How To Create A WordPress Site In 1 Hour

I’m going to show you how to create a WordPress site for your business within an hour, and for less money than it takes to fill the tank in your Toyota Prius.

This tutorial is perfect for new WordPress users creating their first website. It’s also useful for seasoned developers and freelancers who want to produce sites for their clients faster, saving themselves time and earning more money.

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As an example, I have built a website for a fictional pet sitting and boarding company called “Patches’ Pets.” I will show you how to create a similar WordPress site using the same set of tools.

I’m going to assume you already have a domain, hosting provider, and WordPress installed on your server. However, if you’re interested in those details, check out our 5 Steps To Creating A WordPress Site.

I’m going to be using and recommending the Natural Lite theme for this tutorial. It’s the same theme that is used on our example site. However, you may use any Organic Theme of your choosing.

Natural Lite is a completely FREE WordPress theme that I created after years of experience designing and developing WordPress themes for Organic Themes and WordPress.com. It’s among the best free business themes available today, and currently available for download on our site or within WordPress theme directory.

Now that you have the basic tools, let’s create a WordPress site!

Continue reading How To Create A WordPress Site In 1 Hour

Posted: February 2, 2016 by

Major Theme Update: Natural v4

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The Natural Theme has recently undergone it’s fourth major update. In the latest version we have converted all theme options to the WordPress customizer, implemented theme licensing for auto updates, refreshed the design and made several code improvements.

The latest style of the Natural Theme stays true to its roots, but with some more earthy touches such as the new background pattern and default images. We have taken more steps to make the theme intuitive and easy to setup upon first activation. Other new features include custom logo upload and alignment options, more color change options, new page templates, Jetpack, Gravity Forms and WooCommerce compatibility and more. The Natural Theme is still the perfect solution for eco-friendly businesses that work closely with the environment.

Don’t forget to try the Natural Theme with our Instant Setup service to get started immediately!

Posted: January 14, 2016 by

The Give Donation Plugin And Our NonProfit Theme

We recently collaborated with the good folks at WordImpress to integrate compatibility for their Give donation plugin into the latest version of our NonProfit Theme.

Give is the most flexible, robust, and easy to use WordPress plugin for accepting donations and creating fundraisers directly on your website. It’s completely free, and available for download in the plugin repository here. Using the plugin with our theme allows you to create any number of donation forms, and have them displayed in an archive as seen in our demo. In addition, a featured donation form may be displayed on the home page template of your site.

We’re excited to offer this new feature for our popular NonProfit Theme, and see organizations using this great solution for receiving donations.

Posted: December 7, 2015 by

What Is Calypso, And What Does It Mean For The Future Of WordPress?

Things are heating up with the release of WordPress Calypso, but what does it mean for the future of WordPress? We’ll get to that, but first let’s answer the most obvious question:

What Is WordPress Calypso?

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The app being used to manage the self-hosted Swell Lite theme.

Calypso is a new interface for managing your WordPress content, making updates, changing themes, viewing stats, reading blogs and much more. It’s currently in use on WordPress.com, and it’s available for download as a Mac app.

Unlike the traditional WP Admin interface, Calypso uses Javascript and the WordPress REST API. That may sound like gibberish, but it drastically speeds up interactions with WordPress and allows for communication with the WordPress core from external apps and software.

Calypso brings the management of multiple WordPress.com blogs and self-hosted WordPress.org sites under one roof — so long as Jetpack is activated and connected to WordPress.com on self-hosted sites. It’s all really quite slick!

Continue reading What Is Calypso, And What Does It Mean For The Future Of WordPress?

Posted: December 2, 2015 by

Our Biggest Sale EVER! 50% OFF All Organic Themes!

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Black Friday through Cyber Monday we’re offering 50% OFF any Organic Theme! Our biggest sale in history! This sale applies to our most recent release as well, the Vital Theme! Use the Promo Code BFB1G1F at checkout with the purchase of any theme.

In addition, we’re offering a FREE 14-day trial of our amazing Instant Setup service!

  • No Contract, Cancel Any Time
  • Managed WordPress Hosting
  • Auto WordPress Installation
  • Auto Theme Installation
  • Free Site Migration
  • Free Swell Lite Theme

Get premium Managed WordPress Hosting, automatic installation of WordPress and our awesome Swell Lite theme upon sign-up, instantly! After the trial, it’s only $20/month to continue with your hosting and theme. Use this link to get started!

Give the gift of a new website for the holidays!

Posted: November 27, 2015 by

A WordPress Theme For Dentists, Doctors and Healthcare

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I’m occasionally asked how we determine the kind of themes to release at Organic Themes. Most companies in our industry probably perform loads of market research, and release a product based on the findings of an underserved niche. Not us. In fact, when we’ve attempted that corporate method in the past the end result feels sterile, soulless and generally performs poorly. Instead, we release themes based on the current experiences and needs within our personal lives. For lack of a better word, it’s an organic process.

