10 Of The World’s Best WordPress Websites
Word(im)Press
WordPress may be associated with blogging through its .com site, but the .org website-building platform is also hugely significant. While its blogging sibling remains the province of amateurs, many high-profile media outlets and global brands have also used WordPress to host their sites, including pop stars, car manufacturers and news agencies.
It’s perhaps understandable that blue-chip organisations would entrust their web presence to WordPress. With thousands of customisable templates and open source scripts, this is now a full CMS with over 44,000 plugins able to handle almost any conceivable functionality and facility.
These are some of the most successful and dynamic WordPress website examples:
An American mobile web agency, Worry Free Labs uses WordPress to showcase its own services and portfolio of products. Designed in HTML5, this slick site incorporates animations and slides – a true demonstration of WordPress’s power.
2. Spotify
One of the world’s leading music streaming services depends on WordPress CMS, which makes sense when you consider the web interface is very much secondary to Spotify’s music database and the volume of servers required to satisfy global demand for its services. A simple five-tab website design is quite sufficient for everything else.
3. Icon Dock
Obliterating any notions that a WordPress website has to be visually plain, this collection of stock icons uses ingenious content arrangements and image collages to generate colour and style that practically bursts out of the screen.
WordPress website examples include some household name brands, with Mercedes-Benz joining Ford and Toyota on the list of car manufacturer clients. The full-screen sliding images and high-end customised design of this site reflect how classy a basic coding template can become.
5. Typographica
In a similar fashion to Icon Dock and Mercedes-Benz, this typeface review platform makes imaginative use of CMS. Its WordPress origins are completely undetectable, allowing the content to take centre stage.
While Facebook runs on its own proprietary platform, its news blog is powered by WordPress and clad in a Facebook skin. Its minimalist aesthetic is ideal for a news site, with a classic three-bar drop-down menu on smaller displays giving way to button tabs on desktop screens.
This site is interesting for combining two elements of WordPress – page management and shopping cart functionality. The latter is handled by OpenCart, an open-source system with twenty payment gateways and multi-currency compatibility. WordPress is loved by many small ecommerce companies for the dependability of its checkout plugins.
8. Derren Brown
Illusionist and behaviourist Derren Brown’s official website was built using WordPress, with heavy integration of elements from Photoshop and Illustrator. The end result is a highly dynamic site that demonstrates what can be achieved by hanging stylish finery over a basic WordPress skeleton. With two million monthly page views, its robustness is also clear.
9. Little
With over 30 years’ experience in solving business challenges among global companies, Little’s decision to use a WordPress site reflects how versatile this platform can be. Their site is optimised for Retina displays, balancing presentation with page weight to impressive effect.
10. NASA
WordPress’s popularity is attested by the fact NASA specifically chose it as their open source CMS, for data and transparency sites hosted alongside the main NASA.gov portal. The very different appearances of the Open and Data Portal sites underline the endlessly customisable interfaces available to WordPress customers.
Should your website be on this list? Share your WordPress masterpieces with us over on our Twitter page.