WordPress theme Vs Custom Designed WordPress website

From its humble beginnings as a blogging platform, WordPress has snowballed into one of the world’s most popular and user-friendly content management systems (CMS). Updating and maintaining your website has never been easier.

If you’re planning to build your website on WordPress, you may be wondering whether to go with a custom developed theme, or choose from the plethora of free themes available on the web. In this article we discuss the pros and cons of each.

Pre-Built WordPress Themes

Building your website around a WordPress theme is an enticing idea. After all, many of them can be purchased for as little as $45. And the themes really do look attractive in the numerous online market places. But if you’re thinking of investing in a theme, think carefully before jumping in.

Bear in mind that although a theme may look great in a demo, once you install the theme you’ll have to configure it to look the way it did in the demo. You may also want to hire a developer to do that for you.

Themes are also restricting in the amount of customisations they allow you, some only offering a few predefined colour schemes. If you really want to customise the theme to match your company’s branding, you’ll either need to dig through CSS files or again hire a developer.

If you really want to go down the theme route, bear in mind that you may ultimately have to hire a development team to make things look just the way you want them to due to the restrictions in theme options.

WordPress is hugely popular, but as a side effect, many websites powered by it look very “same same”, as they say in Bangkok.

Custom Developed WordPress Websites

The big difference here is that you get to choose exactly what your site looks like, exactly the right colours, and only the functionality you want and need, no fluff. Admittedly, custom developed WordPress websites are more expensive than themes but you get the guarantee of originality. Investing in the right website is very important and going the cheap route now might hurt your business in the long run.

With a custom developed WordPress site you still get all the advantages of WP: CMS, blog, great SEO, a plethora of free plugins, robust and solid framework – but without the restrictions of a pre-built theme. If you need a custom post type for testimonials, no problem, just ask the developers to build that functionality in!

We at Mediacake believe that WordPress is a solid foundation for a good strong website. However, we don’t believe that you should jump blindly into something without researching your options first either. Themes are great, but as their names suggests, they’re a framework, or template that looks generic and is used by thousands of other websites. If you want to really stand out from the crowd, then we highly recommend going down the custom development route.