Update: If you like this post, you should check out my 10 favorite WordPress premium theme sites post, as those will contain lots of awesome non-blog styles.

Remember the post I wrote a couple of months ago, titled When Is A Blog Not A Blog? Well, I was reminded of that post when I started thinking about a new site I’m about to begin working on. You see, I plan to use WordPress to run the site, but I don’t want the site to look like a blog. It won’t be date-oriented, like a blog is, and in keeping with the idea of having it be more like a regular site, I want it to have a non-blog look as well.

Not all WordPress themes have to look like blog themes. In my quest to find just the right look for my new site, I realized that there was a “style” that could be useful to others looking for the same thing. Generally speaking, that style is called “magazine style” or “newspaper style”, but I find that some of them could be referred to as “corporate style” as well. So rather than trying to put a specific name on this, I’ll just refer to the following styles as the “non-blog look”. That work for you? Good.

The next thing you should know is that I chose my favorites to present here, but each of them is a premium theme, which loosely translated, means they aren’t free. Still, the features and options warrant their cost in my opinion. Sometimes, it’s necessary to spend a little. (And just for those of you who absolutely won’t spend money on a theme, I’ve included a link to a review of some free non-blog themes at the very end).

All prices subject to change, and I may not know about it *

Flexx $79

Click here to view more details

Flexx is by far the most flexible and most awesome premium theme I’ve seen. Frankly, all you need to know is that with just a few clicks of your mouse, you can change the layout to any one of over 1000 different possible layouts. You decide how many columns you want, where you want them, where to put special widgets, how to organize the menu, etc., just by clicking your mouse. Seriously, it’s so cool, it’s unreal! So the screenshot below is just ONE of over 1000 possible looks! Lots of other way cool features, too, like flash-like rotating headers, seo friendly, and plug and play graphic changes.

WP Remix $75

Click here to view more details

WP Remix comes with:

• 20+ Custom Layouts
• Multiple Page Templates
• 5 Homepage Options
• 10 Sub Page Options
• 2 Product/Portfolio Pages
• 2 Event Listing Pages
• FAQ Template
• Testimonials
• Multi Level Drop Down Menu
• 1, 2, and 3 column Pages
• SEO optimized
• Image Gallery
• Newsletter form
• and on and on and on

The screenshot only shows one possible layout, but the layout options are almost endless.

Revolution and Its Iterations $79.95 each

What can I say about Revolution? It comes in various flavors and each is wonderful and highly flexible.

Original Revolution:
Click here to view more details

Revolution Magazine:
Click here to view more details

Revolution News:
Click here to view more details

Revolution Sports:
Click here to view more details

Revolution Tech:
Click here to view more details

EggHead $49

Click here to view more details

This theme has a very nice admin options area that makes it easy to customize the text for each section.

Features:

• 8 color schemes
• 2 layouts
• Dynamic menus
• Easy ad placements

Egghead works well for a traditional web site look.

That’s it. I haven’t yet decided which I’ll choose, but I’m leaning heavily towards Fjord09 at the moment. Anyway, as promised, here’s a link to a good review of 11 Free Magazine Style WordPress Themes for those of you who insist on free. (I insist on free at least 99% of the time, so I totally understand).

*

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 25 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: plug and play, regular site, web site look
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Want to know a little secret? My most profitable site is not a blog. It’s just a regular site. You know, the kind that has existed for years, long before the word blog was invented. I almost never update it. I hardly ever even think about it. I certainly don’t post daily or weekly like I would do with a blog. But if I had to do it all over again, I would build it as if it were a blog. I still wouldn’t update it very often or think about it very often. But when I needed to, it would be oh so much easier to do than it is right now. So unless I plan to do some extra-special, hoop-jumping, programming wizardry on my next site, I’ll create it using WordPress as if it were a blog.

But it won’t be a blog.

It will be a regular site that just happens to use WordPress as its foundation. And you probably should too. In the old days, I would have recommended something like Drupal or some other CMS (Content Management System) to you. And then you would have asked me 5,000 questions about how to use it. Keep in mind that a CMS is supposed to make life easier for non-programmers, but just using them can be a daunting experience.

WordPress is pretty darn easy to use. It might not be as easy as 1-2-3, but it’s not much harder than that. And it actually comes enabled with an option to make it work more like a regular site than a blog. It’s not completely designed for it, and some tweaking needs to be done – usually to your theme (design) – but it doesn’t take much tweaking.

Normally, when using WordPress as a blog, any time you write a new post, you are writing just that – a post. But you can also write pages instead of posts in WordPress, and these are handled differently than posts (they aren’t displayed in chronological order for example). And if you tell WordPress to use one of those pages you wrote as your home page, it will! So if you want a 10-page site, write 10 pages and assign one of them as the home page. Easy, right?

Like I said, it’s not quite as simple as that, and the biggest issues almost always center around making changes to the theme you choose. Frankly, unless you’re ready and willing to learn about HTML, PHP, and CSS, I’d probably recommend that you hire someone to make the theme changes for you. Since you might be doing that anyway in order to get a custom theme for yourself, it probably won’t cost you any more than you would have paid in the first place.

You might want to check out this Essential Keystrokes post, as it gives yet another view of someone who went through this process. You might also want to check out Drikatruu Jelly. That theme is one I’ve already mentioned that I like, and the site shows you how you can use it as a template for a WordPress CMS. If you are feeling like tackling the project yourself, it might be the way to go.

So if you want to build a site, but you don’t want to be a blogger, you might want to consider using WordPress as a CMS. If you plan to create some mind-blowing site that requires lots of custom programming, then this probably isn’t the way to go. But if you want to just a build a regular site, put some pages up, maybe throw some affiliate links around, and then let it stand on its own, this might be a great way to make that happen. When you do need to add a page, or change something you’ve written, it will be a breeze to do it through WordPress’s admin panel. And over the years, that ease of use will be something you’ll come to appreciate very, very much.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CMS, Content Management System, HTML, mind-blowing site, profitable site, regular site, WordPress
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.