I realized that I’ve been putting off pulling together a website quote for someone because they asked me to “find them a WordPress template to buy.” Shopping for a template someone else created and dealing with it’s quirks and problem coding is not how I work.
With every template there’s the potential that someone did some coding poorly or in a way that will have a negative impact on the implementation of plugins. Choosing a poorly coded theme can cost more in both time, limitations and headaches and it’s hard to know what you’re dealing with before you buy and get involved with a theme.
Creating a child theme from the current WordPress theme (twentytwelve or now twentythirteen at the time I’m writing this) and heavily customized css is my typical workflow these days. There are also a few select others like the Genesis framework that have been heavily vetted by the WordPress community that we will work with.
No – your site does not need to look like these themes, that’s why we customize them heavily using child themes.
Why is this a better way of working?
- These themes just give us a leg up to speed up the creation process so that we’re not starting completely from scratch.
- These are themes that are built by, specifically for, and included with each WordPress release and have the core functionalities needed to utilize most of WordPress’s power without having to start from scratch.
- These themes are less likely to cause problems with well built plugins or have strange quirks that are hard to fix.
See our process for more information.