Wordpress

[TheFaQQer]

Not got the time for messing around with the internals and don't mind paying for a theme, just wanted something close to the "right" theme

You might need to give some kind of clue as to what "right" means

Within Wordpress, you can search by layout, tags, colours etc. to find the theme that you want. Make sure that you download it from somewhere reliable, though.

And bookmark this link for when things turn nasty.

[Spacecadet]

You might need to give some kind of clue as to what "right" means

This is where the theme recommendation would help, even if it isn't quite right, something else by the same theme creator might be.

[Sysman]

It's a few years since I looked at Wordpress, but I found that "good looking" and "technically sound" are inversely proportional when it comes to many of the themes out there.

Basically, that good looking theme might be a nightmare to amend, and ones that are easy to maintain look terrible, and that includes commercial ones too.

See this chap's comments on Wordpress themes and plugins, and here for suggestions.

With any CMS I like to keep plugins to a minimum to reduce the attack surface area.

[TheFaQQer]

This is where the theme recommendation would help, even if it isn't quite right, something else by the same theme creator might be.

My free one was from Blog Oh Blog | Premium WordPress Themes, Free WordPress Themes, Custom Blog Design, WordPress Blog

They do free and premium themes, but I found it by searching for two columns, blue in the Wordpress themes list

[d000hg]

Who in their right mind would do that?

It's far better, just to knock up a page in css quickly, rather than using a blogging theme for a company site, which would just be awful ..

If you cant be bothered laying out your own page, try googling something like "free css templates", hundreds on various sites.

Wordpress is a full blown CMS now not just a blogging tool, my LtdCo website is done in Wordpress and looks ok for very little effort

WHS.


I used Premium WordPress Themes | Elegant Themes for my simple plan B site, with some customizations by a web-dev guy.

[NickFitz]

It's a few years since I looked at Wordpress, but I found that "good looking" and "technically sound" are inversely proportional when it comes to many of the themes out there.

Basically, that good looking theme might be a nightmare to amend, and ones that are easy to maintain look terrible, and that includes commercial ones too.

It's the usual story: designers can't code, and coders can't design

I once heard a designer describe XSLT's for-each construct as "a loop"! Utterly ridiculous

[Durbs]

I've done a fair few sites based on Wordpress and tend to use the Twenty Ten theme (used to be one of the inbuilt themes) as a starter as its solid, plain and easy to tweak.

[Vanilla]

Try the "Classy" theme from Themeforest by AJ, nice clean one for $35 thats easy to edit and supports a blog/portfolio/services/staff menu system. Drop me a PM if you want to have a look at my site based on the same theme (it's in extremely early stages at the moment with plenty of latin on it so not suitable for publication yet)

[TheFaQQer]

I've done a fair few sites based on Wordpress and tend to use the Twenty Ten theme (used to be one of the inbuilt themes) as a starter as its solid, plain and easy to tweak.

A new install comes with Twenty Eleven now.

[NickFitz]

A new install comes with Twenty Eleven now.

TwentyTen is still in there though.