How I Built a Church Website for Free: Picking a Wordpress Theme

Making Your Wordpress Website Look Good

So far in this series we’ve learned the advantages of a self-hosted church website, hosting it through BlueHost.com, and how to install Wordpress to manage your website content. But now your website looks really ugly and boring, and we can’t have that. Thankfully, giving your Wordpress website a whole new look is as simple as downloading a few files and then uploading them to your website (click here for step-by-step instructions to install a theme). These collections of files that style your website and give it a particular look are called “Themes.” There are tons of both free and paid themes available for Wordpress, from the simple blog theme to a complex news and video website. If you Google “best Wordpress themes” you will get a ton of websites who have compiled a list of themes that they think stand out. If you want a really great-looking website a paid theme is probably the way to go ultimately. Be warned though, that some of these themes require a significant amount of customization that may not be really easy to do at first. Most of these paid themes include step-by-step instructions for how to customize things like rotating picture banners, but you might have to dig a little bit to find it. Also, for the best appearance, you will need to crop pictures to certain sizes at times, which can be done pretty easily online at sites like Picnik.com. With that, here are some of the best places to find themes for your church website.

My Favorite Wordpress Themes for Churches

Some of the best free church Wordpress themes:

• [UPDATE] Ministry Theme – As you might guess, this theme is built specifically for ministry websites. I’ve never come across this theme, but it looks really great. As of right now, the theme isn’t able to be downloaded as the creators of the theme tweak it to be more compatible with Wordpress 2.7. It also looks like they may re-release it as a paid theme, but up until now it was free. Thanks to Bill Robbins of Organized Themes for pointing this one out.
• Ashford – This theme claims to be among the most user-friendly for the novice. Among the unique traits of this theme is the ability to edit certain aspects of the website from the front end rather than having to login to the back end of the website at do all the editing. I have never used this theme, but if you have never used Wordpress before (or will be allowing other people to edit the site who have little experience), this might be the perfect theme.
• LivingOS UPSILON – A very clean theme with a rotating picture header. Changing the pictures takes a little bit of code work, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. I used this theme to create PassingOnFaith.com for a conference I helped organize. This theme was designed specifically for churches. Check out the other themes at LivingOS.
• Notepad – I’ve never worked with this theme, so it might be difficult to customize. Since it’s free, the only thing you lose is time if you end up not liking the theme. If you will only have a few pages, this is a very clean look that makes it clear where information is located on your site. It also has 13 different color schemes.
• WP Full Site – Targeted at small businesses, but could easily be adapted for church use.
• Organized Themes.com (some paid themes, too) – Run by a guy who worked as an associate pastor and realized churches need a simple way to present their web content and began designing Wordpress themes. I’ve never used them, so I can’t speak for their user-friendliness but a few of them look really nice.
• Refueled.net – Never used their themes but I have seen some churches that have. Look like they would be very easy to use and for certain demographics they would provide a simple solution.
• Ocean Mist – Another really simple site, but I’ve never used it so can’t speak for it.
• Vigilance – This is the new theme that I just switched to here at MattCleaver.com. It has some really sweet features that could make it a great site for churches to use. Go to the linked page to see the extra goodies that I am not using right now on my site. I can also vouch that it is very user friendly, a great place to start for newbies who want some flexibility and customization options. This is one of the best free themes I’ve run into in a long time.
• Titan – Just released on March 11 by the same guy who made the above Vigilance theme, Titan is another amazing looking theme. This theme offers drop-down menus that are helpful for sites with a lot of pages.
• Sero – I almost used this theme for something a few months ago, but can’t remember what it was or why I decided against it. Anyways, it’s a good looking theme that might be right up your alley.
• WooThemes (mostly paid themes, but some freebies) – WooThemes has some really sweet themes, most of them paid. There are a few free themes though, like the Original Premium News theme that Tim Schmoyer uses.

Paid Themes:

• Church Wordpress Theme ($59.95) – This is a pretty advanced theme that was free for a very short period of time. During that time I downloaded it and played around with it. I have to say, it isn’t for the novice but can make for a really good looking site if you know what you are doing.
• iThemes ($79.95) – iThemes has a lot of different themes, all paid, many of which would work fabulous for churches. In fact, I decided to purchase their Architect theme for our church’s website. I considered going the 100% free route when developing our church’s website, but decided a one-time fee of $80 was well worth it for a clean theme that did exactly what I wanted it to do.
• WPRemix ($75) – I used this theme for a project I was doing quite a while ago and it was pretty difficult to use. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has been updated significantly since then and is now more user-friendly.
• ChurchRoot (as low as $12.50) – This website just launched a few days ago on March 9 and is, as the name suggests, targeted specifically at churches. They have some great specials since they are just now launching their site.
• Thesis ($87) – Everywhere I turn these days, people are using this theme. Supposedly it is really flexible and customizable, yet has a really clean look to it. I’ve never used it, but it looks like a great theme.

Please leave some links and comments in the comments section below if you know of other great themes for churches. And yes, you can promote your own themes, paid or free! If I like them, I’ll add them to the body of the post.

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