We’ve been on the WordPress-as-CMS bandwagon for several months. Recently, we heard WordPress was awarded the Best Overall Open Source Content Management System award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards, beating out Drupal, Joomla, and a bunch of other geek favorites. We didn’t even know there was such an award, but of course, we like that it confirms our point of view that WordPress is a great CMS.

Recently on our blog, Evobloggito, we posted that All Small Business Websites Should be on a Blog Platform, by which we really meant "on WordPress." We were trying to appear open-minded. But really, we’re biased: we love WordPress. There, we said it! And we don’t care if the whole world knows it! WordPress has earned our favor by being simple, flexible, and powerful. And the more we use it, the more we understand how simple, flexible, and powerful it truly is. Read the above article for the benefits of blog-based websites for small businesses.

Then, download this 4-column WordPress theme and the Photoshop design template.

Evo4 CMS will never be accused of being pretty and having a "cool look" as it unzips from the download file. It is not for casual bloggers who are looking for a "plug-and-play" theme. Instead, it is meant for professional-level designers who want to use WordPress as a CMS platform on which to build business websites with integrated blogs. Successfully turning the theme from the gray, blank canvas you see in front of you into a beautiful website will require a firm grasp of design skills, Photoshop skills, and maybe a bit of understanding of PHP; but it does not require major hacking. Designers can focus on design. And I hope to God their design looks nothing like what you see on this page, but is suitable for whatever business or organization the website represents (instead of looking like a site for a depressed undertaker).

Evo4 CMS is built to offer the most preferred webpage structure (subnav on left/main content right) and the most preferred blog structure (posts on left/sidebars on right), tied together by compatible footer widgets and header item placements in a 4-column grid.

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Finally, I developed a concept based on 4 irregular-width columns (above). You can see this grid at work on this blog post (the red areas of the illustration). If you click on any of the other tabs in the navigation above, you will see the grid on a "traditional website" page (highlighted with green on the illustration).

Visually tying these two very different page configurations together are the widget areas in the footer and items in the header, which are aligned with the grid. The result is combination website and blog with an integrated appearance. The precise measurements of the grid can be adjusted, subject to your preferences and understanding of CSS.

Evo4 CMS is a free WordPress theme that serves as a basis for building complete websites with integrated blogs. It helps to make WordPress into one of the better Content Management Systems (CMS) in existence. This website and blog uses Evo4 CMS, and as you might have noticed, it’s pretty plain out of the box. The theme is a blank canvas for competent designers with good to excellent design skills, Photoshop skills, and minimal PHP skills.

What do you get with Evo4 CMS? Essentially, you get a grid-based layout (with supporting files) for building a "traditional website" with an integrated blog. I’ve never had much success adapting 2- or 3-column WordPress blog themes as a foundation for business websites. It always required major surgery, and the result never looked quite right; I couldn’t achieve the integrated look I was after.

Along with the theme, you can download a Photoshop design grid especially made for Evo4 CMS. That’s where you should start in designing your Evo4 CMS-based website.

There is no requirement that you credit me or acknowledge the use of Evo4 CMS. I would love it, however, if you sent me links to completed Evo4 CMS-themed websites. Also, any ideas you might  have for improving the theme: I’d appreciate hearing them.

Certain plugins are recommended to make the theme work as intended, but using them or not is your choice. You can enhance your website with jQuery, other plugins, Flash, or whatever you think will make your client sit up and say "Wow! We’re going to pay you extra!"