When you decide to build a WordPress site, you may feel a bit overwhelmed. Once you get all the settings laid down you visit your site, but you’re ultimately disappointed at how bare it looks. Don’t worry; you won’t have to spend weeks with your face buried in HTML books to make a design that causes your site to stand out from the crowd. Here are a few must-have themes for your new design website.
Horn One Page Minimal Theme
If you’ve got a love for minimalistic web pages, Horn’s one page minimal theme is the perfect theme for you. It’ll set you back about $40, but it’s worth the price. It’s fully responsive so it’ll look fantastic on all devices. It’s also retina ready, so it’ll look amazing for those with certain devices.
There are two versions for you to choose from: one with a static image as the background and one where you can actually set a video as the background. DSL high-speed Internet is quick to stream video, so don’t worry about it slowing down the load time of your site, though you may want your site to load a static image for mobile users. It supports HTML5 and CSS3, and it’s compatible on all modern browsers. This is the perfect theme if you want the focus of your website to be on a specific item instead of an overly flashy design.
Camilla Photography Theme
This theme is perfect if you want to set up a portfolio for yourself. You can create multiple sections, pricing sections, and more. Similar to Horn, it’s responsive and retina ready, so you won’t have to worry about how it looks when people access your site. It’s SEO optimized, and you can add widgets above the navigation to truly make the site your own. There’s also a video-ready gallery, so if you have things to show off, it’ll look great on this theme.
Reaper Minimal Creative Blog and Portfolio Theme
If it’s not enough to just show off your work, look no further than Reaper. For $40, you get a minimalistic design that shows off your work in style. On the right side, you have a multi-pane display of blog posts. You can tag each blog post to make them easily searchable. On the left side, you have a multitude of options – you can post links to your social media accounts as well as a link to an RSS feed for your site. Reaper is responsive and fully supports HTML5 and CSS3, as well as custom widgets. It’s translation ready and it’s cross browser compatible, so it’ll look beautiful regardless of the device it’s displayed on.
Yalu – Creative Multipurpose Template
This theme is perfect for businesses and users alike. Like the others, it’s responsive and it’s retina ready, so it’ll always look great. It allows you to have blog posts at the bottom and highlights your recent updates on the main page. You can put links to your social media accounts at the top as well, so if people need to reach you they can easily find you. It supports eight post formats: image, video, gallery, quote, link, aside, standard, and audio.
Vellum
If you’re looking to impress your visitors, check out Vellum. It promises “super-ultra-mega responsiveness”, menus by UberMenu, and an unlimited amount of headers, footers, layouts, and home page variations. As the user scrolls through your site, he or she will have a menu on the left side, so regardless of where they’re at on the page it’ll be easy to navigate. It’s retina ready as well, so it’ll look sharp on retina display devices.
Regardless of the theme that you go with, you’ll be able to create a unique site that stands out from every other website out there. They’re all pretty customizable, so you’ll be able to make your site look exactly how you want. Do you use a WordPress theme to highlight your work? Leave us a comment and let us know.