![[A screenshot of welovewp.com]](/pics/welovewp.com.png)
WeLoveWP.com highlights great looking WordPress sites, and it’s powered by WordPress, too!
From time to time, someone will hear that I’m involved with WordPress, and ask me a few questions about it. Some people already have a WordPress-powered site (either self-hosted, or on wordpress.com), and some have never actually used it, but they’ve heard of it. Often, they just want me to show them a WordPress site, so they can see what it looks like. Occasionally, someone will ask whether any big companies or famous people use WordPress. And one thing I often hear is along the lines of, it just does weblogs, if I have a business site, I’d want to use something else, right?
But in reality, WordPress is an excellent tool for managing a business site. When I tell people this, they’ll often ask me for some examples of non-blog sites using WordPress.
So I end up searching for old bookmarks, looking through my feed archives, and checking the Codex until I find some suitable choices. Likewise, if someone just wants to see some examples of WP sites, I want to show them something that really stands out.
Now I’m finally going to document a really nice selection of sites that I can point them to for several examples, a sort of “Best of WordPress”. Some sites just look good. Some are examples of famous celebrities, companies, or organizations. Others showcase WP in a non-blog capacity. In no particular order, here is my list of Awesome WordPress Sites:
- Alex King’s Crowd Favorite not only has great design, but is a perfect example of using WordPress to power a business site.
- And Crowd Favorite, in turn, is responsible for All Things Digital, which is powered by WordPress-MU. Alex also has a great series of articles about building a customized WP site.
- ChickSpeak is another WordPress-MU site, with a focus on women’s issues. It’s structured more like a social network than a blog. There’s an article outlining ChickSpeak’s development that’s interesting, as well. via: photomatt
- If you grew up in the eighties like my wife and I, then you can remember when musician Thomas Dolby was blinding everybody with science.
- CNN’s Political Ticker blog is a WordPress.com VIP Hosting site.
- Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer blog is another WordPress.com VIP site. Scoble has been an icon in weblog circles for many years now, and is famous for his prolific output, as well as for being an author and a former Microsoft technical evangelist .
- Yodel Anecdotal is Yahoo’s corporate blog.
- delicious:days is a food blog that looks good enough to eat. Simply beautiful.
- NASA Ames Research Center is powered by WordPress. This group is responsible for many of NASA’s cutting-edge research projects.
- PlayStation.Blog is the official PlayStation blog from Sony U.S.
- Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, has a blog called The Gavel. WordPress is in ur guvrnment blogging ur lejislashun!
- Ford Motor Company’s Global Auto Shows site doesn’t look much like a blog, but it’s all wrapped up in WordPressian goodness.
- CSS Remix is a showcase of sites with
great design. And the site itself looks schweet. - welovewp.com highlights many WP-powered sites. Some are business-oriented, some are more standard blogs, but all of them have really great design. Oh, and of course, welovewp.com is powered by WordPress, as well.
Of course, the sites I’ve listed here are only the tip of the iceburg. There are tons of fantastic WordPress sites in the wild that deserve as much attention as these. Do you know of some? Post them here, and whenever somebody asks you about great WordPress sites, you can just give them a link to this post!
I love almost all the great designs featured on weloveWp. Helps me see to what all is possible and can be achived with wordpress.
i love wordpress
nice list, although I will say that the Thomas Dolby site really sucks. Its just like a simple wordpress template, that as text going over the bounds, not a top site at all.
Nice list of sites.
I was sad to see that I didn’t make your first list 😉
Maybe the next round?
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Major sites are awesome, definitely. But…
I like -interesting- sites. And it is honestly more interesting to look at small projects and local sites, that are heavily customized with lots of wild plugins and custom template tricks. Based on WP of course.
For example, the site of this small sausage manufacturer in Sweden is really interesting since it is built with an older version of WordPress – but not looking like a typical blog. Custom subpage menu, multple layouts, blog turned into news section, custom frontpage and other useful features.
I have a list of 30+ such sites, some built by well known designers and companies but most built by local talents. I turn to these sites for inspiration, and I have learned a lot from it. Try it yourself, and you will probably see the value of it. (8
and I would like to show you a website I run for showcasing good looking websites powered by wordpress. It is wpgarden.com. Please see if you like it.
Thanks
Sadish
I hate self promotion, but well, as far as I know, I have the ONLY harry potter fansite that is powered by wordpress 🙂 see it at http://hpbeyond.net All I need is a wordpress-mybb bridge and my site will be fully interactive 🙂
That HPBeyond website is nice. Love the use of background images to dress up a site. Nice work!
