WordPress Theme for UUA Congregations

By UUA Web Team, Information Technology Services

The UUA WordPress Theme for Congregations is a framework for your own congregational website. The theme—like a template for your website—does much of the technical and design work for you, so you can focus on the content. The theme comes with plugins and widgets that help you showcase upcoming services and past sermons, as well as recommended plugins to help with events, testimonials, staff lists, and much more. It is fully responsive, looks great on mobile phones or tablets, and uses best practices for screen-readers and visual accessibility. The Theme is a collaboration of the UUA Outreach Team and web developer (and UU minister) Rev. Christopher Wulff.

Check out the WordPress Theme demonstration site for the fictional congregation "UU of Somewhere."

Websites using the theme must be powered with WordPress, a free, open-source website creation tool used on millions of websites worldwide. Once you have installed WordPress on your site, you can install the theme as well.

Download the theme

Content, Menus and Navigation Made Easy

The UUA WordPress theme is available with six sections of recommended content: “About”, “News”, “Worship”, “Learning”, “Justice”, and “Connection.” These recommended sections were developed through best practice research and user testing to find the most intuitive way for users (both UU and non-UU) to find what they need on a congregational website. Each section has several subpages offering space to describe your programs and display your photos, as well as some draft language on key pages such as “About Unitarian Universalism.” You can also download the recommended content without the theme and copy it to your current website.

Help With Your Content

The theme’s extensive documentation site contains page-by-page guidance with suggestions for effective text and images. Some pages, like the ones that describe what Unitarian Universalism is, come with pre-written text that you can use or adapt.

Customize to Fit Your Congregation

The content of the site and the menu are customizable, and you have a choice of color schemes. With the theme doing much of the design and technical work for you, and the user-friendly WordPress interface, you’re able to devote more time and energy to making your content shine: showing the world who your congregation is, what you do, and why it matters.

How to Get Started With the WordPress Theme

The UUA WordPress Theme documentation offers step-by-step instructions, a download link, and extensive guidance for technical and content development.
A video of the November 2015 webinar: Getting Started with the UUA WordPress Theme walks through the step-by-step creation of a website using the Theme, and shows helpful pages on the Theme's documentation site.
The General Assembly 2015 workshop Make Your Website Awesome and Make It Yours offers guidance about WordPress, content development, and reaching your intended audience.