Please recommend me a modern theme with the following features

  • I am looking for a WordPress theme with the following features:

    • Is available for free download or purchase (no custom theme development).
    • Main content + sidebar, suitable for blogs with rich content.
    • Ability to remove sidebar on homepage and certain pages.
    • Ability to show excerpts on 2-3-4 columns in masonry layout.
    • Ability to show full posts on homepage (even if excerpts are preferred, sometimes I want option to show full posts).
    • Each post boxed, surrounded by a background in darker color, same about sidebar (like Donovan theme).
    • Small header with NO banner image, with title on top-left, social buttons and search button on top-right (like Customify theme), and navigation menu sticky at top when you scroll down (I no longer want banner like on Graphene theme, where I made an image with site title and email address to protect it from SPAM, but many people do not pay attention to banner and asked via live chat box what is my email, other people complained that there is no button to go to homepage, the did not realized banner is linked to homepage).
    • 404 auto-search feature: on Graphene and Franz Josef themes when you go to a non-existing page, theme automatically search the keywords from URL and show you all pages containing them. Does anyone know a plugin that can add auto-search feature to any theme? (I have seen plugins that does redirect 404 pages to nearest match, but I am not looking for an auto-redirect, I am looking for auto-search).
    • Built-in customization options, at least for main theme elements, to avoid needing to edit PHP files and risk damaging theme. I will customize theme further via CSS to change colors, fonts, headings, padding in tables, etc.

    I started my online life with a simple HTML website on a free hosting in 2009, then moved to WordPress in 2012. I wanted to make my website looking like Wikipedia, Gmail or Yahoo Mail (left sidebar with folder tree and pages), but because people preferred top menus I added another menu at top with links to categories, then expanded it with links to posts. Sidebar folder list may be no longer necessary.

    I tested about 10 WordPress themes and Graphene was the one I liked mostly. But other people did not liked it, they said that my website is ugly, ancient, outdated, designed in the 1990s, etc.

    In 2015 Google announced that will penalize websites that are not readable on mobile devices. Graphene was not responsive, same developers launched a second theme Franz Josef, responsive but I did not liked it because do not show full posts on homepage. Instead I used WP Mobile Edition plugin to show a different theme on Android or iOS devices. In 2017 they launched Graphene 2.0, responsive on all devices, plugin was no longer necessary. But people keep complaining about my website design.

    Over years, traffic moved from computers to phones, search engines algorithms evolved, thus having a fast loading website with post excerpts placed in grid or masonry layout is better than having full posts with lots of keywords. Franz Josef may have been a good choice, but it lacks social media buttons and have some bugs with latest WordPress version because they stopped updating it in January 2018 to focus on Graphene and its paid version Graphene Plus, that add option of masonry layout and more customization. While Graphene Plus may solve my needs, I do not want more comments about bad website design. Thousands themes been launched over years and I think that there may be better options, but I do not have time to test myself thousands themes, so I am asking here for recommendations.

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  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    I’m closing this topic and copying another person’s reply to another topic as an explanation why. It’s an open ended topic and it’s just a chance for people to use this topic to market themselves and that does not help anyone.

    We have a similar rule on the subreddit, which boils down to “no find my theme for me questions”. Essentially you are asking an open ended question which has no end goal in sight. Everybody has opinions on what thing is better than other things, so such a conversation lasts forever and really helps nobody.

    It’s also an open invitation for authors to hawk their wares, and basically advertise their themes. It’s not a productive conversation for “support forums”.

    If you want to find a theme that you like, then my advice is to setup a test site and install a bunch of free themes on it, and try them out. Look at the results, test the layout, examine the code, etc. Asking other what theme they use is going to get you a lot of responses, few of which will actually help you.

    Also, these are support forums, not a blog. Generally speaking, we prefer people to ask specific questions, which will have specific answers. Questions that rely on opinion based answers just end up spiraling out of control.

    Thank you for understanding.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • The topic ‘Please recommend me a modern theme with the following features’ is closed to new replies.