Our Vital Theme was born from this process. The years of 2014 and 2015 have been eventful years in the personal lives of Jeff and I. We’ve found ourselves in and out of medical facilities more often than ever before. Not for health issues of our own, but for issues of those very close to us.

Continue reading A WordPress Theme For Dentists, Doctors and Healthcare

Posted: November 17, 2015 by

The Free Retro Theme Debuts In The WordPress Repository

screenshotWe released the Retro Theme for free on our site earlier this year as an April Fool’s joke. The theme was purposely designed to look like an old Geocities website from the 90s — complete with “Dancing Baby” and “Under Construction” animated gifs. In addition, it features some pretty awesome background midi music.

The joke theme gained more attention than expected, and to our surprise some people took a liking to the nostalgic design. As a result, we decided to release Retro in the WordPress theme repository. After the long review process, and being forced to remove some sweet animated gifs, Retro has finally debuted!

Despite its “classic” appearance, the theme is very well developed. We even included an option to change or disable the annoying background midi music within the WordPress customizer. Aren’t we nice!

The theme is named “90s Retro” in the repository, and available for download here. Install the theme on your friends blog as a joke! Use it as a review site for all your favorite SNES and Sega Genesis games! Showcase all your favorite animated pixel gifs! Bring back the 90s web style with Retro!

Posted: November 9, 2015 by

Major Theme Update: NonProfit v5

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View DemoAll Themes $99/yr


Our NonProfit Theme has been totally reconstructed into an awesome new theme! We reworked the design and code entirely — adding loads of new features and functionality. This theme is perfect for non-profit organizations and conscious businesses!

Version 5 of NonProfit contains all the theme options within the WordPress customizer for a simple setup process. New features include the donation section, business contact information, logo upload and alignment, color change options, new page templates, Jetpack, Gravity Forms and WooCommerce compatibility and theme licensing so you can receive automatic updates.

Myself and Jeff got our start in WordPress design and development by donating our time to building websites for non-profit organizations. We continue to honor that spirit by providing organizations with the best WordPress theme solution possible, and we continue to donate the NonProfit Theme to organizations in need through our Helping Hands program.

Don’t forget to try the NonProfit Theme with our Instant Setup service to get started immediately!

Posted: October 9, 2015 by

Major Theme Update: Business v3

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It’s Business time! We’re excited to announce version 3 of our Business Theme!

We have totally rebuilt the theme, making everything more awesome along the way! The latest version features all new page templates, functionality, and theme options are now within the WordPress customizer for simple setup. Business offers custom post types for displaying your team members and employees, your latest projects, and any job listings. This theme has all the tools you need to run a successful business website.

We kept the design similar, but made several improvements for retina devices and responsive layouts. Upload your company logo, choose the alignment, change the colors, add your team and get started with your professional business website today!

Don’t forget to try the Business Theme with our Instant Setup service to get started immediately!

Posted: September 23, 2015 by

Introducing Our New Instant Setup Service

We’ve made starting a self-hosted WordPress site ridiculously easy.

Organic Themes realized early in the game that hosting can be a confusing first step to starting a self-hosted WordPress site. Since the creation of our WordPress hosting company, we have been working to merge hosting and our premium themes together into one simple solution for our customers.

As a result, we partnered with the good folks at Pressed to make this possible. Their dedicated team of 8 professionals has 100+ years of combined experience in the hosting industry. Their focus on providing excellent customer support for a quality service made them a natural fit for us. Over the past year we have been working with them to create the perfect WordPress website solution, and we’ve done it!

With Instant Setup you will receive fully managed WordPress hosting, the WordPress platform, an Organic Theme of your choice, and some awesome plugins automatically installed and activated on your personal domain, instantly. Whoa! It’s so simple you’ll never hassle with traditional hosting again.

Choose Instant Setup with any theme, starting at just $20/mo with our Swell Lite and Retro themes.

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Posted: September 3, 2015 by

New Theme Release: Luxury

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Our latest theme was created for sharing the finer things in life. Luxury features a sophisticated design with a strong focus on elegant typography and content layout. The theme is an excellent solution as a blog or business site catering to a luxurious lifestyle — such as travel, weddings and fashion.

As for the functionality, Luxury follows suit with the Swell Theme. The theme displays a blog instead of a home page upon activation. The home page template can be set within the WordPress Reading settings or the Customizer. In addition, the theme utilizes Jetpack features such as Infinite Scroll, Featured Content and the Portfolio Custom Post Type. Our new themes and updates will place a heavier emphasis on the powerful Jetpack plugin and it’s suite of helpful WordPress tools. This should make for an easier transition for our customers between WordPress.org, WordPress.com and between all Organic Themes.

