Although it’s somewhat of a niche and ‘high-end’ service (compared to the baseline, consumerist products and services anyway), architecture is making its presence known on the web. Architecture agencies and freelancers worldwide have their websites set up to display previous projects in best ways possible, to leave an impression on clients, to create a need for their services.
For your online portfolio, there’s no better choice than WordPress. An easy to use, easy to manage and complete system of features created specifically to help you publish and market your content easily – to make a name for yourself in the digital domain.
Now, an architect’s WordPress website is incomplete without a snazzy theme to go along with it. In this post, I have listed 7 of the best WordPress themes for architects, perfect for architectures portfolios of all scales.
MIES
MIES is one of the most sophisticated, cutting edge WordPress themes out there, and it’s designed and coded for architectural portfolios.
The grand theme comes packing smart, performance optimized code and features like Project Builder system, advanced portfolio filters, powerful WPGrade and Redux 3 scaffolding, smooth and parallax scrolling, unlimited colors, custom shortcodes for columns, icons, buttons, meta fields and more, social media meta tags, Google Fonts integration, built in Schema.org rich snippet support, AddThis social sharing (buttons and analytics) bundled plugin, WPML compatibility and much more.
It’s a complete package of design and smart features, all optimized for singularly great performance.
Massive Dynamic
Massive Dynamic is just as huge as it sounds in terms of sheer number of features and configuration control it offers to you. The theme itself is lightweight and quick to load.
Massive Dynamic gets its name from the advanced live drag and drop website builder for WordPress, which lets you create practically any page you want without code. The theme also packs dozens upon dozens of complete layouts, header and footer styles with customization controls for each, unique shortcodes, WooCommerce compatible, notification center (for all updates to admin as well as your registered end users), resizable portfolio elements, brilliant demo content import feature (choose from 40 pre built layouts), mega menus, icons and fonts, auto update feature, AJAX enabled search with enhanced filters, video background support, multiple post formats and portfolio layouts, and so much more.
Pretty massive, is it not?
Kalium
Kalium is, quite frankly, unparalleled. The design, the code, and the truly spectacular line up of features make this theme beyond compare.
Kalium packs a whole arsenal complete with premium plugins (Visual Composer page builder, 2 slider plugins), custom skin generator, hundreds of fonts (sophisticated TypeKit family), icons, and layout options, custom widgets (for social networks, site notifications, scroll box, team, form, portfolio, pricing tables, map, and more), products carousels, multiple blog/ menu/ portfolio layouts and formats, AJAX search and mini-shopping cart, custom page templates (coming soon, 404 error, etc.), infinite scroll, AJAX lazy load, and way too many features to list in a post.
The theme is also seamlessly compatible with WooCommerce, WPML, Post Types Order, Category Order and Taxonomy Terms Order, Ninja Forms, Yoast SEO, and WP Super Cache plugins.
What’s not to love, really?
Throne
Throne is elegant and charming to the last pixel. I’ll tell you why.
The theme packs the essentials without the frills and pomp that generally bloat a theme up. It has minimal design (one page and multi page), multiple page templates and layouts for home page, portfolio, menu, blog, contact page etc., custom page templates, Layout Builder, stunning animations, hundreds of fonts and icons, Multilanguage and RTL compatibility, built in SEO-optimization, and so much more.
It gives you and your projects room to breathe.
Cobalt
Cobalt is yet another stunningly designed and surprisingly minimalistic WordPress theme for architects.
The theme has design and necessary features masterfully covered. It packs a dozen built on color schemes, multiple homepage, blog, and portfolio layouts, post templates, JavaScript shortcode packs for easy customization, integrated Contact Form 7, Breadcrumb (prominent WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin feature) support, mega dropdown menus, super sturdy Redux framework scaffolding, translation and WPML compatibility, and just for the heck of it, premium page builder (Visual Composer) and slider (Revolution) plugins bundled in.
The inherent simplicity is the thing that will draw you in to this theme.
Arc
Take it from a developer – this masterpiece is amazingly well coded.
Arc contains some of the most ingenuously performance and SEO optimized code I have seen in a premium theme. It runs on extensively validated HTML and CSS with custom jQuery elements and strictly following WordPress coding standards. The theme has multiple homepage layouts with background video support, a whole bucket load of shortcodes, fonts, and icons, custom widgets, custom page templates, lovingly animated menus, sidebars, and projects’ pages, Contact Form 7 compatibility, and translation files.
Compared to the other flashy themes, it’s practically a Luddite. But it’s super efficient and simple to work with.
Arctic
Arctic by Umbrella Studios is a theme which fits an Ultra Chic description.
The theme is armed with multiple page templates, home page background slider and video support, animated drop down menus (top/bottom placement) and slides, dual skins, White label- ready options panel, threaded comments support, Google Fonts and Google Maps integrated, Shortcode generator, AJAX enabled (inline validation) contact forms, complete social media support, dynamic loading with super quick ATF (Above the Fold) load time, portfolio filters, user rating (‘Like’) system, smooth scrolling and a whole bunch of animations, and theme auto updates.
It takes care of everything.
Endnote
These 7 themes, picked for awesome design and marvelous features, are created specifically for architectural portfolio sites built on WordPress. Use them well.
