Often, when something is available for free, we jump on it without considering better alternatives. While free WordPress themes are great for bloggers and for most uses, sometimes it’s worth paying a few bucks for a professional theme for resumes and online portfolios. Here are our best picks for different occupational needs.
Writers
Contrast was designed to highlight text in a bold, modern way. You won’t have to worry about paying for stock pictures to fill empty pages. This theme is primarily meant for just a resume, but what it lacks in flexibility it makes up for in pure visual punch. It’s great for businesspeople that may want an online presence and a site to host their resume but lack the amount of time to keep a blog updated. It’s most effective when linked to your company’s site, your LinkedIn page or anything that will let a viewer see what you’re currently doing. If you let it sit stagnant, it won’t be of much value. To use the theme, contact designer Paul Linder through his website.
Jack of all trades
Dandelion is a great profile for those who want to highlight both their words and their art. It features a scrolling gallery at the top of the page and places for pulled-out text from separate pages underneath the fold. If you’re trying to highlight what you’ve done with things like an IT degree, this is the theme for you. You can show web page images and talk about problems you’ve fixed and the steps you took below. It’s a simple enough theme if you have slight web knowledge, but it’s simple in the way that makes it easy to use, not simple in the way that the interface assumes you’re an idiot. You can easily change colors, background textures and text colors from the dashboard.
Designers/Artists
Immense’s ideology is pretty self-explanatory. The theme is great for artists or designers who want their work to be able to fill the whole screen. The best thing about this simple theme is that it can pick up on how large the viewer’s monitor is and adjust your image to fit those proportions. Users can easily choose whether or not to view captions, which are presented as semi-transparent grey blocks on the bottom right of the screen. They can also easily toggle between viewing photos as a slideshow or as a series of images they can click through on their own time. This theme is great for photojournalists as well, who can pull out parts of stories to give viewers a better idea of the context. The one real drawback is that there isn’t a good way to host your resume. If your blog is connected to your LinkedIn account, you should be able to give potential employers a good idea of what your background is like.
Businesspeople
If networking is the goal, Infinity has you covered. The three-column design is great for reaching out. One column holds blog posts, and the remaining two are completely dedicated to social media like Facebook, Twitter and Del.icio.us along with minimal site navigation. Use this theme to host your resume and keep people up on what you’re doing in the business world. It’s not a gallery theme, so it’s important that you’re keeping everything updated frequently with your latest projects and descriptions of them.