16 Great Sample WordPress Sites, Plus the Actual Theme They’re Using

Building a WordPress website from scratch isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Nor is overhauling an existing site. To make the process a little easier and give you some inspiration, we’ve pulled together 16 great sample WordPress sites to help you see what WordPress can do. 🔧

To make the list even more useful, we also dug underneath the hood to determine which theme each site was built with. That way, if you like what you can see, you can try the theme for yourself on your own site.

Ready to get inspired? Let’s dive in. 🤿

Get inspired with these websites that were all built with WordPress

1. Rihanna Now

The popular Bajan-American singer, Rihanna, has a really unique website layout that keeps visitors engaged through the use of imagery and special effects. This is applied to various elements, including the main photo grid on her homepage, as well as the navigation menu.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• The photo grid on the homepage has all of the images appear black and white as the default color, but when you hover over any one of them, the image turns to color and shows a pop-up link to a post.
• When browsing the site, whichever page you’re on shows in the navigation menu as having diagonal strike-thru text applied to it, along with the font itself lightly grayed out.
• All of the layouts across the site are presented in a very visually appealing way, combining photography with short chunks of text, thus making it easy to browse.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

2. Meta Newsroom

Meta’s Newsroom (formerly Facebook’s) is the official news portal for Meta Platforms, Inc. It serves as a central hub for company announcements, product updates, research findings, and corporate communications. The site covers a wide range of topics related to Meta’s various platforms and initiatives, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and developments in AI, VR, and AR technologies.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Minimalist design with ample white space enhances readability and puts focus on the content.
• Effective use of a grid layout with varied image sizes creates visual interest while maintaining a structured, organized appearance.
• Clear categorization and tagging of articles helps site visitors easily navigate and find relevant information across Meta’s diverse range of products and initiatives.

🎨 Theme used: underscores (with an intentional lower case u)

💵 Price: Free

3. The Harvard Gazette

The Harvard Gazette is the official news website of Harvard University, one of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions. It serves as a comprehensive source of information about Harvard’s research, educational programs, campus life, and community initiatives.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Clean grid layout with varied image sizes creates visual interest while maintaining organization.
• Subtle use of color in section headers helps categorize content without overwhelming the design.
• Integration of upcoming events directly on the homepage enhances user engagement and information accessibility.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

💵 Price: N/A

4. Inside Gymnastics Magazine

This magazine serves as an online hub for gymnastics enthusiasts and professionals. It offers comprehensive content including news, features, photo galleries, and video interviews related to gymnastics events and athletes.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• The site uses a grid-based layout with clear sections for news, photo galleries, and featured content, making it easy to navigate and find information.
• High-quality imagery is prominently featured throughout, showcasing gymnasts and events to create visual interest.
• The color scheme, primarily using blue, white, and red (likely referencing the Paris 2024 Olympics), creates a cohesive and professional look.

🎨 Theme used: Bridge

💵 Price: $69 one-time fee

5. Affluent Event Center

The name of this company is very straightforward and tells you exactly what they specialize in. Their website is creatively designed using a mixture of black, white, and purple colors to accentuate certain elements. They also use some nice effects to increase site visitor engagement.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Color changing content blocks that switch from black text on white background to white text on dark purple background when the user’s cursor hovers over them.
• Light use of parallax effect to enhance the overall visual presentation of their pages.
• Certain pieces of text and blocks of content slide onto the page as the user scrolls, thus capturing their attention.

🎨 Theme used: Astra

💵 Price: Free version, or premium version starting from $49 per year

6. Bloomberg Professional Services

Bloomberg Professional Services is a division of Bloomberg L.P., a globally famous financial, software, data, and media company. This division provides financial professionals and organizations with real-time financial market data, analytics, and trading tools through its flagship product, the Bloomberg Terminal. The Bloomberg Professional Services website serves as a gateway for information about their offerings, including market data, analytics, trading solutions, and industry insights.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Excellent use of a dark color scheme with strong color contrast for easy readability.
• Colorful CTA buttons that pop off the page and entice readers to click on them.
• The products section uses a trendy tile layout, which is en vogue in web design at the moment.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

💵 Price: N/A

7. Diggity Marketing

Matt Diggity has been running a very successful SEO agency for many years. He also has a popular YouTube channel with over 150,000 subscribers and is considered one of the thought leaders in the SEO space. His website was built with WordPress and is designed really well for conversion.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Color scheme was chosen very strategically with the CTA buttons being very prominent.
• Big, easy-to-read text makes scanning the pages easy.
• Showcases testimonials from clients and also well-known publications that Matt’s been featured in, both of which help increase conversions.