Those are all pretty nifty websites. 🙂
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I like to see what the big boys can do with a little thing called WordPress. But for my own entertainment I like to see what the average Joe can do with a niche site. like mine even…. niche for sure but WP powered.
iceland.intracore.com
Wow! What a great list. I really love your post, it’s so nice to have a list like this!
Great work! 🙂
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Pritthish and Sean: Those are both nice looking sites, but still pretty standard blog layouts, overall. Granted, some of the ‘celeb’ sites aren’t stand-outs, design-wise, but were included because they illustrate big name people/companies using WP. But again — nice designs!
Sadish: Ah, I wish I had run across your site for my original list! Everyone, go visit WP Garden! One funny thing — I had run across one of the sites currently on your front page (Who Is Jen Gordon) for completely unrelated reasons. She did a site for the city of Canton, Georgia, which is where I live. 🙂
Carl: that sausage company site looks pretty good. And yes, it’s good to see small businesses doing innovative things, too.
I think my WordPress site, ITsVISTA, is a good example of how flexible WordPress is. I’ve integrated Google Search, bbPress, Pligg, Headliner, as well as adding automatic link harvesting, glossary, FAQ, link exchange, and a pile of plugins for other smaller tweaks that is to long to list here. All this without really knowing much about PHP (I can copy and paste, but I don’t know how to write it from scratch).
Persian Online Magazine :
http://farya.com/
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Very nice list, the first one, Crowd Favorite is the best: they have choosen a very nice colours palette for the template, it’s very clean.
Great list – I’ve known a few of those sites for a while.
We recently set up a few sites powered on wordpress which are moving away from the traditional blog format, and there is another which is being rolled out this week.
I’ll spare you all the shameless plugs, except to suggest Popular Nostalgia as our latest example, which is almost ready to take public posts after finally ironing out the glitches. We’ve not moved too far from the ordinary layouts etc with this site, but the actual content and posts are a move away from the standard blog. It is somewhere in between a blog and a wiki…
I appreciate that sounds rather complicated, but it isn’t: it’s like wikipedia, but with opinion instead of facts – i.e. what events from the past meant to YOU!
shameless plug over! WordPress is the ideal platform for such sites as we’re trying to get quality writing and content out there into a professional and working site, that is easy to use for all – wordpress is the best answer, without the budget for a team of coders!
Arts based sites such as ours thrive on open source software, for the benefit of everyone.
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I am quite happy with my own site thank you very much! 😉
http://www.garandstiger.com/krgblog
AceMan
Thanks for the kind words Dougal! 🙂
nice list, although I will say that the Thomas Dolby site really sucks. Its just like a simple wordpress template, that as text going over the bounds, not a top site at all.
We chose WP for My Biggest Complaint. Social networking for complainers, you ask? Yes, there is such a thing!
We’ve coded a lot of new stuff that we might release as various plugins at some point. We just introduced a feature that we’re calling (in anticipation of a plugin release ‘WP-Friends’), a cool way to filter posts, comments and votes based on friend associations created between users on the site.
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We’ve been playing with WordPress in the office on a daily basis, love it! Pity the WordPress search engine hasn’t been explored further, advanced options, filtering, separation of posts/pages? … WordPressMU is next on our hit list to work with.
Any ideas on how to squeeze any more juice out of WP? http://redblock.com.au
Release another batch of links soon, those examples were great! 😀
This is pretty good information. Thanks for sharing.
A really “classic” Shakespeare related website built with WP: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/
Another example, if needed, for flexibility.
No Brasil é meu site sobre violão!
So proud to be “awesome.” Thanks so much for the props. See you at WordCamp?
Nice example… I love almost at that list 😉
I pretty proud over my own site actually =)
Shameless Self-promotion:
http://www.makenosense.net
Hey Dougal, nice list – see http://soccerlens.com and tell me if you think it’s any good 🙂
Scoble and Yodel are not awesome design except content 😐
Yodel Anecdotal, Scobleizer, and Thomas Dolby’s sites are not in the list for their designs. They are examples of celebrities and big companies using WordPress. In the last paragraph before the actual list I highlighted the three cases for inclusion in my list:
So, no, those sites don’t stand out, design-wise. But they are famous names that many people would recognize. (Scoble is kind of an edge-case, since he’s only “famous” within the blogging community.)
And then of course there’s my site!
I love WP for websites. In fact, my school website is 100% blog style on WP and unashamedly so. At first, it didn’t look like a proper website, but given the way we update the website so easily, it’s actually turning into an asset because:
1. Rss is a fundamental part.
2. pages can be done quickly.
