I read a very interesting article over the weekend titled “Are WordPress Themes Cheating in Web Design?” by James Dalman. That article itself was inspired by an older one titled “Confessions of a Template Whore” by Sabrina Dent which is equally interesting.
The point of this post is not to rehash the same ideas as these two articles. I agree with both authors that, using themes is quite OK in many cases, especially for non-designers who want to get blogs and even simple sites up and still get at least a professional “look”, even if we all know that design goes a lot deeper than mere decoration and surface skinning.
A good looking and functional free theme like the one I used when I moved this site to WordPress won’t win anyone any originality awards, but it will get the job done for a lot of people and won’t turn away visitors because the site looks like crap or is completely unusable.
But beyond pre-made themes that you just plug into a site and tweak a little, there is whole other category of themes called “Premium Themes” or theme frameworks. This site’s evolving design is now based on one called Thesis and I’ll be redoing my company blog as well as Isabelle’s entire Web site using another called Headway (btw, both are affiliate links because I believe in these products very strongly). I talked about Thesis and theme frameworks in this recent post.
Basically, what theme frameworks do is enable you to easily (or relatively easily) “skin” your blog or site using your own design with little or no coding… and that is what I wanted to touch on here.
A major Shift
For me, starting to use WordPress has been a mind shift in itself, for a few reasons. But I always figured I would at least eventually build my own theme for it… from scratch… and I figured I would build blogs with it and little else. But that’s until I discovered the true power of the platform. The mind shift was complete once I discovered Thesis and Headway and the world of theme frameworks… and my imagination started racing!
As many of you know, I have been designing and building Web sites for a long time now, so I know how to code and do so in an efficient manner. I’ve never used code exported from Fireworks (the application I design all of my sites with) because it never was good enough for me. Without calling myself a purist, I’ve always prided myself in the quality of my HTML and CSS and I’ve worked hard at keeping up with current techniques. So you can imagine my reluctance to let go of most of my control using WordPress and a theme framework to build not only a blog, but entire Web sites!
But I plan to do just that for not only Isabelle’s site, but my biggest Web site project to date if I get it (I’m sending my bid in on Friday) as well as any suitable future projects.
What changed my mind? Quite frankly, I’m tired of the tedium and repetition. Using WordPress and a good theme framework means that a lot of a site’s infrastructure is already done for me, and done solidly too. Like James Dalman said in his article:
- It takes a lot of energy and time to create something from nothing,
- freelancers are limited by time,
- and a business’ primary goal (freelance or otherwise) is to be profitable
These are just as applicable to coding a site as they are to designing it. If I can get more projects done faster it will mean a better cash flow for me and significant savings for my clients. Plus it will mean I will concentrate more on the parts I enjoy (strategy, design, UX) and less on the tedium of coding the same kind of functionality again and again.
This is not for every project but when it is applicable, it will be a win-win for everyone IMO.
What do you think?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I totally agree, why reinvent the wheel. I come from a design background and anything that helps me stay in business and turn out a good client website get my vote.
Good post!
I agree with you. There’s no need to invent everything or do it from scratch, when there’s a stable foundation to build on.
WordPress provides a stable foundation for the back-end and CMS-like management of the content. I suppose, a stable WP theme framework may help with the front-end development as well.
In the past, I have only modified WP themes that I like, to suit specific needs of mine. This worked pretty well up to now. I suppose, building on a top of a good framework is even better!
I’d be interested to read more from you on this topic, one day — why a WP theme framework? why Thesis? how?
I totally agree but I am still coming to terms with how I think (as a web designer) and how Wordpress works – I don’t understand the terminology and I would really like to find a good tutorial written for web designers and how to understand wordpress and how to customise it
Any suggestions?
Vix
@Vix
Thanks for your comment! I’ve been designing and building Web sites for years but I am pretty new to the Wordpress platform myself so I don’t have any tutorials suggestions for now. What I have found is that, the Worpress community is large and enthusiastic and it’s easy to find information on any topics related to using Wordpress through Google or other search engines. The official documentation is also excellent.
The other thing I can tell you is that, if you choose to go with a premium theme like Thesis or Headway, they also have thriving communities, user forums and many tutorials freely available from users. Same with any plugins you choose to install. If you have specific questions about anything I have done or will do here, don’t hesitate to contact me!
@Michel
What I can say right now about why a framework? Flexibility and speed. I can code and have done so for a long time but what Wordpress and theme frameworks enable me to do is to concentrate on the user experience, the end result without most of the tedious work. I never code a site completely from scratch in my regular projects as I reuse basic CSS and jQuery bits but with a theme framework and Wordpress, most of the infrastructure is already there and I can get to what I want much faster. I’m still learning the new toolset but, to me, the potential is staggering and I think I’ll be able to push projects out the door faster and save my clients money as well as concentrate on the part I like most: the actual strategy and design work.
Wordpress and theme frameworks are not for every project but for many of them, they are the ideal solution, especially since Wordpress is becoming a true CMS. Can’t wait for 3.0 to be released!
And why Thesis? It’s a solid theme but I’m currently redoing this site again with the Headway theme as it’s even easier to implement your designs with it and its SEO features seem even stronger than Thesis. I discovered Headway later than Thesis but I have been concentrating on it since. I will write about all this again for sure.
I agree 100%. I have been a web designer for many years and hand coded all my own/client sites from nothing. I recently discovered the power and functionality of WordPress and now im sold! I just built my new companies site with it. I love love love not having to do the tedious coding! I’m a WordPress convert! =)
Glad to hear it Stacey and thank you very much for your comment!
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