The timeline of WordPress is nothing short of extraordinary. Basically, what started as a niche blogging tool has turned into the most popular publishing platform and website software on the web. Just how popular? Well, currently, research says that 43.6% of the web is powered by WordPress. Just to make this clear, again, that’s 43.6% of the entire web.
Nevertheless, if you’re still not quite sure if WordPress is the correct choice for your next website then check out the list that we have for you today. (Or if your client isn’t sure if WordPress is going to be right for them.)
We felt like doing something fun today, so the list is huge. But even that is an understatement…
What we have for you here are 100 great examples of famous brands using WordPress. So who uses WordPress? We have musicians, corporations, media companies, artists, car manufacturers, universities, tech companies, movies, quite literally everyone.
Who uses WordPress? How about these 100+ famous brands:
Chicago Sun-Times
Distinctive features:
- Grid layout
- Minimalist and old-school design
- Black, white and gray tones
- A lot of widgets and custom elements in the sidebars and in the center block
AMC
Distinctive features:
- Full-width featured images
- Colorful and distinctive content sections
- Design based on content blocks and their visuals
- Scroll-friendly
- Rich in multimedia content
BBC America
Distinctive features:
- Large featured images.
- Dark skin on the homepage.
- Blog-like and boxed layout.
- Modern and minimalist design.
- Rich in multimedia content.
Mercedes-Benz
Distinctive features:
- Simple grid-like layout.
- Dark skin design.
- Boxed structure.
- Nice use of carousels.
- The search bar is part of the featured slider on the homepage.
Groupe Renault
Distinctive features:
- Full-width video header.
- Clean blog-like design.
- Nice social media integration via boxes.
- Nice designed and colorful Categories box, with great icons.
- Landing-page-like homepage.
Wired
Distinctive features:
- Very elegant black-and-white design.
- Modern magazine-like appearance.
- Creative and animated content blocks for categories, displayed in various sizes and forms.
- Sidebars included within the posts on the homepage.
- Parallax slideshows for every post page.
- Beautiful typography.
Time
Distinctive features:
- Professional magazine look.
- Magazine homepage style.
- Slideshows with the most influential images of all time.
- Comprehensive and useful sidebar widgets.
- Clean, classic news site design.
- Original anti ad blocker message.
The Rolling Stones
Distinctive features:
- Colorful and simple homepage.
- Landing page for the app.
- Lots of video posts.
- Playful and intuitive interface.
- Rich in multimedia content: images, videos, audio.
Beyonce
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen homepage layout.
- Homepage entirely consisting of high-resolution images.
- Modern black-and-white tones.
- Clean, grid-like online shop.
- Many sections leading to external sites.
- Lots of large visuals (ribbons and galleries).
University of Washington
Distinctive features:
- Modern design.
- Awesome full-screen parallax images in posts.
- Big animated visuals in pages.
- Colorful elements and friendly content structure.
- Simple and minimalist homepage.
TED Blog
Distinctive features:
- Simple and classic blog page.
- Clean design with neatly organized content.
- Simple sidebar, providing just a few important widgets.
PlayStation Blog
Distinctive features:
- Dark skinned design with clean post pages.
- Boxed layout with full-screen image background.
- Magazine-like appearance.
- Grid structure for the posts – some having just the featured image, others also intro texts.
- Short and compressed sidebar.
The Offcial James Bond 007 Website
Distinctive features:
- Classy and clean design.
- Modern and elegant typography and Retina display.
- Magazine-like appearance.
- Grid animated posts.
- Overlaid animated content blocks.
Usain Bolt
Distinctive features:
- Parallax full-width slider.
- Minimalist pages with grid structure.
- Modern online shop with visuals in various geometrical shapes, carousels, and great product pages.
- The homepage contains the slider and an animated grid for news and galleries.
- A static full-screen image as background for every page.
The Walt Disney Company
Distinctive features:
- Clean blog page with two posts styles – grid and large featured image.
- Very long About page, providing full-width image and video separators.
- Colorful, business-oriented pages.
- Modern, colorful, and animated fonts and buttons.
- Pastel, rainbow-like tones all over the website.
