I’m doing a charity project for my church, setting up a website for them.
So I decide to use WordPress, because after all that’s one of the easiest ways to allow non-technical people to create content on a web site. And I’m used to using WordPress to create mini-sites, so it seemed like a natural fit.
After I bought web hosting for the church, I installed WordPress and started looking around for a theme. This is the part of creating a site I absolutely hate, because there are a zillion themes floating around the Internet. They all look great, so how do I pick just one?
I happened to do a search for “church wordpress themes”, and up comes Living Open Source’s themes. These are themes created by a minister, Tim, and many of them are designed with churches in mind.
The one I ended up choosing was the Upsilon theme. It has built in integration with SmoothGallery for doing a timed slideshow in the header. The church wants to show off some photos of the church and church life, so that’s a great place to highlight some of the best.
The theme also has integration with the FAlbum plugin for showing Flicker photos, and with Plogger for showing photos you have hosted on your own server using the Plogger script. A photo gallery was one of their wish list items, so having this support built into the theme is terrific.
If you’re ever doing a project for a church, I can highly recommend you head over to <a href="Living Open Source and take a look at the themes there.
Thanks for the heads up. The congregation I attend has a very outdated website. Of course, I have no control over it, but if one day I have the chance I might remember to mention it to our webmaster.
(Now that I think about it, I don’t even know for sure who manages our congregation’s website 😛 )
I appreciate Living OS’ contribution – they’ve put out some very nice and useful themes. Good article.
[quote comment=””]I appreciate Living OS’ contribution – they’ve put out some very nice and useful themes. Good article.[/quote]
Yes, their themes are terrific. My church project wouldn’t have gotten off the ground nearly as fast without them.
If you need any more free WordPress themes designed for churches, I currently have four on my site http://www.OrganizedThemes.com. They are designed to not look like blogs, but to look and function as a stylish church website. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Hi Bill, your themes look great! Anyone looking to start a church web site should definitely take a look.