WordPress theme customisation allows you to pick any theme you want and get it customised to suit your business. If you’ve already set up a WordPress website for your business, then you most likely would have chosen a theme for it. WordPress themes are a great time saver if you need to get a website up and running quickly, without having to spend too much time and money on a customised design. All you need to do is choose a design that matches your corporate identity, and off you go.
Unfortunately, it’s not always a simple copy-paste exercise with your business content to fill in all the blanks. At some point you will run into some of the common development issues that happen when you build your website this way. You will often encounter things that are unfamiliar, or you are required to purchase something in order to get the functionality you want. Unless you have an IT background or you’ve done some reading on it, there is very little likelihood that you will find a solution that does exactly what you need, without having to pay for it somewhere – whether it’s time or money.
The Drawbacks of Paid Themes
While paying for a theme makes sense financially in the short term, you often run into problems after the first year. Most of these licenses only offer support and updates for the first year. Thereafter, you either have to pay for a renewal fee, or try to find something else. You also have the option of preventing your theme and WordPress version from being updated. That way it never has to change, and you can keep your site looking the way it is without the updates. The problem with that is the security risk.
Since almost everything about WordPress is open source, it means that anyone can access the source code to look for vulnerabilities. For that reason, it’s important to keep all your plugins and themes up to date at all times. This where these theme developers catch you. You are essentially forced into paying, or make do with the free options. You also have to bear in mind the changes that would need to be made if you ever wanted to change to another theme. Either way, purchasing a theme is only a short-term solution that can end up being a long-term pain.
WordPress Theme Customisation Service or Hire a Developer
When you haven’t got the time to get your theme looking and working the way you want it to, consider hiring a developer. Of course you still have the option to purchase a theme license and continue with filling in the blanks, but you may still hit a few roadblocks along the way. You might even find yourself pouring over help files and theme documentation to see if you can find the answers you need, but why go through all the headache? If you hire a WordPress Developer, they can help get the job done faster, or they will even provide you with a work around that you can continue to use in the future.
The thing with most of the free themes is that they are often so close to having what you want, that all it takes making a few changes here and there, and it will work! That’s the good news about hiring a web developer to resolve your problems. They’ll be able to fix whatever functionality you need quicker than it will take for you to find the answer on your own.
I’ll be adding more posts about this in future, with a whole series on customising a particular theme. In the meantime, if you need theme customization or bespoke coding, my WordPress theme customization service means you can tell me what you need customized on your theme, and I make it happen!