We love blogs, but we love websites, too. Small businesses, personal portfolios, non-profit organizations, government websites -- bring 'em on! These four sites are each beautiful, effective, and built on WordPress.com.
Purple carrots, green grass, red tomatoes -- rather than clashing, the images on Sandyfoot Farm's site suggest abundance and health. Popular free theme Sela is the perfect backdrop for these Virginia farmers' vibrant vegetables.
Sela's built-in "front page" template gives them space for a welcome note and and three areas highlighting key elements of their business like farmers' market appearances, farm shares, and their farm blog. The theme's default sans-serif font plays well with the Sandyfoot logo and keeps things feeling streamlined, even amidst a riot of color.
Ever thought about visiting Winnipeg, Canada? You will after seeing Only in the Peg, the adorable online showcase the city's tourism board built using the premium Adventure theme. While the site retains a blog-style layout, its use of featured posts, widgets, and a menu create a home page feel.
Replacing the theme's stock adventure travel images with retro-mod patterns and a trio of cartoon clothespegs -- Mister, Missus, and Lil' Peg -- gives the site a fun, family-friendly vibe. We especially love the punch of orange in the site's logo, and shadow of Winnipeg's skyline spanning the header. Next stop, Manitoba!
Even we are hard pressed to tell what theme graphic designer Trina Lambert uses for her personal site -- pared down and bold, it puts all the focus on her, where it belongs. (Hint: it's Clean Home, a free blog theme.)
Clean Home already features bold text against a crisp white backdrop; Trina takes that a step further, removing the theme's standard red title text and creating a stripped-down home page with a few well-placed graphics. It's an eye-catching presentation that gives visitors an immediate sense of her style.
New Zealand's Leading Change is a network of social entrepreneurs committed to fostering social and environmental change. On their website, they lead the charge using the free theme Edin.
Edin is tailor-made for business and organizational sites. Leading Change makes the theme their own with an engaging image layered with their mission statement. Swapping out Edin's chunkier fonts for lighter, leaner Futura keeps things modern, in line with the organization's forward-looking stance.
From themes like Goran, Creative Portfolio, or Swell designed with websites in mind to malleable blog-style themes like Twenty Twelve and Oxygen, WordPress.com lets you go beyond the blog. Free themes and tools allow anyone to build a professional site quickly and easily, and add-ons like premium themes or the WordPress.com Business plan, mean the sky's the limit.
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