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The Pros and Cons of Pre-Built WordPress Themes

custom wordpress development

WordPress rocks. WordPress’s huge support group is only one of the many reasons it’s so great. Millions of people make up the WordPress community, and they’ve developed tens of thousands of plugins and themes to make WordPress even more powerful and capable of providing even better web services.

Limited resources and pressing schedules may make developing a wholly unique theme from scratch impossible.

Many premium, ready-made WordPress themes meet these needs, offering stunning visuals and powerful features at a fraction of the expense of starting from scratch.

There are a few things to remember before settling on a custom wordpress development.

The Benefits of Using a Pre-Made WordPress Theme

First, let’s focus on the good stuff: the advantages you can count on enjoying as a pre-built user.

Less Money Needed To Start

There is no doubt that ready-made WordPress themes can save you money compared to a custom solution. Some of these templates can even be downloaded without cost. Free stuff is always appreciated. A pre-built WordPress theme can be sufficient for the time being if you are just getting started and want to see if there is a need for your product or service.

Everything is gravy until you try to tailor the stock WordPress theme to your visual identity, and that’s before we even talk about security issues. Let’s keep things upbeat for now and save that discussion for when we cover the drawbacks of using a premade WordPress theme.

Reduced Time to Deployment

If time is of the essence, a pre-built theme may be your best bet. In most cases, a pre-built theme can be downloaded, tweaked, and made live within a day if you have some familiarity with WordPress and its page layouts.

However, custom wordpress development demand technical knowledge, so if you need to learn the difference between a single-page.php template and a page.php template, you may save time studying online.

To look on the bright side, you could hire a WordPress freelancer who could easily modify your theme for you; while this wouldn’t be a one-day job, it would be much faster than having an agency develop a bespoke WordPress theme from scratch.

Easy on the Mobile

Who needs a desktop these days? A lot of people, but that’s a separate story. The mobile web is where many customers will first encounter your company. Because of this, many popular WordPress themes are mobile-ready by default.

You won’t find a “however” or “but” here. Pre-built WordPress themes optimise mobile well.

Remember that a good mobile user experience can help SEO. Search engines can assess your website’s mobile-friendliness. That setting must be enabled.

You’ll feel like a kid in a candy store browsing through the thousands of pre-built WordPress themes on niche websites like Theme Forest. Many pre-built wordpress cms customization are grouped by the sectors they can serve, so you can make your search more particular by including your industry in the search criteria.

Industry Specific

Pre-made WordPress themes designed for your specific field typically include the necessary plugins. In the case of a hotel, for instance, a booking plugin may already be included in the pre-built theme you purchase. Such nifty aids will get you up and running in no time, and who knows, maybe they’ve thought of something you haven’t!

Here is why using a custom wordpress development is advantageous, possibly to our detriment as a business. Certainly, some do exist.

Be wary, though; that pre-built theme may not be all it’s made up to be if, in the future, you find yourself having to deal with slow page loads, 40,000 plugins, and more anti-ageing cream purchases than ever before.

Cons of Using a Premade WordPress Theme

Here are a few major arguments against using a ready-made WordPress theme for your business. Things turn ugly.

Security

When we inform people that we create with the WordPress platform, one of the first things they always yell about is security. The doomsayers are correct, but only insofar as they apply to default colour schemes and other design elements. If you encounter any of the following security issues with a pre-built theme, you may feel like the sky is falling.

Bugs

Many developers are honest. However, some put little effort into their work. Developers can be annoying; they’ll make a theme, put it out there, and then nothing. When they get your money, they vanish. If you’re using a custom wordpress development and need to update it more often, invite cockroaches into your house.

Bugs in your website’s code might compromise security and negatively affect your user experience and search engine rankings.

The problem isn’t bugs so much as unpatched security vulnerabilities. If there are security flaws in WordPress or any of its plugins, they could be exploited by anybody who has access to the source code. This means that WordPress is always being updated and improved by a global team of developers. Unfortunately, many theme developers don’t update the plugin and core WordPress files so that security patches can be deployed. Make sure you have the most recent version of your theme installed.

The unexpected delay of one of American Airlines’ jets caused by a fault in the flying software for the iPad cut into the company’s profit. Consequently, even the huge guys get them.

Problems with Compatibility

Okay, so now your theme is live. But what if you want to take your website to the next level of awesomeness by expanding its capabilities? Now, the plugins.

On rare occasions, you may need to install a specialised plugin to your website. This feature may look poorly with your theme or need to be put in the right place. Your chosen theme might have yet to be designed to function with this add-on.

Indicators of this include faulty or missing website components or a failure of the plugin to load. A professional adding the plugin to your site is usually necessary to make this function.

For online stores, one of the most popular plugins for WordPress is WooCommerce, and certain themes are designed with that plugin in mind. Your chosen theme may only function properly with WooCommerce, not other plugins like Bigcommerce or WP eCommerce.

Make sure you read the theme and plugin documentation to avoid incompatibility issues. You should always take the time to choose and install well-built and compatible plugins.

Pirated and Hacked Templates

Some themes may have hidden viruses. Server problems are another side effect of using a pirated theme. There has been a steady increase in malware infections over the past decade, and new forms of malware are constantly being developed.

Verify the authenticity of the source if you come across a premium or paid theme being offered for free (pirated). Never plagiarise; always utilise reputable publications. A select few websites offer premium themes at no cost. These “nulled” themes are probably unlawful and infected with malware and viruses.

In the most extreme situations, using a nulled theme might lead to legal action being taken against you and your website and potentially the website being completely suspended.

Personalisation

One of the major drawbacks of using custom wordpress development is that they cannot be customised. According to our prior blog post: A WordPress Expert You Say? You’d be wrong to assume that a “standard” theme will work for your business because “most stock themes are not made for your brand.”

Pre-made WordPress themes typically have some form of control panel for modifying the theme’s appearance. The global colour scheme, typeface, and “light”/”dark” mode can typically be adjusted in this manner. However, beyond this level of customisation, pre-built WordPress themes start to show their limitations. A pre-built WordPress theme hides a labyrinth of cumbersome code that permits millions of possibilities, making customisation difficult on any level. Although it won’t be easy, it’s not impossible.

You should always use a child theme to keep your modifications after updating the parent theme.

Compromise is key

Using a ready-made WordPress theme has one major drawback: you will have to settle.

It’s not easy to make your WordPress theme from scratch or modify an existing one to meet your specific branding needs. If a WordPress theme needs to be better coded and follow WordPress coding standards, even the most skilled developers will have difficulty fixing problems caused by attempting to change the theme.

You must give up some functionality if you want your website to function.

Conclusion

Using a pre-made wordpress cms customization can be convenient but has certain drawbacks. In exchange for a more robust set of features and capabilities, which may or may not operate exactly as you desire, you give up the opportunity to fine-tune every part of the site. Choosing a pre-made theme requires careful consideration of several factors. Be sure to carefully consider the requirements of your organisation and weigh the benefits and drawbacks.