20 Badass Sites Built on WordPress

20 Badass Sites Built on WordPress

Bridget McQuillan's Layout avatar

We (obviously) love WordPress, and we really love finding sites built with WordPress that are absolutely beautiful and powerful. We made a list of 20 sites–ranging from portfolio sites to blogs to agencies to photographers–that are perfect examples of how beautiful WordPress sites can be. Check them out below.

1. Sane Communications

sane communications

2. Mindcastle

mindcastle

3. Trent Walton

trent walton

4. Angel Acevedo

angel acevedo

5. The Band Agency

the band agency

6. The Fresh Exchange

fresh exchange

7. Design Made in Germany

design made in germany

8. Childagain

childagain

9. Recurrently

recurrently

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10. Seattle Cider Company

seattle cider

11. Grind

grind

12. I Shot Him

i shot him

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13. Captain Creative

captain creative

14. Listen

listen

15. Racket

racket

16. Hyemi Oh

hyemi oh

17. Trever Hoehne

trever hoehne

18. Michael Berger

michael berger

19. Breanna Rose

breanna rose

20. We Say So

we say so

 

Can’t get enough of these badass sites? Check out even more here!

Comments ( 5 )

  1. Pat

    December 29, 2015

    These are very cool designs. Some of them seemed a little similar to a couple of Squarespace templates but getting these designs on Wordpress is impressive. With the flexibility of Wordpess, I think more and more people are migrating from SQ.

  2. Luke Cavanagh

    July 23, 2015

    You could use any of the lazy load plugin which would help image loading and also use a static caching plugin as well.

    https://github.com/Automattic/lazy-load

  3. Carole Baskin

    March 21, 2014

    I liked the way Trever Hoehne displayed the images on the front page. I'd love to know how that was done so that a screen loading quickly, as others below it were starting to load in the background. With our big cats, that could really be stunning.

    I noticed that most of the graphics intensive sites took 8 seconds or longer to load, which isn't a trade off we can make. We have been thrilled to get our 6 seconds down to about 2 thanks to FlyWheel.

  4. Nasendackel

    March 18, 2014

    Its always quite impressive, how designers use Wordpress. For years I try that May blog looks different.

  5. John Locke

    February 25, 2014

    The Captain Creative site is f-f-f-f-FRESH! I love how the colors even look retro.

    Most of the rest of these use imagery to tell stories, oftentimes in intriguing ways. Check out Racket, LIsten, Trent Walton's site, Design Made In Germany, and Sane.

    The workspace photo as a metaphor for expertise is still effective, but I think it *has* peaked and will eventually become cliched. This applies for both the macro (here's our offices) and micro (coffee cup and Mac).
    It's difficult to tell a story with photos, that just seems to be the quickest way to do it, and I see everyone do it.

    That Seattle Cider site uses photography very effectively, without being blunt.

    • Jason Terry

      February 26, 2014

      John, I checked out the Captain Creative site and it does look amazing. It really surprised me that his last blog update was in August of 2012. Yikes!

      • John Locke

        March 21, 2014

        Hi Jason:

        Yikes indeed! That's way too bog of a gap in between publishing. Good content works wonders if you produce it consistently.

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