Reuters Blogs
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist, grid-like homepage.
- Simple and clean posts.
- Old-school, news site look.
- Professional and content-focused appearance.
Longitudes
Distinctive features:
- Two sliders one below another – a slideshow and a carousel.
- Sidebar with distinct sections.
- Simple, blog-like design.
- Brown and yellow tones.
The Next Web
Distinctive features:
- Modern interface, with modern fonts and visuals.
- Clean design with orange typography.
- What should be an single post page contains multiple expanded posts if you scroll down.
- Each of the posts has its own (same) sidebar.
People
Distinctive features:
- Modern, visually-oriented design.
- Homepage full of posts and contents of any kind.
- Sidebars on both right and left sides of a page.
- Clean interface, with small, pink and yellow elements.
- User-friendly design, with large fonts, borders, and images.
TechCrunch
Distinctive features:
- Old-school, simple interface, keeping the content first.
- Professional look, with green and gray colors.
- A separate box only for videos at the bottom of the homepage.
- Meaningful widgets in the sidebar.
- Timeline for posts.
- Subtle “Next Story” pop-up button when you enter a post.
WGN-TV
Distinctive features:
- Modern interface.
- Grid posts structure.
- Big volume of content on the homepage.
- Sponsored links in separate boxes in the sidebar.
- Clean overall website design.
IBM Jobs Blog
Distinctive features:
- Clean, modern (Retina) display.
- Blog posts shown in a list style.
- Infinite scroll.
- Carousel slider with featured posts.
- Colorful call-to-action buttons in the sidebar.
Vogue
Distinctive features:
- Very clean and simple design.
- Full-width header.
- Multiple expanded posts on the same page.
- Separate box for the most watched videos.
- Infinite scroll with repeating elements (ribbon and videos boxes).
Observer
Distinctive features:
- Clean and simple design.
- Grid layout with lots of content.
- Boxed design with small featured slider.
- Posts displayed in slider carousels, widgets and lists.
Sony Music
Distinctive features:
- Extremely minimalist (clean and rather empty homepage).
- Prominent Twitter timeline.
- ’98-like pages for posts.
- Grid style for the artists pages.
- Content predominantly organized in lists.
Facebook Newsroom
Distinctive features:
- Only two main content blocks and some widgets.
- Everything is very minimalist.
- Engaging timeline presenting the company’s history.
- Grid resources and media galleries.
New York Post
Distinctive features:
- Alternating black and white sections.
- Beautifully delimited post categories.
- Nicely and distinctively designed sidebars, which makes the content difficult to ignore.
- Intuitively arranged articles in each category, which makes browsing easier.
Evernote Blog
Distinctive features:
- Posts are displayed in a classic blog list style.
- Very creative and colorful featured images.
- Clean and modern platform suitable for writers (story-friendly).
- Content-first approach.
Xerox Blogs
Distinctive features:
- Posts are displayed in a grid style format.
- Clean, professional design, content-oriented.
- Complex menus, with categories and subcategories, structured in an interesting way.
- Content-heavy look.
Flickr Blog
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen featured header.
- Clean, two-column layout.
- Modern, media-friendly design.
- Single posts get a more traditional, artsy look.
The Mozilla Blog
Distinctive features:
- The layout based on three columns.
- Modern and friendly design.
- Magazine-like look and typography choice.
- Design optimized for mobile viewing.
Hootsuite Blog
Distinctive features:
- Four-column grid-based layout.
- Minimalist, content-oriented design.
- Extensive menu in the footer.
- Content tightly packed on the pages.
Motley Crue
Distinctive features:
- Homepage consisting only of a full-width slider and a footer underneath.
- Black-colored design.
- Minimalist design – each page has a content block and an image background.
- Beautiful store, with large visuals.
Angry Birds
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen and very colorful homepage.
- The homepage has a custom layout from top to bottom.
- High quality media elements (mostly animated cartoons) on each page.
- Lots of modern, scroll-triggered animations and catchy effects.
Herald Sun
Distinctive features:
- Boxed layout.
- Each category is marked with distinctive colors.
- Big volume of content nicely structured on the homepage.
