WordPress Theme Development

The best option for WordPress websites is the development of your own theme. An overview of the advantages and disadvantages of “custom themes”.

Advantages of Individual WordPress Theme Development

  • Individuality – the website fits 100% into your brand identity, because the design is implemented without any compromises. Therefore it is absolutely unique and can not be found on any other website. Contrarily a purchased theme like the frequently used Avada theme will be recognized immediately. This interchangeability is avoided if you use your own theme.
  • Performance – Increase in performance as the design and functions are implemented without the “all-rounder” ballast of the premium themes. It is free of any unnecessary scripts and fonts and endlessly interlocked shortcodes, that make it hard for search engines to interpret the page
  • Usability – The trend of being an “all-rounder” is distinctive under the premium themes, which has a negative effect on the usability. While included page builders such as the JS Composer fight over the widest range of features, more and more often the customer, who is supposed to use the tool, despairs. When developing your own theme, we provide a customized modular system that contains only the necessary components. At the same time, a high degree of flexibility is maintained, so landing pages and other complex layouts can easily be build. As only the necessary components are available, the system is extremely easy to understand and use – the costs for the actual “content management” drop drastically.

Disadvantages of Individual WordPress Theme Development

  • Increased design effort – Every desired layout needs to be designed, normally in 3-4 versions: smartphone, tablet (high-rise format and horizontal format) and desktop.
  • Prescient planning is essential – every interaction needs to be described and defined. What happens when you click on a button, how do thumbnails change, what exactly happens on the stage of the homepage and so on. Only what has been defined in this process will be available later on, unlike a premium theme, that comes with existing templates for just about any occasion. That means that you could start editing the page and after 6 months decide to use one of the existing templates and publish you page straight away. That is not the case with the individual themes: everything that was not designed and defined in the beginning is not available. Hence, if you have new ideas and wishes for your website they will need to be designed. Even tho it is technically not a problem at all, it is still far more complex than defining and designing it in the beginning und just use it when needed.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that it depends on the requirements and ambitions of the customer, whether to choose the path of “Custom Theme Development” or the one of using a “Premium Theme”. The Premium Theme is a shortcut to achieve good results with comparably minimal resources – at the expense of individuality.

If companies want to realize their own brand identity on the web in a pure form, the “Premium Theme” way is the wrong one. Particularly because the costs for individual theme development are not as high as one would think

How is your own WordPress theme created?

Depending on your wishes, we can offer the complete design and development process, or adopt a supplied design and make it a theme.

Theme Design

Normally the design is provided by the designers of our agency partners. They supply us with sketch files, invision prototypes, Adobe XD, InDesign or Photoshop layouts, which we implement according to the specifications

Development of blocks and templates

In this process, the building blocks are created with which any layout can be realized without the editor having to worry about the design of the building blocks. Additionally complete page templates are part of the project, as blog posts and references often follow a certain pattern, while landing pages have to be flexibly adaptable to the content and objectives.

Implement functions

Whether it’s contact forms with automated notifications and that link to Salesforce, a retailer search based on Open Street Maps, a donation form or other requirements that arise from the client’s business model: we have got the freedom, that would not be possible with existing themes

By the way, that does not mean that we want to develop a plugin for everything. We often use existing plugins and only take care of the customization of the design so that it fits.

Testing and Optimizing

Speed and SEO are central factors that affect the ranking of the website. In this last step, we ensure that all technical possibilities are exploited and provide the editorial team with the tools they need to optimize content, meta and open graph information.

Interested in WordPress Theme Development?

Let’s talk about it. It won’t cost you anything – indeed it will most probably be a big step forward in your journey

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