Responsive WordPress Theme for Churches
This church theme for WordPress has the features a church website needs — a mobile-friendly responsive design, sermon archive, photo and video gallery, church events calendar, support for multiple locations, staff profiles and church news. The sermon archive is complete with the ability for visitors to search for audio, video and text sermons by category, tag, date and speaker. Risen has powerful customization options that make it easy to change the theme’s colors, fonts and background.
Risen is also useful for non-church websites that need rich multimedia publishing capabilities for audio, video and photos and that want to promote events. The sermon archive can be fully renamed using the theme options, making this a WordPress theme not only for churches but also parachurch ministries, nonprofits and charities, conference websites and multimedia presentation archives.
This theme is well-documented with over 30 pages of organized, easy to follow instructions explaining how to use its features. Additionally, a series of video guides is included and support is provided.
“I have to say I’m very impressed with your theme. It has made building the current site I’m on as easy as possible… I really wish all themes were built like this one. You did a phenomenal job of making everything customizable in the way it should be!” — Brent Barkley 5 Star Rating
“This theme was extremely easy to use and the documentation that came with it was a huge help…The couple of questions I had were answered very quickly and efficiently. I would definitely recommend any theme by this author.” — duncan99 5 Star Rating
“I love risen! It has been easy to set up and looks really great… much better than what I had been using.” — Pastor Eric Atkins 5 Star Rating
“Great work on Risen! It’s the best church theme on ThemeForest!” — @wpforchurch via Twitter
”…looks great on my phone and tablet. Steven included all the features you would want in a theme designed for churches.” — wpforministry.com (Nick Blevins)
For more, see What People Are Saying at the bottom of this page.
Mobile-friendly Responsive Design
The Risen church theme was designed to be responsive. In other words, it is mobile-friendly and will adapt itself to fit comfortably on devices with small screens such as phones and tablets. Scan the QR code below with your mobile device for a live demonstration.
Highly Customizable Colors, Fonts and Background
Risen was made to be easy to customize to match your church branding from within the WordPress admin area. You can choose between a Light or Dark appearance, set a Main Color, link color, change fonts (200+ Google Web Fonts preloaded) and choose from 19 Preset Backgrounds, some of which can be colored (or provide your own). It is also easy to Upload Your Logo. None of this requires editing code.
Sermon Archive for Audio, Video and Text
Put your pastor’s sermons online in audio (listen online or download MP3 ), video (YouTube or Vimeo), online text or downloadable PDF format. This theme provides a robust multimedia archive in which sermons can be organized and browsed by category, tag, speaker, month, day and year.
Photo & Video Gallery
Share your church photos and videos using the theme’s gallery features. Create multiple “albums” by organizing your photos and videos into categories.
Events — Church Calendar
Keep your congregation and community in the know about what will be happening by posting events to the church calendar. Events can include dates, times, address, Google Map and other information.
More Church Website Features
In addition to sermon multimedia, photos and events, Risen has features for posting Church News (blog), Staff Profiles, support for multiple Locations, and a Contact Form that can be configured with multiple recipients for the visitor to choose from (e.g. Church Office, Senior Pastor, Youth Pastor, etc.).
Complete Feature List
Responsive design using HTML5 and CSS3 styling
Theme Options powered by Options Framework
Custom Colors (light or dark appearance, main, link and background color)
Custom Background (full background image or pattern — 19 included or upload your own)
200+ Google Web Fonts
Logo Upload
Homepage has Responsive Slider (supports video), intro message, featured boxes and widget areas
Sermon Archive with embedded video (YouTube or Vimeo), Audio Player, MP3 download, online sermon reading, PDF download and archives by date, category, speaker and tag.
Gallery with photos, videos, categories and Responsive Lightbox.
Church Calendar (Upcoming Events and Past Events)
Support for Multiple Locations with map and directions
Staff Profiles with e-mail buttons
Church News (Blog)
Contact Form with multiple recipients and reCAPTCHA support.
Custom Post Types for sermons/multimedia, gallery, events, staff and locations
Custom Page Templates for sermons/multimedia, events (upcoming, past), gallery (categories, all items, images only, videos only), locations, staff, blog and contact.