- Lots of modern animations and catchy effects.
- Great widgets with live stats and interesting info.
Toyota Brazil
Distinctive features:
- Professional and clean look.
- Awesome online car simulators and calculators.
- Design based on great interactivity and user engagement.
- Lots of high quality media galleries.
Glamour Italy
Distinctive features:
- Full-width ribbon slideshows.
- Large visuals and featured images.
- Full-width related articles.
- Daily advice timetable/carousel.
Microsoft News Center
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist and clean design.
- Color tones of blue, green, and gray.
- Large featured images.
- Blog highlights section near the top.
Alanis Morissette
Distinctive features:
- Friendly and modern design, with colorful images.
- Nice sidebar box in light and dark gray.
- A different full-width image on every page.
- Simple podcast section.
Felicia Day
Distinctive features:
- Friendly, pastel-colored site (colorful fonts and buttons).
- Grid-like design on every page.
- Each blog post preview has a different color.
- Personal brand -driven website.
Larry King Live
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist and old-school design.
- No media elements, except for small images in the posts.
- Large sidebar, listing the most useful information in one place.
Harvard Blogs
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist, old-school design and layout.
- Very few media files.
- Light beige, red, and gray tones.
- Tabbed post categories in grid style, with nice animated filtering.
Sigur Ros
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen YouTube video on the homepage.
- The site has only a few pages.
- Minimal blocks for tour venues and tickets.
- Dark skin and design.
VentureBeat
Distinctive features:
- One-column layout (the posts are displayed one below another).
- Blog-like design.
- No permanent sidebars.
- Events page with a subscription form.
ProBlogger
Distinctive features:
- Good call-to-action placement in the header.
- Three-column grid display, each column containing a content category.
- Engaging sidebar.
- Beautifully designed podcast page with interactive boxes.
- Job boards and event submissions.
Matt Mullenweg
Distinctive features:
- Colorful full-screen backgrounds, looking like painted walls.
- White, gray, and blue pastel tones.
- Minimalist blog design.
MTV News
Distinctive features:
- Elegantly animated lazy loading.
- Lots of media elements and visuals.
- Nicely designed boxes with trending topics placed within the categories.
- Floating fonts and parallax scrolling on specific pages.
Web Designer Depot
Distinctive features:
- Subtle animations when you hover over individual posts.
- Content-heavy and complex layout.
- Multiple colorful elements such as buttons, icons, and images.
- Interesting animated logo that shows up gradually.
- The possibility of switching the fonts of the articles.
America.gov Blogs
Distinctive features:
- Blue and black fonts.
- Minimalist design and layout.
- Long column with big tags in the sidebar.
- The articles are not shortened, they appear in full size on the homepage.
Tim Ferriss
Distinctive features:
- Darker tone of the design.
- Two-column site – posts and sidebar.
- Black full-screen background.
- Prominent header with a big image of the author.
Jane Fonda
Distinctive features:
- Old-school, minimalist design.
- A community website.
- Every page has a forum + a blog-like layout.
- The blog has a subcategory for photo galleries.
U.S. Department of Defense Blog
Distinctive features:
- Three videos in the right sidebar.
- Runs on the former default WordPress theme.
- Big images in posts.
- Layout aligned to the left, plus there’s a simple black space to the right.
Harvard Gazette
Distinctive features:
- Professional, modern, and clean look.
- Multi-color menu when you hover over the items.
- Friendly tabbed sidebar widget.
- Interesting tabbed category block for the articles.
- For individual posts, headlines are on the left and the image is aligned to the right.
Bloomberg Professional
Distinctive features:
- Large full-width video header.
- Large animated clickable visuals.
- Dark skin.
- When you click on drop-down menus, the background fades out.
- All the content is smartly arranged inside beautiful and intuitive blocks.
Pulse
Distinctive features:
- Black, gray, and red tones.
- Large, prominent logo – the first thing you notice when you enter the site.
- Minimalist and clean blog design.
- Drop-down bar with categories.
Microsoft EU Policy Blog
Distinctive features:
- Old-school blue header with the menu attached.
- The homepage has a list of posts, sidebar, and footer.
