Getting the Best Value from Custom WordPress Templates

What is a custom WordPress template?

 Unlike readily available WordPress themes, custom templates are designed from scratch based on a client’s specific requirements. This is practically the same as having a new website or blog built from the ground up. The only difference is that the final product is specially made to run on the WordPress platform.

How much does it cost?

The amount of money you’d have to shell out to have a custom theme made would depend on who you hire to do the job and how complex you want the finished product to be. In most cases, however, a project like this could easily fetch a price tag of over a thousand Dollars – and that’s just for development.

Once your website or is up and running, you’d still have to pay for support, in case you encounter problems uploading or editing your content, and regular updates to ensure that your theme is optimized to run on the latest version of the platform.

Now, if you’re not willing to pay a premium price, why not just learn to create a custom theme yourself? There are a lot of great online tutorials out there that can help you get started and guide you through the rest of the web design and coding process. You’ll be creating stunning fully-functional themes in no time.

Are there any alternatives?

But what if you don’t want to create all the customization yourself? Are you doomed to just using your Facebook page as your website? Well, don’t lose hope just yet. You can always go the free or premium route.

Free templates typically offer more than enough design choices and customization options for personal websites, blogs, portfolio pages and even some corporate websites.

However, the fact that you’re considering having a custom template made in the first place means that a free theme would probably be unable to meet your needs. Also, going the free route may open you up to poor support and security risks.

Premium themes, on the other hand, offer so much more in the customization department. In fact, they’re so customizable that you might as well have an actual custom template – minus the hefty price tag.

The number of things you can do with them are practically endless. You can easily move design elements around, change fonts and colors, add or remove pages and features, and activate plugins and widgets – all to make your site better suited to your brand and its personality and goals. And they generally come with exceptional customer support as well so that’s another plus.

The bottom line

Instead of looking at having a custom template made right at the get go, try to go through some free options first. If you can’t find anything that you can use, then move on to premium. There’s a big chance that your search would end here because there are a lot of good ones to choose from – which you can then simply customize to better suit your needs.

Now, on the off chance that the premium route still doesn’t cut it, then that’s the time to look into having one designed from scratch or doing it yourself.

At the end of the day, each option has its good points. You just need to figure out which one provides the best value for what you need and how much you are willing to spend.

About Jeffrey Smith

Jeffrey Smith is the founder of SEO Design Solutions the makers of SEO Ultimate (a popular WordPress All-In-One SEO plugin) and the SEO Design Framework (an optimized SEO Framework with Drag and Drop Design and Stylish Skins).

Jeffrey learned SEO and web design out of necessity back in 1995 which helped in successfully launching a thriving global consumer product development firm. Since that time, he's pioneered innovative solutions for WordPress while intently helping individuals and businesses of all sizes increase rankings, revenue and reach.

You can find over 1000 posts written from Jeffrey on all things SEO over at the SEO Design Solutions Blog

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