45.

Natty currently has 12 themes, and Tribune and Newsday seem to fit your design bill. There are a ton of safe, semantic, supported premium themes out there, but Natty is the only on I'm personally familiar with that often uses pages for nav right out of the box.

Oh, and Cushy from Woo Themes, too.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:35 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

DarlingBri - great post. I am looking for just about the same thing as Herkimer. Thanks for the info.
posted by txvtchick at 6:02 AM on March 21