Custom vs Premade WordPress Themes
One exciting thing about building a website or blog is the part where you are designing it. Either it’s for personal or business purposes, you need to make sure that your site appears pleasant to attract visitors, and a large number of visitors means a great performance in search engines. That simple act of designing can be crucial to the future of your blog or website.
If you are new to blogging or web designing, you may ask yourself questions like where you should go first or how much designing a website will cost you. Some platforms have complicated setup options to build your site, but you don’t have to worry about it. Whether you have mastered the art of coding or are still a newbie in this field, the first thing you should know is that you have an option to use custom and premade themes depending on which is advantageous to your situation.
Before you start installing and designing your website with WordPress themes, here are the pros and cons of choosing either. These will also give you more insights and ideas which one is better for you.
Custom Themes Pros and Cons
- Uniqueness – A customized theme is like setting yourself apart from others, meaning, you are giving your site its own identity. This also means that you are the only one who have a particular theme, so it separates you from other sites or blogs, regardless of the fact that the contents of your website are similar to others. There are thousands and millions of WordPress users, and you may stumble upon some WordPress users and/or companies who have the same website design. It reduces the originality of both sites, especially if their products and/or services are alike. Not only are they competitors in terms of business, they are also competing for visitors’ attention even though they have the same appearance. However, if you have a custom theme, your site may stand out from the others. After all, an animated navigation or banner is better than a bland header text or menu.
- Custom Functionality – Another advantage of customized themes is the functionalities you can use. You may customize the navigation and setup multiple menus according to your liking and needs. With customized themes, you may also have your theme translated into different languages. This is essential if your business is operated internationally or you are shipping products to other countries. One more example of custom function is your freedom to choose any image which represents your post. You may use this function if you want to highlight an image from one of your posts or simply for an archive view.
- Adjustment According to the Content of Your Blog – One thing that may come to your mind when you hear the word ‘customized’ is adjusting your theme according to your content or what your website or blog is all about. If you are a nature lover and blogging about it (on a personal basis), you may use an image of a mountain, a forest, or any nature-related images as your site background. Some users also use background music for their site to match the theme. In this case, you may use a rain, thunder, or birds chirping as your sound effect. If in case, your website appears more professional and for business than for personal use such as restaurants or foods, you may substitute normal navigation menus with restaurant menu templates. That would give your website a restaurant-like feeling.
- Costly – The one and only downside of using custom themes is the large amount of money it can cost you which usually reaches thousands of dollars. The cost of hiring professional web developers may also be as expensive as customizing the theme of your website or blog by yourself. Consider the plugins, the future updates, bugs, and other things to deal with in maintaining your website.
Premade Themes Pros and Cons
- Affordability – Premade themes, especially the free ones are affordable. Other blogging and website platforms besides WordPress also offer this kind of service. If you are new to blogging or website building, you don’t have to worry about having no knowledge in coding–WordPress has already prepared that for you. The good thing about premade themes is you can afford it if you are on a tight budget, since most already made themes do not cost above $100. Whether you want your blog or website to be minimal or profligate, you may find premade themes to suit those types.
- Time-saving – Spending time with codes in building your blog or website can be time-consuming. There are research included and trial and errors in creating your codes, which may result in prolonged working time. Additionally, you also have to take care of manual settings, such as the font face, size, colors, and display images to upload. Meanwhile, premade themes are already set, and all you need to do is to click a few buttons and you are good to go. Setting up the design for your blog or website usually takes less than a minute so this saves you a lot of time which you can use in other aspects of developing your website.
- Limited Customizability – This is one of the disadvantages of choosing premade themes: you can never go deeper and bring out the full potential of your website. Unlike customized themes, premade themes have a limited options in colors, font face, and sizes. So even if you want your title to have that Star Wars or Game of Thrones font, this will be impossible due to the limitations set by your theme’s developer. If basic options like these are limited, the functions will also have restrictions. Unless you want to face legality issues, it is highly advisable not to edit the original codes, even if you are knowledgeable in HTML, CSS, and Javascript coding.
- No Originality – While customized themes give you the privilege to be unique and stand out from the others, you are quite losing your originality when you use premade themes, especially the free ones. Ready made themes use the same element, so it doesn’t give your website or blog a sense of its own identity. Of course, it also reduces the credibility of your business and/or company. If you are specializing in hotels and you use the same theme with a competing hotel company, then people might think you are no different from the other one.
- No Warranties – Another issue with premade themes is that you are not covered by support and warranty. Since some premade themes are premium or need payment, we can conclude that this is where some developers get their income from. If that is the case, they may provide users and website owners a full support in case of bugs and other issues. The problem lies on the fact that that doesn’t apply to all premade themes, especially the free ones. Since free premade themes are made without that much budget, the tendency is that there would be a lot of bugs and issues: plugin malfunction, for example.
