Do You Really Need A Custom Wordpress Theme?
One of the hardest parts of running a Wordpress (or similar CMS/blog script) is finding the right layout and look for your content. After all, the first few minutes that your visitor arrives at your website are some of the most crucial. You need to make a good first impression. Even if you have the best content in the world, if your website does not look appealing to visitors you are going to lose them to a competitor. If your primary purpose is to make money from your website or if you rely on the revenue that you generate, then this could seriously harm your pocket. But how much should you spend on your design? Or should you even spend at all?
There are thousands of Wordpress themes available on the Internet. You only need to go to your favourite search engine and type in “Wordpress Themes” and look at the number of results that are returned (Google: 21,200,000 results). Many of them are available for free, you simply have to browse through designs until you find one that suits your style and your needs. Then there are the ‘premium’ themes which are sold in multiple amounts at more affordable prices. These are designed to give a professional, crisp design at a lower price than your standard graphic designer’s fees. Finally, you have the option to contact a graphic designer and ask them to come up with a custom design to suit your needs and niche. You will be paying top dollar for this, so you would expect a very good quality design for your money.
Free Themes
These are the most easily affordable themes for people looking to setup their new Wordpress site or perhaps change the look of their current design, since they cost…absolutely nothing. The other major advantage of using a free theme is that you save yourself a lot of time and effort with the design work as everything has been built for you. All that you need to do is download the theme, plug it into your Wordpress site and away you go.
However, a lot of people do make mistakes in choosing a theme for their websites and end up with a finished result that is completely different from the design they imagined before they started. Similarly, since the design was not created by themselves and was instead offered as a free theme if they wish to customise the design/layout and they lack the sufficient design knowledge to achieve this, they may hit a stumbling block and have to pay someone else to customise their free theme. Suddenly that free theme doesn’t seem so appealing does it?
One of the most common mistakes that you can see as you browse blogs across the net are people who jump on a bandwagon and use a theme because it is popular. This ends up with your site lacking uniqueness and credibility and your visitors can become bored by seeing a design that they see several times a day.
So what do you do if you really want to use that popular theme? Well, why not change some of the colours around and perhaps change the default font that is used so that you can give yourself more of a unique look. Changing colours would be as simple as opening the CSS file and playing around with the colours.
Tip: Before editing the colours or playing around with a CSS file, you should ensure that you make a backup of the files first. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to get carried away, make changes that you are unable to reverse, and then you realise that you’ve deleted the files from your PC and you don’t have a back-up. It will save you hunting through the free theme websites just to download another copy of the theme.
The most simple and obvious changes would be to add a new header image and/or logo to your Wordpress theme. Perhaps the layout fits your niche, except the header is of a car when your website is actually about computers? No problem, just source yourself a new image (I use iStockPhoto and sxc.hu), trim the photo to size and you’ve got yourself a new header.
Just be careful about how long you spend editing the theme, should you choose to do so, as the whole point of a website theme is to save time and effort in the creation of your site. Should you customise the theme to a position where it is completely unrecognisable from the theme that you downloaded, then I would suggest that you have gone too far. Whilst it is good that you have a completely unique design, you’re defeating the point of the website theme, which is to give you a canvas on which to paint your art.
Premium Themes
Why would you want to spend a little money on a theme when you can get one of thousands for free? I’ll tell you why…
- A premium theme gives you a chance to stand out from the crowd of the ‘popular’ free themes.
- You can see the design before you buy and you know exactly what you’re going to get – plus on many sites, you can see showcases of how people have customised the theme (more on this shortly).
- Ideal if you don’t know PHP/CSS/HTML.
- You can get a theme that has been designed specifically for your needs. Perhaps you’re starting a celebrity blog and you want to get a ‘Magazine style’ media theme – no problem, there are many of these around.
- Excellent value for money as you get a theme you can tweak and make your own, which has been carefully designed.
- Product support – If you have a problem with your theme, you can contact the designer and they will help you to resolve your problems.
Of course a premium theme would not be suitable for every user. The main useage for these themes are going to be the media, news, technology style blogs, who rely on a magazine style layout and a really crisp and professional design. For these types of sites, content is their number one priority, so the less time that is spent on designing and implementing the theme, the more time there is available for adding content and value for the website’s visitors.
As an example, one of the more popular premium Wordpress themes is Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme. This magazine-style theme currently comes in 9 different flavours, which cover a broad spectrum such as music, news, sports and technology. The themes cost $79.95 for single use, and in my opinion represent excellent value if they suit the style of your website. Take a look at a few examples of a customised Revolution theme in the showcase. One of my favourites is floatrightmedia – which looks absolutely outstanding, considering it was based on the ‘Revolution: Pro Media” theme.
Custom Themes
A custom Wordpress theme doesn’t always have to be expensive, but with only one or two exceptions, you do get exactly what you pay for in the design industry.
Sure, you can head on over to a Freelance design website such as GetAFreelancer, and post a job – but the majority of applicants for your job are going to be underskilled and will try to fool you with a pre-existing Wordpress theme that they have modified slightly and declared as their own ‘unique’ design. Don’t get me wrong, there are exceptions and there are some fantastic designers out there, but by and large these designers do not have time to post on Freelance websites and they will command a much higher fee.
The average fee for a completely unique theme seems to range from $300 to $1000+ , dependant on the needs of the client. If you’re going for a unique look you should definitely be budgeting for at least a $300 spend to ensure that you give yourself enough money for a quality design.
SitePoint’s Marketplace often has a number of Wordpress themes for sale, mostly unique. If you’re quick and have the money ready for an immediate purchase, you can snag a good bargain here. I’ve bought a few themes in the last 3 months within an hour of them being listed. Including one theme that was purchased for $199, which we then used on a client’s website and sold to him for $800.
There are many choices as you can see, and I’ve not even covered half of them. Look out for a future update with more evaluation of your choices and some recommended designers. Why not tell us about the theme that you use on your Wordpress blog? Leave a comment below…
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