Dos and Do Nots for Multipurpose/Creative Themes: Wordpress VS HTML
First off, let’s settle the fact that the creative types constitute businesses and individuals such as filmmakers, musicians, designers, artists, performers, agencies of all sorts, magazines and what not.
Though in the today’s universe of web design, “multipurpose” and a “creative portfolio” are the buzzwords everyone seems to use. But does everyone understand the meaning behind it? What really encompasses a multipurpose website for creative types, that gets truly efficient both visually and functionally?
Let’s try to deconstruct the baseline criteria for those — all while comparing some creative multipurpose themes — some made for the Wordpress CMS and the others being HTML5 templates!
But before we do, let’s make it crystal clear, that we’ve chosen these two separate Content Management Systems (or, rather one CMS and one platform) not because we wanna compare them. The only thing that matters to us here is actually the design & functional part of the equation, not starting a battle between these two platforms, both of which have pros and cons of its own…
Essential #1: Multiple Designs (kinda equals Multi-purposiveness in itself)
So what do creative websites crave for first and foremost? Is it the design part of the equation? Yep.
Naturally, creative businesses have a thing for what the appearance of their webpage is, just as much as they need multiple choices to pick from. Hence, providing multiple variants for both the homepage & a few more niche-specific design skins will surely get you their attention.
Essential #2: Multiple, Bolder Color Schemes
Yeah, not all businesses need an acid magenta-colored homepage or some freaky broken CSS Grid for their website gallery. But the creative businesses surely do. And the more original the better. All kept within the boundaries of reason, of course!
So while providing customers with many design skins is definitely a starter, combined with a versatile color schemes and some bold & unorthodox choices for hues will make such multipurpose theme truly fit for creative types.
Essential #3: Oomphy Galleries, Grids & Layouts
Almost any website has an image gallery these days. Unless yours stands out in some way, it won’t be creative enough, which is not the way to go for a creative website, isn’t it?
Interactive animation and over-an-image hovers, unusual grid layout, interesting single image view mode (or a separate single image page) are all the factors that can play into increasing your website’s quality by a lot.
Essential #4: Basic & SOME Advanced Functionality
How different are creative/portfolio websites from the rest of them, functionally-wise?
Well, it’s obvious that functionality as basic as the About page, hero sliders, newsletter subscription, social media widgets, CTAs, Blog etc are all essential, whether it’s an adv agency’s website or a plumber’s website.
But just take a look at the image above (it’s taken from the Dieter theme for Wordpress) — do you really follow all the features listed and do you really need them all? In fact, talking about a creative agency that this multipurpose theme is meant for — it looks like they went for an overkill with things like the progress bar, counter etc…
Still, those are the details and accents that distinguish a universal template from the one that’s good for creative types. Advanced functionality such as the one listed below, is something to consider:
- E-commerce plugins
- Backups & Updates Automatization
- Multi-tier, customizable Navigation Menus
- Case studies/Projects/Team/Timelines
- SEO optimization plugins
- Advance image galleries
- Custom Headers/Footers
- Customizable and Optional Sidebars
- Fullwidth Sliders
Don’ts: Are Acid & Too Bright Colors a Good Thing? No, They’re Not!
I mean, considering the latest web design trends both for creative, portfolio gallery type websites & the latest craze about multipurpose, multi-layout websites, it sounds like a marriage made in heaven, doesn’t it?
In theory yeah, but only if you avoid a few good old mistakes while creating your website.
When it comes to how sensational the design is or how many functionality you’re offering, extreme experiments won’t cut it. You see, those people crazy enough to choose the bottom left corner color will most likely design it all on their Salvador Dali-like own.
We Get It, It’s a Long Article. Here are Some Random Hilarious Web Design Flops to Keep You Going:
Some More Dos and Do Nots: Comparing Two Multipurpose Templates (both demos linked in the footer):
Well, let’s firstly run a quick checklist on the 4 essentials we’ve discussed before.
While both have versatile homepage layouts; niche-specific design skins; basic, just as well as advanced functionality — so far Magic now wins 3 to 2, which is too close to call.
So what’s that differs them, if the checklist run is kinda close?
- First off, the Beyond theme may look more clean, but it has much more negative white space around, which won’t look good on 4K-ready desktops and laptops.
- Then again, the Beyond has a more unique gallery layout…
- But once more, it lags behind when we talk about the most important thing — range of design skins and homepage layouts, by the score of 11 to 4 on homepages & no design skins.
Meaning, the Magic theme now beats the Beyond theme by a 5 to 3 score!
The Closing Word With Some Summarizing Advice on the Dos:
- Functionality-wise, websites for creative websites are best to be kept simplistic & beautiful.
- Keep the spotlight on design, on bold colors and layouts versatility
- Adding some animation for website elements will work miracles
If you’ve made it that far, feel free to check out the live demos for those 2 themes used as examples in this article (some other couple of themes were used to make a point, but just episodically):
#1 — Magic — Wordpress Theme —
http://bit.ly/magic_theme
#2 — Beyond — HTML5 Theme -
http://www.mojomarketplace.com/item/beyond-creative-multi-purpose-wordpress-theme/demo
Written by Max Nefy, Web Designer at JetImpex
