Read Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.
This is the fifth post in my series about using video with WordPress. In this post, we’ll talk about how displaying video content can differ from the normal blog or website layout, and what themes are available to help your site stand out from the rest.
Over the last several years I’ve built many of my own sites using WordPress and have worked as a WordPress consultant with dozens of clients. In that time, one of the reoccurring challenges was to “break the blog format” with a theme design that would display video in a unique, and more importantly, a more navigable way. Whether it’s videoblogging, video tutorials, or citizen journalism, the last thing you want is one long line of posts with a page that scrolls forever. You want to get your videos in front of the viewer and not force them to search around to find something they might want to watch.
One of the first solutions to come from the WordPress community of developers was the Magazine theme style. These themes were OK for displaying video, and still are, but don’t focus quite enough on the video niche in my opinion. I’m not going to go into detail, I’m sure you’ve heard enough about these themes by now.
So I set off to offer another solution, in conjunction with Cheryl Colan, and with the full support of the Show In a Box team. We created the Video Producer Double Feature theme.
I’m still rather proud of this theme as it was my first time coding a complete theme from scratch. I think it still stands up today, although it could probably use some updates.
Not to be ignored is the original theme developed for Show in a Box users, Spacey, by Michael Verdi.
Another great video-specific theme is EVID from Elegant Themes. This theme is only available to Elegant Themes members, but even if you only become a member in order to use this one theme, your $19.95 membership would be well spent. Of course, there are many other very beautiful themes available as well:)
The last group of video themes comes from Press75.com. This site’s themes are by far my favorite video WordPress themes, not just because they display video posts amazingly, but because they have some special features that make posting your videos very easy. My favorite theme on this site is named Video Flick.
Just read some of the features:
Video Flick is the latest addition to my “Video Centric” line of WordPress themes. The all new Video Flick theme features a “gallery” style design which gives your users access to more content on one page in an appealing and efficient way. Got WordPress 2.7? The new Video Flick theme is compatible with all the great new features released in 2.7 including threaded comments and several others. Also, with Video Flick you can seamlessly blend standard Blog and Video posts without having to do any extra work. In short, the Video Flick theme is the perfect all-around Video WordPress Theme. Continue reading below for a more detailed description of the features included with the Video Flick theme.
Check out Video Flick here.
As you can see, there are some great video themes available for WordPress so far, and I’m guessing many more in the future. Do you have any favorite WordPress themes for video? Are you currently using a theme for your video site? Please share with us by leaving a link in the comment section.
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