The best way to save both time and money is to customize an existing free WordPress theme with a suitable structure rather than to create one from scratch. Especially if you are the developer, and particularly if you are new to WordPress development.
It’s crucial that the chosen site template should generally fit your idea of the future site’s functionality and appearance. Usually, changing colors is easy. Modifying the overall look and feel takes some digging. It takes even more time and effort to add e-commerce widgets which existing plugins or WordPress itself are lacking, or to migrate the data from a non-WP platform, or to integrate third-party services when the necessary plugins are either not available or inadequate in functionality. Search through the free and premium themes for different industries and niches on WordPress.com, ThemeForest, Envato Market, Mojo Marketplace or other sites. You may find an existing theme with a range of features that fit the majority of your requirements and modify it to fit the rest.
There are many ways to customize a WordPress theme. You can start once you’ve installed it. (This step-by-step guide shows how to make a WordPress site without any coding.) When you click on the ‘Customize’ link under the ‘Appearance’ menu, you can change your theme settings with a live preview of the website. Afterward, whenever you’re logged into WordPress, navigate to the home page and click ‘Customize’ in the toolbar.
You can also customize a WordPress theme with a CSS editor. It’s built into the Customizer: go to ‘Appearance’ and select ‘Edit CSS.’
A variety of plugins allow writing custom CSS too. If it’s just a styling issue, you can try Advanced CSS Editor or custom CSS in Jetpack plugin to start.
Sometimes, plugins can quickly provide the required functionality and style that can be difficult to create for a WP beginner. Beaver Builder is a popular choice. Independent developers may offer such customization plugins at no charge or under a ‘freemium’ model, i.e. the basic functionality is free and you pay only if you need the more in-depth functionality.
We prefer WPBakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer) and SiteOrigin’s Page Builder. The latter has been utilized in the development of VisitHaiti, a tourism website currently in production with Onix. The plugin allowed, among other things, to add an impressive video of sea waves instead of a static hero image.
However, such page builders have drawbacks as well. Here is another recent example: a brand new luxury foods online store that is under development right now. For faster integration in the market, the website’s code should have minimal HTML markup that search engines have trouble understanding. SEO experts advised against using any page builder, and our team had to create the necessary solutions from scratch. (Actually, that’s one of the benefits of working with an agency: they have seasoned professionals to see to all aspects of a project.)
It’s generally recommended to start with the WP Customizer before moving on to more complicated methods. However, they all have their limitations. Even customization with CSS applies typically to the looks and not much to the functionality. When dealing with a site’s structural elements, the best way to customize a WordPress theme is to create a child theme. WordPress Codex strongly recommends this way.
A WP child theme inherits the functionality of the parent (a theme that was installed but not activated yet). In a nutshell, a child sits on top of the main theme files that control the look and feel of a site. If there is a version of a template in each theme, your WordPress site will use the version from the child theme. If it has none, the site will default to using the parent’s template. This makes a child theme the safest way to modify an existing one, whether you need a few tiny tweaks or extensive changes.
If interested, you can have a step-by-step instruction in creating your first child theme. But as usual, we recommend sticking with the pros. Only an experienced WordPress web designer or developer knows how to customize a WordPress theme in a way that won’t cause you problems later.
With thousands of free and premium site templates out there, and all the customization options available, what’s the point of going for a custom WordPress site?
