15 new WordPress themes for consultants

With virtual reality exploding, this is a great time for virtual world experts to repackage themselves as virtual reality consultants and start putting their hard-won expertise to work.

Whether your focus is training and education, content creation, interaction design, scripting or development, you probably know more than most of the other experts that are coming out of the woodwork.

To start with, you need a cutting-edge website that tells people you are professional and up-to-date.

Today, that means a responsive site with a long home page that’s heavy on the graphics and social integration, maybe with a bit of a parallax effect.

The list below is of themes released in the past month or so,Â so that they’re not already all over the Web. They all have free versions so that you can set them up and try them out, and also have premium versions backed by design studios, so that you can upgrade if you need to get support or more features.

If you’re looking to sell things on your site, many of the themes below support WooCommerce, which is currently the go-to shopping cart platform for WordPress. However, do keep in mind that if you’re selling things one item at a time, you’re usually better off just usingÂ PayPal buttons.

Don’t all these themes look the same?

Yes, yes they do. They all have the same basic structure and layout. And if you are both extremely creative and really really good at Web design, you can do your own theme, instead.

However, for businesses, a site design is a lot like a man’s business suit. You want to show some originality, but not too much. Maybe a clever tie, or a pair of socks.

No, it’s worse than that. It’s more like a woman’s business suit. Because fashions change every year, and a website’s design can instantly tell visitors that your site is out of date. Or, even more damaging, if you try to get creative with your site and fail, it will simply seem amateurish, a hobby rather than a real business.

As a technology journalist, I visit many — many! — tech and business sites every single day. And yes, I do judge businesses by their sites. Out-of-date sites make me wonder if the company is still in business — or just hanging on by a thread, with no resources to spend on marketing. Unfinished sites, with “lorem ipsum” text or menu links that don’t go anywhere, make me think that the company isn’t ready yet to do business.

My recommendation? Pick a sleek, clean design in a color that fits your company and then spend your design money on a nice logo and gorgeous graphics instead. Most of your visitors will notice the photographs and images you’ve chosen, more thanÂ the layout of the site itself.

If you can, try to avoid a lot of customization, because it will make it harder to upgrade the theme later. If you do customize, do it in a child theme. Then put a reminder on your calendar to revisit the design a year and a half or two years from now to check that it is still current.

Gaga Lite

Download free theme here.Â This theme is from AccessPress. They don’t have a premium version of Gaga Lite, though they do have other premium themes. I’m still including Gaga Lite here because I like its design and bright style.