Custom Widgets for Enhanced Categories, Enhanced Recent Posts, Sermon Archives (by month), Recent Sermons, Recent Gallery Items, Events, Locations, Staff, Donations
Widget Sidebars for regular pages, blog, sermons, gallery, events, staff, locations and contact
Responsive Shortcodes for buttons, tabs, accordion, columns, boxes, quotes, maps and contact form
WordPress Embeds extended for responsive videos
Custom Menu support for header (with dropdowns) and footer
Customizable Footer (menu, address, phone, copyright)
Individual page and post options for header image and sidebar
Breadcrumb Path
Social Media Icons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Skype, Dribbble, Forrst and RSS
Google Maps integration
Google Analytics support
Favicon upload support
Automatic image resizing using native WordPress functionality
Fully localized and Translation Ready (PO file included)
Compatible with WordPress Multisite network
Required WordPress styles implemented (.alignright, .wp-caption, etc.)
Includes Child Theme for optional style and feature customization
Comes with layered PSD Photoshop files
Support, Documentation & Video Guides
Support is Provided by the developer
Complete Documentation (40+ Pages) covering installation, usage and customization
12 Video Guides show you how to use the theme
Installation Guide (4:54)
Appearance Customization (5:00)
Homepage Setup (5:00)
Adding Pages (5:00)
Custom Menus (4:56)
Publishing Sermons (Multimedia) (5:00)
Gallery Setup (5:00)
Church Calendar (Events) (5:00)
Church News (Blog) (5:00)
Contact Form Setup (5:01)
Staff Profiles (4:29)
Adding Locations (5:00)
Sample Content (XML) similar to live preview included — just import it
Sample Widgets can be imported as well (instructions included)
Well-commented HTML , CSS, JavaScript and PHP code
Lifetime updates included
If you have a question that is not answered in the documentation or if you discover a problem, you can submit a support request via the form on my Profile Page (must be logged in to see it). My goal is to answer questions within 24 hours on weekdays (excluding US holidays and the rare period of travel).
Please Note: Support is provided for theme features and problems. Customizations not included.
Changelog
The current version is 1.1.2 (September 21, 2012) — 8th release. View the Changelog.
What People Are Saying
Here is some feedback from users of Risen and other WordPress or church website experts. Five stars have been placed by those who have mentioned that they rated the theme as such here ThemeForest.
“I have to say I’m very impressed with your theme. It has made building the current site I’m on as easy as possible… I really wish all themes were built like this one. You did a phenomenal job of making everything customizable in the way it should be!” — Brent Barkley 5 Star Rating
“This theme was extremely easy to use and the documentation that came with it was a huge help…The couple of questions I had were answered very quickly and efficiently. I would definitely recommend any theme by this author.” — duncan99 5 Star Rating
“I love risen! It has been easy to set up and looks really great… much better than what I had been using.” — Pastor Eric Atkins 5 Star Rating
“Easy to use and exactly what a church needs! Thanks Steve!” — Tim Dunnington 5 Star Rating
“A fantastic looking theme that is a breeze to set up with excellent documentation. 7 out of 5 stars. Highly recommended.” — simian1701 5 Star Rating
“This is a perfect theme for building a church website- I have little to no experience in building a website and yet found the layout and construction easy to follow and customize. Also, the creator is easy to contact and provides personal help, which is a huge benefit to purchasing this theme. And for anyone looking to build a site in another language, I built mine in Spanish and it’s working great!”
— Pastor Jason Boyle 5 Star Rating
“Loved your Risen Theme! Thanks so much for the excellent support documentation/videos, I’m brand new to this, and you made it almost too easy!” — Pastor Chad Cohoon 5 Star Rating
“I absolutely love your theme and have had fun playing with it to build my new site.”
— baharte 5 Star Rating
“Just want to say that your documentation is outstanding. Just started using WordPress and I felt like a pro with your great instructions.”
— Elena Rivera MacGregor 5 Star Rating
“Many thanks again Steven for your excellent support on your themes!”
— @hiwearesuperfly via Twitter 5 Star Rating
“Great work on Risen! It’s the best church theme on ThemeForest!” — @wpforchurch via Twitter
”…looks great on my phone and tablet. Steven included all the features you would want in a theme designed for churches.” — wpforministry.com (Nick Blevins)
“I had the privilege of testing…and let me tell you, it is top-notch and very user-friendly.”
— Matt Cleaver, Church WordPress Tips
“This week’s featured author is StevenGliebe, who has…the newest from the Churches category.”
