Wordpress theme help

[SteveC]

As I have mentioned before, I have 'inherited' a couple of Wordpress websites.
One of the sites really doesn't need the blogging aspect of Wordpress at all, apart from possibly posts about forthcoming events and the like.
The majority of the site is static. Unfortunately, the theme currently in use is very wedded to the blog concept and I'm having difficulty changing to a static page based scheme. Does anyone have any suggestions of appropriate themes to try? I've had a quick Google, but the survey sites seem very hagiographic 'this theme is wonderful', 'so is this one', 'and this one', which really isn't very helpful.

TIA

[citoyen]

I just checked what theme I use for my website... It's called Twenty Sixteen. I like it because it is extremely simple and works equally well on desktop or mobile devices. (I think this might be the official default Wordpress theme - the current version of which appears to be called Twenty Twenty-One.)

All the pages on my site are static, but that was easy to achieve because I built it from scratch. If you're inheriting a site that has been set up as blog pages, it might be trickier to convert it. I think the simplest option might be to create a new static page and then assign that as the home page.

You've reminded me that my site is somewhat out of date. I should probably do something about that!

[tonycollinet]

As I have mentioned before, I have 'inherited' a couple of Wordpress websites.
One of the sites really doesn't need the blogging aspect of Wordpress at all, apart from possibly posts about forthcoming events and the like.
The majority of the site is static. Unfortunately, the theme currently in use is very wedded to the blog concept and I'm having difficulty changing to a static page based scheme. Does anyone have any suggestions of appropriate themes to try? I've had a quick Google, but the survey sites seem very hagiographic 'this theme is wonderful', 'so is this one', 'and this one', which really isn't very helpful.

TIA

If it is just a local/club site not needing all the wizzbang of marketing, then as citoyen has pointed out the default/generic themes are good. Simple. Clean. Whichever is the latest that will run on your site.

[nikki]

Unfortunately, the theme currently in use is very wedded to the blog concept and I'm having difficulty changing to a static page based scheme.

Besides changing to a different pre-exisiting theme, there'll be different tweaking options open to you depending on whether the sites are running on wordpress.com or are the self-hosted wordpress.org flavour. Do you know which you've got?

What are the blogging-related aspects you're trying to remove? You might be able to remove sidebar archive listings, tag gubbins and that sort of thing through the theme options. Or a bit of display: none in css perhaps.

[SteveC]

Thanks for the comments.
The site is self-hosted. I would rather not use one of the very standard themes as, although the group is a voluntary one, we do interact with commercial clients so I'd like it to look a little less 'out of the box'.
As regards to the blogging aspect and what I want to get rid of:-
The front page of this scheme automatically displays the latest posts from a number of categories. I cannot find out where to change these categories, nor any other controls for the page. So the stuff we'd like to be on the front page has to be a 'post' rather than a 'page'. A recent update to the theme has added date stamps to all posts. This means that the front page looks very out of date (all the posts being dated 2017). I would prefer the static information to be on 'pages', but I also need them to be on the home page.
There will be a small number of items which will fit the concept of a 'post', but it will be maybe ten items a year.

If I were starting from scratch I would probably not choose Wordpress at all (although I have no idea what else might be an improvement).

[Lightning Phil]

If you have a test version of the site you can install multiple themes and switch between them to find out what what works best.  I’d just go with a simple clean theme. I’d also look at your current theme and page options. You can often turn off the side bar in page settings. Failing that you can remove the widget from the side bar showing old blog posts.  You can also change what page the home page points at. Least you can if the theme is decent.

[nikki]

The front page of this scheme automatically displays the latest posts from a number of categories. I cannot find out where to change these categories, nor any other controls for the page. So the stuff we'd like to be on the front page has to be a 'post' rather than a 'page'.

The setting to change the front page into a static page is usually under settings (in the left hand menu bar) > reading settings



It being a self-hosted site opens up lots more in the way of options to tweak how pages and posts are displayed. If switching to pages or to a different theme doesn't quite get you where you want to, then you can look at either editing the relevant php file within the theme so that it doesn't carry out the instruction to generate the date (usually commenting out a section of code), or adding some lines to the css file to hide the date from sight, without removing it from the underlying code.

That's when it would be useful to know which theme you're working with and assumes you have access to the wordpress files on your server. (And that you've made a back-up before changing anything!)

[SteveC]

The theme is AccessPress Mag. I do have access to all the files on the site if necessary.
I did have a go at the changing to a static page, but will have another think and look again tomorrow.

Thanks again.