With the Luxury Theme, we have abandoned the Featured Video function and custom field in favor of automatically featuring the first video applied to a post. We believe this will be more intuitive and save our customers the extra steps of finding and pasting video embed codes. In addition, similar functionality is used for the Link and Audio Post Formats within the theme.

In addition, Luxury features some unique design and functionality. The featured content slider for the theme displays 3 featured posts at a time, and can be displayed on the Home and Featured Content Page Templates. The theme was designed to display a central logo, with a menu displayed on the left and right sides of the logo. These menus can be managed within the Appearance > Menus section of the WordPress admin.

Overall, Luxury is a classy addition to our theme collection that improves upon every aspect of our previous themes. It’s perfect for anybody that places an emphasis on elegance and sophistication in their website or brand.

Posted: June 1, 2015 by

The Best FREE WordPress Theme Ever Made!

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Once upon a time, there existed an internet. An internet unlike that of today. It was filled with funky fresh space background patterns, random animated GIF’s, empty tables, 3D rotating pentagrams, blinding link and border colors, annoying background MIDI music and floating content devoid of any structure or design.

Enter our latest theme — the Retro Theme. It’s designed with all the pizazz of a 1996 GeoCities website! Just visit the demo and let the aura of nostalgia wash over you like a Double Dare slime bath.

Despite the putrid appearance, the code for the Retro Theme is actually quite solid. The theme is fully responsive and features some slick WordPress customizer options, like the “Stop The DAMN Music!!!” option. Retro is a fully functional WordPress blog, and it’s totally free to download and unleash upon an unsuspecting world. Maybe you can use it as a practical joke when setting up a blog for a friend. Perhaps you have a client with an old HTML FrontPage website that wants to upgrade to WordPress, but still loves the design of their awful 1997 website. Maybe you’re just crazy, and you actually dig this theme.

Retro is a totally rad WordPress theme! Bodacious even! The web design styles of the past are like a fine wine — Who am I kidding? This is an ugly ass theme!  But it’s probably the most elaborate April Fool’s joke ever conceived by a WordPress theme company.

Many years ago, Organic Themes founders Jeff Milone and myself, David Morgan, attended high school together in Lakeland, Florida. During our Algebra 2 classes we devised a way to pass the time by playing video games on our TI-85 scientific calculators. We enjoyed these calculator games so much that we created the nerdiest GeoCities website ever constructed in which we reviewed all the games we had played. After school we’d sit in front of the computer and code basic HTML, find ridiculous animated GIF’s and background images, and write reviews of calculator games while listening to Hootie and the Blowfish. Ah, the nineties…

Today, we surprisingly use a lot of those same skills to create some of the best WordPress themes available on the market. Our skills have gotten slightly better, and we have gotten slightly less nerdy over the years. The Retro Theme is part April Fool’s joke, and part homage to our roots in web design and development. Creating websites has always been fun for us. So let’s all raise a glass of Sunny D to the internet. We’ve grown up surfing your waves for a long time old friend.

Posted: April 1, 2015 by

Major Theme Update: Photographer v3

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Our popular Photographer Theme has recently undergone a makeover. While we kept the clean and minimal design, virtually every other element of the theme has been improved upon vastly.

We have moved all theme options to the WordPress customizer for a faster setup process. New options such as logo alignment give you more control over the design of your theme. Licensing has been added so you can easily keep your theme up-to-date with new functionality or bug fixes. In addition, new page templates, improved shortcodes, an improved responsive framework and many more features are included with the latest version of Photographer.

The Jetpack portfolio post type has been added to Photographer as well, giving you another portfolio option in addition to the slideshows, portfolio page template and category pages. The theme also utilizes Infinite Scroll from Jetpack, if you so desire.

This latest update is sure to please new and existing customers of the Photographer Theme. Check out the demo to see the new version in action!

Posted: March 27, 2015 by

Major Theme Update: Portfolio v5

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Among the first Organic Themes themes ever released, the Portfolio Theme has recently undergone its 5th major update to the design and functionality. With an abundance of new features including the Jetpack portfolio custom post type, new page templates, customizer options, shortcodes, licensing for automatic updates and much more — give your artwork the professional website it deserves!

Portfolio maintains the beautifully minimal design that has made the theme one of our most popular products. The responsive framework has been completely rebuilt for a seamless display across all devices. All theme options have been moved to the WordPress customizer for a quick and easy setup process.

We hope the revitalization of Portfolio will please our existing customers of the theme and attract new fans looking for a simple WordPress theme perfectly tuned for displaying art and design.

Posted: February 19, 2015 by

WordCamp Maui, WordPress In Paradise

We are stoked to be involved with the upcoming WordCamp Maui! David and Jeff of Organic Themes are speaking, sponsoring and helping organize the WordCamp, along with local friends Jon Brown (Lead Organizer), Erik Blair, Elena Rego, Jen Russo, Chuck Burke, Tania Ginoza and Malia Bohlin.