3. theming is easy.
moreover the updating style really helps to create a much more vibrant website than a static site. That’s very helpful in getting people to come back!
more about “The Blog IS the Website”.
Thanks, WP!
Nikki:
Well, I certainly think that it’s awesome that Yahoo uses WordPress 🙂
I wish I could come to WordCamp, but it’s just not in the stars for me. For one thing, plane fare and hotel rooms just aren’t in my budget right now. And for another, I recently started a new job, so I don’t have any vacation days built up, yet. Maybe one day I’ll be able to coordinate the money, work time, and family time such that I can participate in some sort of big web-oriented gathering. Preferably, with my whole family, since my wife is a web geek, too 🙂
I’ve been using WordPress for my blog for a while now and just recently convinced my boss that it can be used as a CMS – I’ve now created a new corp site using WP and it’s working out marvelously, thanks a bunch to Codex, forums and some handy plugins 🙂
This is a good one http://www.trackbunnyfilms.com
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Heya! I’ve just added this list into my latest blog post.
It’s a fantastic article you have here.
My own blog is undergoing some major design changes and this list would provide some ideas on what I could integrate in my site.
Do check it out http://blog.thedanielrichard.com/ and drop me an email to give me some tips and suggestions along the way. 🙂
This really should have been called 14+ name droppings of famous people and corporations that use WordPress.
Don’t get me wrong some of those sites are great but part of what makes WordPress so appealing is it’s accessibility and ease of use. This list just seems interested in star f—–g.
Just my opinion.
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James:
I think I made it pretty clear that name-dropping was one of the criteria for the list. The idea is to impress people on any of three fronts: “name-dropping” (use of WordPress by famous people or companies), visually impressive design, or use of WordPress in a non-blog context.
In my view, six of the links above made the list more due to “name-dropping” than the other factors: Thomas Dolby, Nancy Pelosi, Scoble, Yahoo, Playstation, and CNN. And each of those covers a different sector (entertainment, government, blogging, internet infrastructure, electronics, and journalism).
Good post. I can show these sites to my next client.
Nice list. Most of them are usefull. NASA Ames Research Center – NICE SITE ! I was impress when I was there first time.
Our site uses WordPress, although we’d like to think that it doesn’t looks like it does!
You can see it here: http://www.WiiDS.co.uk!
Hope you agree 🙂
Thanks! There are some great looking sites here.
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I would add a site that I’ve worked on (yes, shameless): http://www.osskins.com/main
It’s similar to the purpose of CSS Remix.
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Some great sites on that list.
I always thought the same thing. WordPress was just for bloggers. I was wrong. Good Post!
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Good to know that WordPress can be used for more than just blogging. I’d love to try experimenting on creating sites that uses WordPress as the framework. 🙂
Very nice list. Most usefull. J have been playing with WordPress in the office on a daily basis, love it !!!
These are really great sites to be able show to to clients that are looking to build a wordpress site. It’s nice to be able to see so many sites all in one place.
I just did some digging and found a whole bunch of sites that don’t look like WordPress and posted them here: http://blogosopher.com/?p=244
Some of them are mentioned above- some not.
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Hello,
Let me know what you think of my site. It is a photo tour of ny city that I have been working on for a year. Let me know what you think.
Chris
http://www.theweblicist.com
Hi, great article, I love wordpress and I’m learning everyday from it, I’m just finishing my personal site as a Florida Keys lover and frequent visitor, http://www.traveltothekeys.com powered by wordpress, let me know your thoughts.
Thanks!
Nice list of sites.
Wow, very cool list.
Some great sites there
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OMFG! These sites are great. Very inspiring indeed. It goes to show that it’s NOT just another WordPress weblog eh!
If my blog looked half as good as all those listed. I’d be wealthy.
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Sites are really awesome and interesting. I liked your sites very much, thank you for your post.
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WordPress rocks! It is by far the best blogging software on the planet. And you can’t beat free. Keep up the great work.
[…] 14+ Awesome WordPress Powered from Geek Ramblings – A list of well-designed sites that are powered by WordPress – will be some good inspiration if you’re working on a design. […]
yummy yummy! my favorite is deliciousdays.com. Nice content and design!
@Manele: hehe, i bookmarked half of these in delicious, too 😉
I was searching Google for WordPress templates for my new blog and found your list. All sites you list use clean design – something that I like.
I took inspiration from deliciousdays.
Cheers
Respect! WordPress best blog script!
