Let’s continue our guide to building a new website. In the first entry, we told you about the three most popular content management systems and we opted to choose WordPress as the best means to achieve our intended goal. In this post, we will focus on selecting the most fitting theme for our WordPress-based web portal.
Choosing the Theme for a Web Portal
We all have different tastes, so various elements of the web design may be more or less important for each of us. Nevertheless, we will try to set some fundamental features that should matter when choosing the right theme for a website.
We want our portal to contain a section listing our entries. In this section, we want to be able to indicate texts that are important to us, so they are highlighted. It might be the latest news, our best texts, or promoted sponsored articles.
We also want our theme to include a sidebar where our users would be able to find additional information. We want to be able to customize the appearance of our entries to match the nature of the content so differentiation in displaying the entries is important to us.
And let’s not forget that the theme and all its elements must be fully responsive, so it will display well on mobile devices. And last but not least, we should not ignore the issue of banner advertising. Many creators, when presenting their themes, indicate the examples of ads placements, which are the best from the design point of view and at the same time are the most effective. When building your website you may also consider the same features as important.
With those guidelines in mind, we will now try to find a sample of paid and free themes for our website.
Paid WordPress Themes
Gillion
Gillion is an interesting and modern-looking theme. Its authors provide several examples of its use – for us the most important is the demo showing the version of “News”. The theme contains all the elements we mentioned in the introduction of this entry: the section with the spotlighted texts and the sidebar, it is responsive, it offers a variety of the entry types and provides examples of where ads may be displayed. Gillion looks great on both desktop and mobile devices. The authors provide the users with the opportunity to choose several header options, including the one with advertising space, as well as several types of sliders that can be used on individual pages. The theme uses Visual Composer to create the home page and other pages.
Theme author: Shufflehound
Theme price: 55$
Newsflash
The second proposition of a paid theme is Newsflash. It is a distinctly open and highly aesthetic theme. The creators provide us with sample solutions for various types of internet portals. The users have the option to personalize the header, as well as the entire home page, thanks to compatibility with Visual Composer and blocks prepared for it. The users may also benefit from six article templates as well as a Mega Menu. The entirety of the theme is complemented by carefully selected colors and clear typography
Theme author: Mikado-Themes
Theme price: 69$
Saxon
Saxon is a clean and elegant theme. It will, undoubtedly, find use on many websites. It’s most prominent characteristic is the speed, as well as interesting typography. The creators offer its users a lot of options for personalization on the home page without the need for an additional page builder. The theme authors have also prepared blocks that can be utilized as a part of the Guttenberg entry editor
Theme author: dedalx
Theme price: 59$
Digiqole
Progressive, transparent, with interesting colors – those are the features that can be used to describe the Digigole theme. It has a lot of personalization options, thanks to the blocks. The theme supports page builder Elementor, as well as Guttenberg editor. Other than that it has several options to display entries, a text reading progress bar, as well as six header styles and sliders that can be used when creating your website.
Theme author: trippleS
Theme price: 35$
Zox News
A professional Zox News theme is the last of our sample of paid themes. It offers several section layouts with spotlighted texts as well as the option of displaying only a part of the text in the article – the rest is available after a “Read more” link is activated. The authors suggest using the space directly after the “Read more” link to display advertisement. This theme is fully responsive and, as a bonus, it has an AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) version
Theme author: MVPThemes
Theme price: 59$
Free WordPress Themes
NewsCard
The NewsCard theme in its free-of-charge version has plenty of options that allow customizing the page. Similarly, as in the paid theme Saxon, the homepage doesn’t have to be created with a page builder, instead, using specially prepared blocks is quite enough. The theme is fast and simple to personalize. However, some options allowing more precise customization are only available in the paid version.
Theme author: Theme Horse
ColorMag
Color Mag is one of the most popular free themes available for WordPress. It offers basic customization options. ColorMag is easy to use, so it shouldn’t cause any problems even to non-technical users. The great advantages of ColorMag are pre-designed advertising placements, as well as easy cooperation with the most popular plugins available for WordPress users.
Theme author: Theme Grill
News Base
News Base is one of the more interesting free propositions. The theme has a modern look and is very clear. Among its advantages is the possibility to create a home page with widgets prepared by the authors. Same as with the previous two themes, you wouldn’t need to use a page builder, so you may easily create an interesting web portal
Theme author: Thememattic
Newsphere
Newsphere is a free theme made attractive with the section that contains the latest and most popular content. It doesn’t require a page builder to create the main page, everything here can be done using widgets. It has an interesting feature – an appendix that indicates how much time is left to read an article. The authors also point to compatibility with the Guttenberg editor, as well as responsiveness and readiness to be translated into various languages.
Theme author: AF themes
JustWrite
Another interesting proposition is JustWrite. This theme offers a slider with the latest entries, as well as the possibility of personalization with widgets. The creators also made sure to show the potential advertisement placements and included some examples. JustWrite in its demo version presents a very innovative homepage structure, that can be used to create a web portal. Other features include tag widgets, links to texts, social profiles, as well as recent Twitter activity of the page author.
Theme author: Acosmin
Summary
When you take to building a web portal on WordPress, you should choose your theme carefully. Website users pay attention not only to the information you provide and the quality of said information but also to the appearance of your portal. It should be clear, transparent, and easy to navigate. That’s why, when choosing your theme, you should state your minimum requirements – guidelines – that the theme must meet, so then your website is interesting, intuitive, modern, and also ready for monetization.
In our next entry, we will focus on useful plugins that help you create a well functioning internet portal.
Some of the links in this entry are affiliate links. After clicking on them you may familiarize yourself with the offer of a specific theme. While you do not bear any costs, you may support the development of the AdFoxly plugin and this blog.