- Only one featured post at the top of the homepage.
Lily Allen
Distinctive features:
- This site is just a full-screen landing page, utilizing some heavy parallax effects.
- The homepage consists of an animated grid photo gallery that occupies the whole screen.
- Each photo leads to various social profiles, music channels or songs of the artist.
Kylie Minogue
Distinctive features:
- The only thing on the site is the Twitter timeline.
- Big and interesting logo design.
- Colorful header containing the logo and a social menu, both in gold fonts.
The New Yorker
Distinctive features:
- Beautiful and easy to read typography.
- Unique icons and illustrations.
- Lots of elegant lines between sections, categories, and posts – which make the content readable and looking great.
- Lots of cartoons and sections involving cartoons.
Fortune
Distinctive features:
- The page has a landscape format.
- The content is displayed in four columns on the homepage.
- Slideshow display for the featured section.
- Black and white professional look.
- Accent on video content.
Wil Wheaton
Distinctive features:
- Simple and clean blog format.
- Large content pages – not full-screen, but not boxed layout either.
- Minimalist design.
- Large and colorful buttons included at the end of articles, suggesting next and previous articles.
Justin Bieber
Distinctive features:
- One-page boxed layout.
- Lots of animated carousels – in almost every section.
- Black and white are the dominant colors + other colorful boxes and buttons.
- Modern design with many media elements.
- The pages don’t have too much content.
Official Canadian Olympic Team
Distinctive features:
- Big time counter banner on the homepage.
- Blog-like layout.
- Posts on the homepage showcased using only their large featured images and headlines.
- Tabbed sidebar featuring stories, videos, and photos (+ ads).
- When you click on “Read full story”, the next post expands while the previous one closes automatically.
Brian Smith Pictures
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist, boxed design.
- Elegant black and white tones.
- Grid photography portfolios.
- Lightbox slideshows for the galleries.
Snoop Dogg
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen, modern design.
- Black and green tones.
- Transparent news slider.
- Single-page-like layout with samples from every section on the homepage.
General Chuck Yeager
Distinctive features:
- Static full-screen background image (changes with the sections).
- Landscape-like page format.
- Small separate box on the left of the page where the content gets loaded.
- Mostly text-based content with small images here and there.
a-ha
Distinctive features:
- News in nine languages!
- Colorful sections.
- Catchy and friendly typography.
- Boxed layout with light gray textured background.
Ford Blog Canada
Distinctive features:
- A distinctive icon for each menu item.
- Grid posts style on the homepage.
- Footer sitemap.
- Blue tones.
Dave Matthews Band
Distinctive features:
- Original and well-designed logo.
- Animated backgrounds on all pages.
- Playful and colorful interface (it uses tones of beige, gray, and orange).
- All media is displayed in animated grid style.
- Interactive timeline presenting the band’s history.
Sylvester Stallone
Distinctive features:
- Simple homepage containing only the header, the latest news, and an Instagram integration.
- Minimalist and clean design.
- Fans community forum that requires registration to reveal the content.
- Images open in a lightbox.
Jason Mraz
Distinctive features:
- Colorful, static background image.
- Two-column content on the homepage (containing four sections).
- A box showing online users and latest forum activity.
- Upcoming shows presented in a good-looking block.
- Nice community/forum area that requires registration.
OMG! Ubuntu!
Distinctive features:
- Blog-like layout with a two-column content display.
- Nice custom featured images with colorful and creative elements.
- A box in the sidebar showing the number of subscribers from all social networks.
- A form where users can submit news to go live.
Reader’s Digest
Distinctive features:
- Nice and user-friendly subscription box in the footer.
- Elegant magazine-like typography.
- Articles displayed in two styles: list and slideshow.
- Jokes and Contests pages for the users.
- All pages smartly built and optimized for marketing.
YESSBMX
Distinctive features:
- Simple design with black, white, and gray colors.
- Large images on the homepage.
- Full-screen parallax featured images.
- Vimeo video montage featuring BMX users from around the world.
Chicago Bulls Blogs
Distinctive features:
- Nice textured background that fades out as you scroll.
- Gray and red color tones.
- Minimalist, classic blog-like layout.
