Over the past few months, I have seen a significant trend in request for custom WordPress themes – more and more people are emailing me and asking me to design them a theme that looks like a newspaper or online magazine.
As WordPress becomes more popular, people are becoming aware of the fact that the capabilities exceed that of a typical blogging platform, and can be used as a reliable content management system. I have now created the Revolution WordPress theme to accomplish that!
I would say that the thing I hear most is “I don’t want my blog to look like a blog.” In my opinion, people are bored with the look and functionality of a typical blog, and want to take theirs to “next level”.
Aside from individuals having these requests, there is also a growing number of small business/publications that are wanting to test how far we can make WordPress go – this is the primary reason I taught myself how to code PHP and CSS.
With the help of the WordPress Codex and support forums, taking WordPress to the next level with customizations is quite possible. Granted, it takes a fair degree of code knowledge, how to play with “the loop” and make special function calls.
If you are looking to use WordPress for an online magazine or online newspaper, feel free to contact me – I’d love to work with you on creating a custom theme.
Brian, you are completely correct. I do not want my blog to look like a blog or even to look like WordPress right off the bat. However, I think WordPress can be used as a full CMS with the right theme and plugins.
Alex King, although he is a WordPress guru, has demonstrated the power of WordPress with Crowd Favorite and All Things Digital. One day I want to be able to do that.
Will, yes, Alex is really good at what he does, probably among a handful of the best. I’m a firm believer that with WordPress (and the right plugins as you mention) anything is possible!
Yeah, I agree with this. I am not sure why you wouldn’t want your site looking like a blog though, a lot of familiarity is good for a site and a blog sites automatically gets that. You don’t have to learn where things are…..they have there own set place on any similar site. That is part of what makes blogs so user friendly and the draw of them. What people are suggesting is that you take all the familiar things about a blog away. That seems less attractive to me, but I guess… I am all too happy being a blogger.
Brian, I’ve seen some of your unpublicized work and one of my first questions is “Is that Wordpress?”. You do a great job with them, keep it up!
Thanks Brad, nice to see you coming out of the woodwork! Been a while, we need to chat and catch up! How’s the forums coming along?
YO MAN! haven’t talked to you in like….a month?! It’s funny you wrote about this because I am in the process of giving BpBc an overhaul so that it looks more like an entertainment portal and less like a blog. I’m 90% there.
Glad to see you are still kicking things over in the web design world.
Dan, I just checked out your site. VERY ADULT, but it isn’t working as is. I don’t know if this is the new portal you speak of though, as it looks like a blog.
I have a very wide screen and your header is centered while all your content is left. It looks very odd.
Brian could hook you up though, he is great.
Jennifer, yeah, Dan’s living his college days still!!
(Cheap shot for you buddy, but I know you can take it!) As for your comments, those looking for a non-blog look are normally small businesses who want the ease of WP and its functionality, but want to maintain a website look. It really all depends on what people are looking to accomplish.
Jennifer – PS, thanks for the recommendation!
Dan knows how to get in touch with me – in fact, he owes me a beer or two for sharing so valuable information a little while back!
Brian – You are right, but whats will the cost of doing this be like ?
Hi people, Brian.
I’m building an online-magazine basen on WordPress; i think that it’s possible and… well, easy (it’s not so hard). First thing we must have in mind is the magazine structure: issues, articles, sections (subtitles, auth curriculum, etc).
Once you know the structure, the rest is to work with “CUSTOM FIELDS” and CSS’s
regards,
alex
I’m looking into making an e-commerce site using Wordpress. I’m just now starting to move the code around, but it definitely doesn’t need to look like a blog.
We’ve done this in a round about way with http://www.deadmule.com and a few tweaks.
I could see a customer needing work done on the admin look & feel.
If I could afford it I’d so try out the revolution theme.
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