David is managing the design and swag for the event, while Jeff is managing speakers and the schedule. The design and speakers are top notch, if we do say so ourselves!

The event will be taking place this weekend on Feb 13-14 — Valentines Day. That’s how much we love WordPress in the islands!

Tickets are sold out, but this won’t be the last WordCamp in paradise. Keep your eyes peeled for the next WordCamp Maui. It’s a good excuse for a business trip to Hawaii! In the meantime, you can stay updated with the event on Twitter, #wcmaui.

It’s been a pleasure working with our friends in the community, and we can’t wait to meet others involved with WordPress in Hawaii!

Photo courtesy of Maui Photographer, Rodrigo Moraes.

Posted: February 11, 2015 by

New Theme Release: Swell

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The Swell Theme is a landmark theme in the Organic Themes arsenal — with a free and premium version.

Swell was crafted to be even more inline with the development standards of WordPress.com. The premium version features an abundance of page templates, shortcodes, post formats, a portfolio custom post type, slideshows and much more. Support and auto updates are only offered for the premium version of the theme.

Swell differs from most Organic Themes to date in the sense that it displays a blog instead of a home page by default. However, the home page template can be set within the WordPress Reading settings. In addition, the theme utilizes Jetpack features such as Infinite Scroll, Featured Content and the Portfolio Custom Post Type. We have made these changes so that users may transition between WP.com and WP.org more efficiently with the theme. We believe Jetpack will play a more significant role in WordPress in the near future, and Organic Themes will be utilizing the power of Jetpack in more themes to come.

Every other aspect of the theme features the qualities you’ve come to know and love with Organic Themes, beautiful design and finely crafted, well commented code. We hope you enjoy this Swell Theme.

Posted: February 10, 2015 by

Free Theme: Swell Lite

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We’re stoked to announce the release of a free theme, Swell Lite!

Swell Lite was created as a way to give back to our loyal customers at Organic Themes that have supported us over the years. It’s a basic blogging theme designed and developed to perfection. The theme was crafted with WordPress.com standards in mind. Swell Lite boasts an ultra clean design and extremely well commented and formatted code. The theme is ridiculously easy to setup using the WordPress customizer, making it an excellent solution for bloggers. Budding theme designers and developers may appreciate picking this theme apart to see how we construct our Organic Themes.

Support is not included with Swell Lite, but there is a premium version of Swell available for sale on our site that includes support, documentation, several additional page templates, features and options.

You can also download Swell Lite from the Swell Theme site or directly from Github.

Update: The theme has been released in the WordPress.org repository here.

Mahalo and Happy New Year from your friends at Organic Themes!

Posted: January 15, 2015 by

WP.com Theme Release: Purpose

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Purpose is our latest theme to be released on the WordPress.com marketplace. It’s a beautifully designed modern theme for bloggers, businesses and artists!

The theme is packed with features! It’s fully responsive and displays beautifully on mobile devices. The theme utilizes the Jetpack portfolio custom post type for displaying your projects. The home template featured slideshow uses Post Formats to display slides in a variety of layouts. The header containing the logo and navigation is fixed, and scales upon scrolling down the page. Purpose uses the WordPress customizer for theme options — making it simple to setup.

Give Purpose to your WordPress.com site!

The WordPress.org version of the theme for a self-hosted site is available on our site here.

Posted: January 14, 2015 by

Major Theme Update: Shop v3

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Start your online storefront using the latest version of the Shop Theme!

Version 3 of the Shop Theme keeps a clean, minimal design while improving upon several aspects of functionality. Shop now features more custom menu sections for adding product category navigation. The responsive framework has been reworked and improved upon. All theme options have been moved to the WordPress customizer for a seamless setup process. In addition to several other improvements, the theme now includes licensing for automatic updates as well!

View the demo to see the theme in action. Shop works with the popular WooCommerce plugin and the Exchange plugin from our friends at iThemes.

Posted: January 7, 2015 by

WP.com Theme Release: Connect

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We have recently released our 6th theme on the WordPress.com marketplace — Connect.

Connect is your virtual business card! Share your name, title, contact info, a brief bio and your social media links with ease using Connect. In addition, the theme includes several page templates, including a Resume, Portfolio and a Vertically Centered page template. It also utilizes post formats for the blog for displaying different types of posts such as quotes, links, images, video and more.

connect-mobileThe theme is fully responsive and displays beautifully on mobile devices. Connect features a minimal design that’s perfect for sharing your professional profile online. The Home and Vertically Centered page templates are centered vertically and horizontally within the browser window — so your site will look fantastic even on large displays! Using the WordPress customizer, Connect is simple to setup and launch within a matter of minutes!

If you’re looking for the WordPress.org version of the theme for a self-hosted site, it’s available on our site here.

Posted: August 21, 2014 by