Pro Tips
WordPress Themes – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
WordPress is one of the most used content management system (CMS) platforms because of its functionality and user-friendliness. With its free and paid pre-built themes, almost anyone can build a basic website. However, for businesses that need a professional website, engaging an experienced web development company like LOCUS-T will be a better option.
According to WordPress.org, a theme is a way to “skin” a website — it is a collection of files that controls the visual representation of a website’s content and other data as well as the way certain elements in your site interacts with visitors. A theme determines how a site is displayed without modifying the underlying software. It includes customised template files, custom pages, image files, style sheets and other necessary code files among others.
A theme is one of the most important aspects you need to consider when designing a website. It not only determines the visual appearance of your website but also its functionality. With WordPress, you can either use their pre-built theme, develop your own custom theme or use the combination of both. Using a pre-built theme has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s look at the Good, Bad and Ugly of a pre-built WordPress theme:
The Good
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User-friendly
Designing and developing a website using a pre-built WordPress theme is so easy that you don’t need to know any programming language. As long as you have the basic knowledge about the web and the internet, you can build a website within a day!
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Cost-effective
The cost of a WordPress theme is next to nothing. If your website does not need any complex programming, you can even use the free themes.
The Bad
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Lack Personalisation
You are limited to the design of the pre-built theme. There are some themes that allow you to make some changes to the existing design, but there are still limitations that you have to workaround. And you have to risk the possibility of breaking the codes when you make modifications.
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Poor Website Speed
Pre-programmed themes usually have functionality that sometimes not needed by your website. Fancy animations and effects require a lot of Javascript, which will most likely slow down the loading speed and if you are doing SEO, this may affect your ranking.
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Possible Obsolete Themes
WordPress introduces continuous updates and themes has to be updated to be compatible with the latest version. When purchasing your theme, make sure it is from a reliable developer so that they will keep track of the changes and introduce updates to their theme concurrently, failing which, you may end up with a non-functioning website.
The Ugly
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Bugs
There are cases of buggy themes, which will inevitably cause issues on your website. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you are purchasing your theme from a reliable developer.
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Security
Pre-built themes have their loopholes, and the fact that it is easily available to anyone makes it vulnerable to hacking and security breach as compared to a customised theme, which would have specific security functions put in place.
As an experienced digital marketing company, we, at LOCUS-T, use a customised WordPress theme, specially built with design and functionality in mind. With our customised theme, we have the flexibility to create designs and functions that meet our client’s requirements. That is why websites designed by LOCUS-T allows you to stand out from the crowd and create your own identity.
Contact us for more information on our website design and development services.
