10 Best Church WordPress Themes?
Using WordPress to open the window into your church’s life is a recurring theme of my blog and one of the ways I’ve been able to share some of my skills with others. A number of my own WordPress themes were designed for churches in mind, and I was surprised to discover someone had reckoned my Delta theme “the only decent-looking church theme”. I’m sure there are plenty of other great themes out there. So here is my version of the ten best that I have noticed being used.
And, oh dear, I could only find 6, that I could say were in some way “best”.
They are in no particular order and I hope you won’t mind me at including at least one mine!
1. Delta
I’m not sure it is the “the only decent-looking church theme”, but it is the one I put together for out church web site. You can see it in action here.
Theme Homepage
2. Ad Clerum
Ad Clerum is a distinctive theme and has been put to good use by Antelope Valley Church.
3. Mandigo
Mandigo is a fairly standard and popular WordPress theme. It has some big name users like Sony and Björk. Lindale First Baptist has put it to use for their web site, though the customised version is not quite to my taste.
Theme Homepage
4. Andreas09
Another popular WordPress theme. This one is here, because it is running on WordPress.com, which is where smaller churches with less technical skill can be on-line in five minutes for free. Immanuel Baptist seem to do OK with this. But…
Symmetrical 3-column designs are fundamentally flawed as a concept. One of the reason why Drupal hasn’t hit WordPress levels yet is the dominance of the 3 column centred theme - which just doesn’t work.
Theme Homepage
5. Ocean Mist
A much better theme, but also available on WordPress.com is Ocean Mist. Serpentine Rd Family Church are using this one.
6. Upsilon
OK, so I’ve included two of my themes, but while Delta gets the accolades, Upsilon has been the most popular of my themes; and not just for church applications. The main reason is that it includes SmoothGallery for a cool rotating header. See it action on Perimeter Pointe church’s site.
Theme Homepage
Help me out here!
There must be more than this. What do you think? Which ones have I missed? What is the best WordPress church theme? They must be free to be in with a shout and they must be being used by a church!
Thanks for mentioning my post! At the time I was researching specialty themes which targeted a specific niche, such as churches. I wasn’t intending to say that no churches made good use of WordPress. Yes, some other themes have been customized for churches, but I still haven’t really seen any other free themes created specifically for churches and available for anyone to download.
Hey Tim,
I just wanted to clarify something in your post here. Your link to the Ocean Mist template is a version that I ported for ExpressionEngine and not the version for WordPress.
The version you want for WordPress is the original theme by Ed Merritt and the link for the actual theme is over at Ten by Twenty.
My apologies for any confusion!
All the best,
Chris
P.S. Email also sent to you, in case you don’t see this right away.
Thanks Chris. I’ve updated the link.
Chris,
Thanks for using our website as an example of Andreas 09. While it may not be the perfect template, it meets our needs right now, which is to have a website up and running with zero budget!
I chose Andreas 09 because it has the buttons expand as I need them at the top. I don’t like not having a custom image header and will be probably changing our layout in the next month.
I appreciate this post; it helps me to see what choices I have.
Rick Boyne
Pastor
Immanuel Southern Baptist Church
http://www.immanuelsouthern.com
Rick, I think you have made great use of the tools available on Wordpress.com. Lots of churches don’t have people with much technical know how and I don’t think many people realise how easy it is to set up a site on WordPress.com.
There are many better designed sites around, and I don’t like the Andreas theme all that much, but you’ve put it to good use. It’s also great to see pictures of people and not buildings on your home page!
And, I think you meant Tim (owner of this blog) not Chris?
blessings
Tim,
Yes, you, not Chris….
Sorry ’bout that!
Rick