WordPress is currently the most popular publishing platform in the world with over 60 million people choosing to use it! The question is ‘why is it so popular..?’ The answer is not that difficult … because, it’s so easy to use you could teach your granny to use it! In-fact your granny could download it and have a professional looking business up and running in no time at all!
Great, let’s do it gran… we pay $30, sort out some hosting and where do we go now…. well… hmm… er? There are so many free templates and pre-made themes on specialist websites like Themeforest. These are great for start-up companies to use but does that make it the right thing to do?
“Hey I’m on a budget so it’s cost effective to use a pre-made template! Of course, using something of the shelf is a no-brainer because you get off the ground and your up and running with the big boys, shoulder to shoulder, doing business… but, actually hang on! Looking at all these other websites… hmm! They look familiar? I know where I’ve seen that before, I was going to buy that one because it look different and individual… eh, what the….!”
Ok, sorry about the third person in my head there! The fact of the matter is that pre-made templates are not unique and the danger is that you get diluted in an already (over 60 million!) saturated world of wordpress websites! Although they are cost effective, using them will become frustrating because of the inflexibility of using them. My guess is that you’ll buy one to do one thing and another to do something else and then another….. the dilution starts!
Let’s make no bones about it, I love wordpress because… it’s full on and I only have to use what I need! The core is like having 2000bhp engine under the bonnet! But, you can drive it like a first time driver or an F1 super star! This is ultimately how time and money can be saved, through bespoke development of only what is needed!
Bespoke means unique and flexible and that’s something you don’t get with pre-made templates.
Having a website that is not only unique but easy to use is going to save you time when it comes to adding your content. We design only what is necessary and what you want or need. With a pre made theme you might not like a certain part of functionality, you want the logo moved in the header, you want to change something but you can’t, it’s the way the theme was designed and thats it! Also, you might have to figure out where to put special bits of content if it’s not well documented in the 30 page manual!
So be careful about using pre made themes, although you’ll end up spending less money the time you might waste in the end will make up for that and actually cost you more!
And there you have it, is it a WordPress themes or bespoke web design? What are your thoughts, do you use them, have you had any frustrations with them?
Perhaps a naive question, with the bespoke web design can one still have the power of wordpress behind the site with all the plugins available and content management and yet have a professional custom designed theme/look and feel/skin (I am not sure of the correct term).
Absolutely! My point is about the inflexibility of free or premium themes. Most of the frustrations come with themes functioning in a certain way and not the way the website owner would like. When you start from the ground up you can customise the theme to do exactly as you want it to do and include the bespoke design.