🎨 Theme used: Neve

💵 Price: Free version, or pro version starting from $69 per year

8. Sweden.se

The official website of the country of Sweden not only uses WordPress to run their site, but they even tell you they do! You can see it in the second paragraph of the screenshot above. The website serves as a bridge between Sweden and the rest of the world. It covers various topics, with the unifying factor being…well, you already know. 😅

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Very navigable layout, with neatly defined sections, and each section having a slider filled with articles about that section’s topic.
• The overall appearance feels like an online magazine and encourages visitors to stay on the website via the rabbit hole effect.
• Use of varied, high quality images that match well with the subject matter of each article.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

💵 Price: N/A

9. Microsoft News Source

Microsoft News Source is Microsoft’s official news and storytelling platform, designed to provide in-depth coverage of the company’s initiatives, innovations, and impact. The website offers a mix of corporate news, feature stories, and multimedia content that highlights Microsoft’s products, services, and broader technological developments.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Similar to the Sweden website, it also has an online magazine feel to it, with intuitive navigation.
• The sidebar featuring the latest news is a nice way to separate those stories from the featured ones.
• A well-placed CTA asking you to sign up to their newsletter is placed shortly after the fold and stands out with an elegant color contrast.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

💵 Price: N/A

10. jQuery Official Website

jQuery is a popular JavaScript library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions. The website serves as the official hub for jQuery, offering downloads, documentation, plugins, and learning resources for developers.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Prominent download button and version information make it easy for developers to quickly access the latest jQuery release.
• Clear, concise code examples with syntax highlighting demonstrate jQuery’s functionality, enhancing readability and understanding.
• Well-organized navigation with dropdown menus provides easy access to different sections of the site, improving user experience for developers seeking specific information.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

💵 Price: N/A

11. The TED Blog

The TED Blog is an extension of the renowned TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) platform, offering written content that complements TED Talks and events. It features articles, behind-the-scenes insights, and updates on TED’s various initiatives and conferences.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Clean, grid-based layout with a mix of text and images creates an engaging visual hierarchy, making it easy to browse multiple stories.
• Prominent featured article with a large image draws attention to the most current or important content, guiding users’ focus.
• Consistent use of the iconic TED red color in headers and logos maintains brand identity while keeping the overall design clean and readable.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

💵 Price: N/A

12. Jacob McMillen

Jacob McMillen is a site about copywriting and content marketing. He gets clients through a well-designed WordPress website and form fields.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• He uses his own copywriting abilities to sell his services on the site.
• Jacob displays case studies and real results from past clients, increasing his conversion rates.
• The site is consistent in design and color, and has a nice layer of minimalism to it.

🎨 Theme used: Divi

💵 Price: Starting from $89 per year

13. Kobu Foundry

Kobu Foundry was built to show off (and sell) the owner’s custom font library.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• It’s an interactive site! You can drag elements across pages and play mini-games to generate stories that come up with special, gorgeous fonts based on the topic of the story.
• The design was built to quickly catch grab the user’s attention.
• The site has only three menu pages and lots of call to action buttons for effective conversions.

🎨 Theme used: Custom theme

14. Pilatesology

This online fitness business relies on WordPress to attract customers and to convert them into paying members. Through clever use of subtle effects like background shadows being activated upon hover, Pilatesology is able to guide their website visitors to the sections they want them to go to.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Has a “Wall of Love” to showcase testimonials from their clients.
• Boasts a very clean, easy-to-navigate design.
• Uses color contrast very effectively to draw visitors’ eyes where they want them to go.

🎨 Theme used: A child theme derived from the Beaver Builder theme

15. Solid Gallery One

Solid Gallery One is an online portfolio of a talented tattoo artist based out of Arizona. It contains an effective mix of his previous client work, along with testimonials, lead capture boxes, and other elements.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• Jarrett, the artist, does a nice job selling himself through effective design and storytelling.
• Examples of tattoos he’s done in the past help build trust and increase conversions.
• He’s able to fit everything nicely into a one page design.

🎨 Theme used: Hestia

💵 Price: Free version, or pro version starting from $69 per year

16. New England Cord Blood Bank

New England Cord Blood Bank is a scientific business that preserves newborn blood and tissue from the umbilical cord with the scope of using them in the event of any diseases that may occur in a family. In short, this site is about banking stem cells for possible future use.

👉 Here’s what we like:

• The animations that show up on almost every page keep you engaged.
• The color scheme makes the design look stylish and yet professional.
• The content and pages on this site are overall structured and presented in an intuitive, visual way so the average user can understand the process of collecting and preserving stem cells.

🎨 Theme Used: Neve

💵 Price: Free version, or pro version starting from $69 per year

Final Word 🏁

By the way, if you’re ever curious what theme a WordPress site is using because you want to try it out for yourself, we have a free tool on our sister site that will give you the answer. Simply put in the URL of the site you’re wondering about, and after a few seconds, the “what theme is that” tool will give you the answer. It’ll also provide a link to where you can learn more about it, along with some other related information. Happy analyzing!

Do you know of any other great sample WordPress sites? Share them in the comments so everyone can check them out!

💡 For even more website inspiration, check out our roundup of ten great Wix examples.