Choice between a theme and a theme builder in WordPress
This article is the result of many conversations with customers and our own experience with it. With a WordPress website, you have the option to choose between a normal theme and a theme with website builder. There are several tools that allow you to mix up a default theme and further customize it to your liking. In this article, we'd like to point out some of the pain points and hopefully explain how a theme and a theme builder work. And why you should choose one. Let's get started!
WordPress itself is all about giving you the ability to create and use a website without much effort. Anyone with the motivation to read up on certain topics, like our knowledge base, can set up a WordPress website. The main thing that makes WordPress stand out is that the content you write is the main focus. From the core of WordPress being a tool for bloggers to start a blog, it has quickly become the most used tool for setting up a website. From blogs to portfolio websites and web stores. With themes and plug-ins, a WordPress website can be further customized to your liking. In this article, we will focus on what to look for when choosing a theme. There are three ways to theme a website.
A ready-to-use theme
What will suffice for the majority of WordPress users are the themes you can download from WordPress itself. And through various marketplaces. These themes can often be downloaded and used for free, with the option to purchase all the features. Or they can be purchased for around $50 usually on various marketplaces. These themes are designed to be easy to use and you can get started right away without much customization. With this type of theme, it's important to make sure that your theme of choice is updated frequently. And preferably, it already has a history of satisfied users and a proven speed and efficiency. So look at the experience and make sure you do your homework on the theme.
A good example is the themes that come standard with a WordPress installation. These themes are developed by the WordPress team themselves and give you the ability to get started without installing a third-party theme. With a theme from WordPress itself, you can be sure that your website theme will receive updates for a long time. We're still seeing updates to a default theme from 2014 that will still be updated in 2021.
As long as you stick to a few themes that have a solid reputation, have support, and have a wide user base. Then you can use a ready-made theme with no worries.
For beginners, experienced webmasters and in between, ready-made themes are an excellent choice for almost any website hosting. Provided you choose a good theme, you will have a fast website that is well put together from a code standpoint. For these reasons, we often recommend going for it. Especially as a beginner.
Combination of a theme and a website builder
There are a number of website builders or theme builders on the market that allow you to customize your WordPress website. Personally, I am not a fan of these, feel free to disagree with me. That's because these website builders have some major drawbacks. Number 1 is that these theme builders add a huge amount of unnecessary code to each page. This detracts from your beautiful results in terms of speed and results in a lot of unnecessary code being injected into almost every aspect of your website. For every change or element you want to have on a page, a lot of code has to be loaded to make it happen. This often leads to entire blocks of code that aren't structured efficiently.
It also takes away a lot of the simplicity of WordPress: writing posts and pages is often implemented a bit differently by a theme builder. And the way it works will be different as a result, and not always better.
Many website designers that you can hire to create a custom theme within WordPress are created with theme builders. So if you're considering this, it's wise to find out first if this is what they use to create your theme. If it is, then we recommend you think again.
Outsourcing or creating your own theme
With a WordPress website, you can also choose to create a custom theme yourself or outsource it. The better agencies employ programmers who can create your theme from scratch. This has the advantage of making your theme more efficient than a theme builder. If it's good. With a theme you build yourself, you can always go to the agency if you want to have extensions or other customizations made. Of course, this comes at a price and can mean up to several thousand dollars in investment. Therefore, this is more recommended for businesses that have a budget to spare, or if you have your existing Theme WordPress website a few years on and have revenue.
So you can make the choice between a theme, a theme builder or a custom theme. Do you have any questions about this? Then you can always come to the chat. We'll be happy to help you find the best solution for your WordPress website.