— ThemeForest Homepage, shortly after release of Risen
“Your documentation and videos are super! I’m so impressed. Worked with another theme but documentation was minimal…thanks for giving us a great product.” — mogulbear
“This is the best wordpress theme I have ever worked with! Great job.” — sporez
“Wow do we love this theme. : -)” — reubenleeb
“I purchased this theme for my church’s website and had it up and functioning within a day. This is by far the best “church related” theme out there! The support is awesome! Thanks Steven and team.” — jordan0109
“I love this theme, looks great from the front and works great from the back. ” — Zerojosh
“Excellent theme, and fantastic documentation!” — counterform
“If you are looking for a church theme, Risen by @stevengliebe is a very beautiful option!” — @WPExplorer in tweet to 30,000 followers
“Absolutely love this theme!” — estrong
“I am happy to have received such great customer service with this theme!” — pdiddy2aop
“Thank you for putting together such a great theme!” — trinitytv
Sources & Credits
Much appreciation is given to the people behind these helpful projects and resources used in making the theme and live preview.
Options Framework Plugin (GPL) by Devin Price
locate_template_uri() from WordPress Trac by John Blackbourn
Get YouTube Video ID from URL (CC BY-SA 3.0) by jeffreypriebe, Lasnv, WebDev and Chris Nolet
reCAPTCHA PHP Library (free to distribute) by Mike Crawford and Ben Maurer
Codestyling Localization (GPL) by Heiko Rabe
Widget Settings Importer/Exporter (GPL) by Kevin Langley and smccafferty
WordPress Code: Earlier Shortcodes by Viper007Bond
jQuery (MIT, GPL )
Modernizr (MIT, BSD ) by Faruk Ates, Paul Irish and Alex Sexton
css3-mediaqueries.js (MIT) by Wouter van der Graaf
HTML5 Doctor Reset (public domain) by Richard Clark
Superfish and Supersubs (MIT or GPL ) by Joel Birch
hoverIntent (MIT or GPL ) by Brian Cherne
SelectNav.js (MIT) by Lukasz
FlexSlider (MIT) by WooThemes and Tyler Smith
Backstretch (MIT) by Scott Robbin
MediaElements.js (GPL, MIT ) by John Dyer
prettyPhoto ( CC BY 2 .5) by Stephane Caron
Hash Fix by Eddie Monge
Improved _fitToViewport() by Vladimir
jQuery Validation (MIT) by Jörn Zaefferer
jQuery doTimeout (GPL, MIT ) by Ben Alman
ColorPicker (MIT, GPL ) by Stefan Petre
URL Rewriting: Custom Post Types Date Archive by MillaN
Custom Post Type Taxonomy Pagination by Justin Carroll
jQuery Smooth Scroll (MIT, GPL ) by Karl Swedberg
jQuery Easing (BSD) by George McGinley Smith
jQuery Cookie Plugin (MIT or GPL ) by Klaus Hartl
jQuery.browser.mobile (public domain) by Chad Smith
CFInstall (BSD-style license) by The Chromium Authors
getParameterByName (with permission) by James Padolsey
Google Maps API
Google Web Fonts
Open Sans (Apache License) by Steve Matteson
Shadows Into Light Two (SIL Open Font License) by Kimberly Geswein
Sun Background (PhotoDune Extended License) by Serg64
Wheat Field Background (PhotoDune Extended License) by jeka2011
Premium Pixels (Orman Clark) Backgrounds (license allows use in ThemeForest themes)
11 Light Subtle Patterns (.PAT)
8 Seamless “Dark Metal Grid” Patterns
5 Bokeh Effect Backgrounds
Elemis Backgrounds (license allows use in ThemeForest themes)
Colorful Wood Background
Tileable Wood Texture with 7 Colors
2 Tileable Grunge Paper Textures
Tileable Brick Texture with 15 Colors
Tileable Leather Texture with 2 Colors
Tileable Corkboard Texture with 6 Color Options
John Piper and Desiring God Foundation for sermon content for preview
On The Third Day Slide by Luis Rivera (used in preview only)
The Parables by Megan Watson (used in preview only)
Reflection Icons by Webdesigner Depot (used by preview’s customizer slide out)
Various images from iStockPhoto and PhotoDune
Note: With the exception of background images, the photos and illustrations seen in the live preview are not included with the theme.