Can someone direct me to a tutorial on tagclouds for wordpress?
googd post thanks!
It is a great list.crowdfavorite is great blog.
omg … you forgot http://sharebrain.info 🙂
cool sites. I have a new WordPress blog on http://www.cigarsetc.com/blog. Looking for user comments. Thanks.
they are some really nice looking sites. all sites should be cool and made with wordpress
Great list!!!
It for my bookmarks 🙂
Nice work!
great article, I’m used to drupal but recently need a simpler cms for other projects.
definitely will choose wordpress as cms 🙂
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Only beatiful? Those are remarkable!
Mesajiniz icin tesekkurler bana cok faydali bir bilgi oldu saolun 🙂
Wow, this is a GREAT list of wordpress-powered sites!
I am still using blogger for my blogs, but now I am experiencing with wordpress and it looks good. Maybe that I change my engine for blogs.
My designer just completed this very cool site for me with WordPress.
nice.. delicious days has to be like the top one.. simply beautiful. Its been a year man.. you gotta make a new list for 08. Thanks.
Nice collection of Quality sites powered by WordPress.
Thanks, you nice post that helped me alot.
We launched both http://www.ReelEnglishCoach.com and http://www.EnstructCorp.com with WordPress
Those are some pretty darn awesome sites. You should make a similar post to Drupal hosted sites and see which people like better.
Un tema muy interesante, lamentablemente no todos pueden tener las mismas opiniones.
Esto me hara investigar mas acerca del tema, lo que nunca esta demas.
Saludos
nos vemos.
Chau
I used to use traditional methods when building web sites but since I discovered wordpress, all I ever use is wordpress unless a client really does not want it. I have several sites that appear as normal websites but are WP powered and I think they are fantastic fun to work with. The USB gadget site is brilliant…time to shop for some new toys.
good design..thanks
“Dougal has put up a list of 14+ awesome WordPress-powered sites on his site.
So being curious, I went to check those 14+ sites and see which sites are using my plugins.
After checking them out, 4 sites out of 14+ sites are using my plugins and they are…”
😉
nice list, thanks… good source of inspiration
Love theses sites! The themes are very varied, and I enjoyed looking around. Keep it up – great post!
It’s amazing to me what we can do with WordPress these days. Alex King did a great job on his site, hopefully the new 2.7 will bring us even more amazing power.
Alex did an amazing job with Crowd Favorite, it’s one of my favorites
CSS Remix looks really nice, I’m very impressed with that. The other ones you gave on your list are pretty good – longlive wordpress
Here is another online gallery for cms only sites done in wordpress.
http://www.bestcmswebsites.com
I have a list of 30+ such sites, some built by well known designers and companies but most built by local talents.
I have to say my favourite one is the delicious days blog. Too bad I’m not really good at designing and stuff.. but it’s nice to know that my choice in using wordpress for blogging can’t really go wrong judging by the blogs that are running it.
Alex King’s Crowd Favorite not only has great design, but is a perfect example of using WordPress to power a business site.I’m very impressed with that
nice share
Thanks for a great list.
Yodel Anecdotal now use ycorpblog dot com, after I read here about they using wordpress then I check the site, and I can not believe if they still use WordPress 2.3.3 😀
Can WP themes be changed into Blogger themes? If so where should I go to get help?
Love the list. Some really great examples.
WordPress becoming favorite blog CMS right now. There are a large wordpress plugin that make your blogging activity easier
Hey guys! I just launched my site last night. Its a completely custom theme which I will also release for download once I get all the kinks out of it.
Have a look around, tell me what you think!
http://blog.papacreative.com
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Awesome.. Nice list..
Great list of sites it just makes you feel inferior when you see what can be done lol
some are good..some are poor..overall…good choice
Great list of WordPress links. though I wasn’t able to reach crowdfavorite
Peter
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Have a look at this site http://www.thelittlejohnny.com
This one is completely done in wordpress with the help of plugins and custom codes.
wow nice list .
merci pour ces info, et tous cela poura m’aider .
Very nice list
I love WordPress! Current project is http://www.easysongsforbeginnersguitar.com Super simple, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
Sophie
WordPress is incredibly versatile and easy to set up and customise, that is why it has become so popular, growing from a simple blogging platform into a solid content management system. These sites are all great examples of this!
I’m proud of what I did with this WP site:
Jenna Claire Handbags
I think it’s a good example of pushing WordPress far above and beyond its stock capabilities… this site is a custom handbag store. It’s 100% WP, including the custom designer. Every product and fabric is a post, so it’s really easy for the store’s employees to add/edit their products.