Mark Webber
Distinctive features:
- Parallax full-width header.
- Latest Facebook and Twitter posts displayed on the homepage.
- Widget with the latest event + a summary of it.
- Nice pages consisting only of full-width ribbons with text.
BMX Odyssey
Distinctive features:
- Blog-like layout, centered posts, and big featured images.
- Modern black-and-white design.
- Two narrow sidebars on either side of the homepage – the main menu and a social menu.
- The featured images/videos don’t lead to articles, but open separately in a lightbox when clicked.
- Lots of multimedia, galleries, videos, wallpapers, etc.
Xbox Live’s Major Nelson
Distinctive features:
- Big, eye-catching post titles.
- Two-column content layout.
- Ribbons that break the main content list visually, featuring latest entries from other platforms (a sidebar alternative).
Tom Jones
Distinctive features:
- Black-skinned design.
- Full-width slider with various transition elements.
- Ajax masonry layout for the photo galleries.
Arcade Fire
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist design, with a vintage vibe.
- Spotify widgets for each album.
- Blog-like layout.
- Distinctive site fonts.
Royksopp
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist design, old-school look.
- Textured static background.
- List post style without featured images.
- Animation filter for music portfolios (which are displayed in a grid).
Creative Ad Awards
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen, broad appearance.
- Interface based on very large and high-resolution images and posters.
- Infinite scrolling through tons of ads.
- Directory of featured advertising brands, filtered alphabetically.
Katy Perry
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen appearance, with full static backgrounds on each page.
- Animated elements as you scroll up and down.
- All posts open in a lightbox.
- Content based on media files.
Ubuntu Romania
Distinctive features:
- Minimalist and clean appearance.
- Downloadable presentation/promotional video on the right.
- Orange menus and buttons.
- A public forum page for users and developers.
- A separate page with downloadable versions of the product.
JAY Z
Distinctive features:
- Horizontal scrolling, formed of small featured images in grid display.
- Black-skinned design.
- The horizontal scrolling plays the role of a featured slider on each page/section.
- Content based on media files.
Variety
Distinctive features:
- Modern and clean magazine design.
- Small featured slider with three slides on each page.
- Four content variants depending on the audience: U.S., Global, Latino, and Asia.
- Good-looking widget boxes.
Quartz
Distinctive features:
- Large elements, images, headlines, videos.
- Large article titles change colors when you hover your cursor over them.
- Wide layout.
- Full-screen ribbon videos with parallax hover.
- Very large, high-quality featured images for posts.
Bata
Distinctive features:
- Full-screen header.
- One-page-like scroller.
- Lots of media files, photos, videos, product pages.
- Ajax filters.
- The entire site’s content is formed of galleries whose items open in lightboxes.
Rackspace Blog
Distinctive features:
- Beautiful magazine-like design.
- Colorful post boxes displayed in grid style.
- Clean and modern appearance.
BlackBerry Blog
Distinctive features:
- Modern magazine-like design.
- Orange and green color tones.
- Standard one-below-another posts layout.
- Part of three company blogs organized by audience: Inside BlackBerry, Help, Developers.
Dallas Mavericks
Distinctive features:
- The homepage consists only of a full-screen slider and schedule board at the top.
- Lots of interactive elements, carousels, social media hub, emojis, countdowns, fan contests, etc.
- Lots of media galleries.
- Big volume of content, nicely presented and easy to navigate.
Did we somehow miss any huge name that should have their place on this list? Who uses WordPress? Let us know in the comments section below.
Original text by Adelina Tuca and Karol K. Layout and presentation by Karol K.
this helped me with a school assignment
Excellent article .. I add https://www.whitehouse.gov/
IGN.COM too
Oh, correct! I’ll add his site these days. Thanks for telling us. 🙂
No worries @adelinatuca:disqus Keep producing the good stuff 🙂
Excellent article, I found some famous brand which is also using WordPress like The New York Times Company, Marks & Spencer, Google Ventures and The Verge, etc.
Hi Nikhil, thanks for completing the list. The New York Times is not using WordPress, I checked it in the first place. 🙂
I can not believe it. really they use!