Studeo is a WordPress theme by PremiumPixels that is available through ThemeForest. It is designed to appeal to creative agencies and makes heavy use of images throughout the design. It comes with 4 custom widgets, a filterable portfolio and an easy color picker. A church not to far from where I call home used this theme in redesigning their church website. Thursday I’ll feature that site and you can see it used in a church context.
The team at ChurchThemer.com released their second theme a couple weeks ago. Moses was their first them and now they’ve released Ezekiel. There are some common things among the two with the overall look and feel being similar yet distinct. Here’s a screen shot of Ezekiel. What do you think? Anyone use it yet?
First Baptist Church in Miami….Arizona, runs on WordPress. First Baptist is using the Moses Church Theme from Church Themer that I blogged about a couple weeks ago. It looks great and the sermon page is well done too.
WooThemes makes great themes and one I like is Saving Grace. I am in the process of customizing a theme for a church that is doing a campaign to raise funds for a building. I suggested Saving Grace to them because of how perfect it is for their situation and for any church or charity where giving is a huge focus of the site. The theme includes donation functionality through PayPal.
ChurchThemer.com just recently launched a few months ago and their first theme is the Moses Church Theme. I like that it is designed specifically for churches and therefore has the ability to post sermon mp3s, events, location and service times. It also comes with the PSD files which is great for customization. Screen shot is below. Head to ChurchThemer.com and see if the Moses theme is a fit for you. If not, they have 2 more themes on the way soon that you might like.
The great minds behind the Standard Theme and Live Theme just released the Pro Photo Theme last week. It’s a theme that is built on the greatness of the Standard Theme but is specifically customized for photographers and photo bloggers. I use the Standard Theme on my blog and it’s excellent. To promote the Pro Photo Theme out the gate it was being offered at a discount to the first 250 buyers with the price being $49 for the standard license and $99 for the support license.
You can watch the preview video here or click below to head right to the site and purchase the theme.
Somehow, I managed to discover a premium theme I wasn’t aware of – Catalyst Theme. I haven’t purchased it (because I’m a little over-stocked at the moment) so I can’t examine the code, but the features look sweet. The demo’s design seems a few years dated, but if it packs all the punch it says it packs, it’s worth a glance…
I don’t like this ad:
It’s for Headway Theme. I like Headway, I just don’t like the ad. I’m guessing that one of the motivations for pushing this message is to tick developers like me off enough to react to it. Another message, however, is why pay a bunch of money for someone who knows what they’re doing when you can just drag and drop stuff? That’s the message that gets my goad.
Let me make this clear – I like premium WordPress themes and plugins. The themes directory at WordPress.org used to be filled with so much junk, and with so many premium theme distributors using a GPL license and thereby having some free themes included in the directory, the overall quality of themes is on the rise. Furthermore, designers and developers have a plethora of great frameworks from which to choose as a base or framework. And I would agree that some organizations and entrepreneurs need to deploy sites quickly, skipping all the consulting and development time associated with working with a freelancer or agency. So I get all of that.
I just don’t like the message… “no need for WordPress develoeprs.” Here’s why:
I’d like to congratulate the team that put Headway together. You’re a great group of WordPress developers. Keep up the good work. The internet does need you.
Just released – hot off the press – is Cross Talk Theme for Churches by Chimp Studios. At first glance, one of the features I love is the slideshow. I’m actually not a huge fan of slideshows (even though I use one here on WordPress for Ministry) because information, secondary stories, and calls to action all seem to get hidden. But with the slideshow built into Cross Talk offers much more.
The theme resembles a lot of great church sites, but still has some touches of uniqueness. It comes in four color schemes and has an options panel as well.