This is the most unique wordpress websites that I’ve ever seen. It has over three hundred underwater and aerial 360 degree spherical
panoramas taken in the Florida Keys. I’ve never seen wordpress used
for a website like this before. The A-list just named it “best of the web”. I
thought that you would like to see it. http://www.360FloridaKeys.com
Dan Baker
Fantastic examples. There are some great looking sites here.
I love the CSSREMIX website! I’m a huge fan of it! Had seriously no idea it was run by WordPress. Great list by the way.
I like the fact that wordpress can do almost everything these days, big kudos to developers. i had these debate at http://www.afrowall.com about wordpress and blogger.com and wordpress beat them down.
Your site works fine. For me I always rely on wordpress plug in with highest rating and do some research about the plug in before installing my blog.
Nice collection,it’s amazing to see what people could do using wordpress, I really loved those designs.
I have listed here are only the tip of the ice burg. There are tons of fantastic WordPress sites in the wild that deserve as much attention as these. Do you know of some? Post them here, and whenever somebody asks you about great WordPress sites.
It always amazes me just how creative you can be with wordpress!!
hi…I agree with you that wordpress is a great platform for building
web 2.0 content websites. Also it has nice community and the small
learning curve.
But i would advice using Drupal…if you want websites that can be
customized and scaled. the disadvantage : a very high learning curve.
Check out the website http://www.liveaquote.com as a case in point.
I tried wordpress
themes and fine It more alive and vibrant than my other free themes. It has
caught my attention and apparently others which eman it will help me build
more traffic using wp designs.
Thanks for the links. Scobeleizer blows my mind. Anyway, when I got started, WordPress was the easiest way I could find to get started. Now we have Weebly. I helped build a site there recently and it was amazingly easy. Would you recommend WordPress for customization and Weebly or something like it for simplicity, or are you strictly a WordPress fan?
Nice compilation of wordpress sites. do you have for Joomla?
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Great list of websites. These almost make me want to give up using HTML, but despite being able to hack a lot of standard wordpress options, I don’t like dealing with databases.
These sites are very appealing, but I’m wondering 1. How much coding knowledge was used to achieve these sites? 2. Is WP a good choice for a well-known non-profit’s Web site? I am trying to decide between Drupal and WordPress. Can I build a nice looking, functional Web site with WordPress without having to do custom technical edits to the code itself? Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated! Thank you.
Hallo. Ich wollte an dieser Stelle mal mein Lob für den/die Betreiber der Seite aussprechen. Sehr gut gemacht und tolle Texte. Weiter so!
http://jacobszate.com/?page_id=2job in saudi
I will make my first wordpress site verry soon. Now I have some ideas for the vision of the site.
I liked the PlayStation WordPress site! Thanks
Wow! cool list of WordPress sites. does anyone knows about other major sites which are built in WP and doing good?
these are some great sites.. all things digital looks fantastic..
nice work finding these sites.
I have studied a few of the articles on your blog, and I genuinely like your style of writing. I added it to my bookmarks blog site directory and will be coming back in the near future.
very cool
I like all the great designs. Helps me see to what all is possible and can be achived with wordpress.
Thanks,
I absolutely love seeing new ways that WordPress can be used as the CMS it is. Thanks for the shares!
While I agree with the above it’s not the ‘best’ CMS in the world it’s certainly, as I’m sure all here will agree, made it’s mark and it’s really amazing to see what can be done with it outside of the realm of blogging.
The great thing about wordpress, is that it can be used in so many ways, its hard to really chose whats best to showcase wordpress.
Nice article.
Thanks for sharing.
Heya! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any problems with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing several weeks of hard work due to no backup. Do you have any solutions to prevent hackers?
I must be the only person in the world who has a hard time with wordpress. Sure it’s easy for the mundane user, but it takes too long to publish multiple posts. Maybe it’s my computer, because as I’m sitting for them to publish, every once in a while my internet freezes.
While I agree with the above it’s not the ‘best’ CMS in the world it’s certainly, as I’m sure all here will agree, made it’s mark and it’s really amazing to see what can be done with it outside of the realm of blogging.
You Missed out http://www.Weavei.com. Its an awesome site 🙂
Most of these, at least the ones that I have seen, are a little too sophisticated for me. On the other hand, I really like the variety of layouts that I am seeing. I am pretty good on the technical side, but very weak on the creativity. Unfortunately web design requires both. Oh well.
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Good examples, although not use wordpress