Do you want to build a website exactly the way it looks but with all the features you desire?
You don’t want to buy a new WordPress theme or customize an existing one; instead, you want to build it yourself, without the help of anyone else, because you are afraid they will ruin your website and the vision you have for it.
On the other hand, you are completely clueless when it comes to coding. You are not a developer; rather, you are an entrepreneur. And so your expectations and desires have been dashed to the ground at this point.
However, it is now possible. You can be a student in the eighth grade without having any experience in coding. Well, all you know about programming is what you’ve seen in Mr. Robot and The Matrix.
But now you can change a WordPress theme’s look without touching a single line of its source code. Even if you don’t know much about web design or development, you can still change how the chosen theme looks by using the plugins and tools that come with it.
But if you want to customize it and change it according to your look and feel, you should consider hiring a WooCommerce developer. But if you want to create a custom WordPress theme without coding, this blog is for you.
An Overview of the Types of WordPress Themes
People use many different types of WordPress themes when they are creating websites for their businesses. It is important to note that there are many types of businesses out there, and for each of them, you need a theme that suits their particular needs.
Single-Purpose WordPress Themes
Single-purpose WordPress themes are templates that have been made to meet the needs of a single type of website. It is possible for you to either create and start a blog or a directory site for your business. The only limitation of single-purpose themes is the fact that they can only do one thing at a time.
If you want to make significant changes to your website or if you want to make a company website out of the blog theme you are using, you should customize the theme and also get help from a WordPress developer if you wish to do so.
Multi-Purpose WordPress Themes
As the name suggests, Multipurpose WordPress themes can be used on a wide range of websites. One theme can be used to create many different types of websites, including online directories, blogs, business websites, and personal websites.
Most themes that can be used in different ways come with examples of websites that show how the theme works in different situations.
In addition, any multipurpose theme out there comes with a variety of different examples so that you can easily understand the theme and also have a variety of settings and contexts to play with.
Due to the fact that you can do many things with one theme, multipurpose themes are far more popular than single-purpose themes.
Here are some examples of multipurpose WordPress themes that you can use for various purposes.
Blank WordPress Themes
Have you ever seen a pizza with no toppings or no cheese on it, so that you can add everything you wish to it on your own? That’s what a blank theme is. There is nothing on the theme, like a pizza with no toppings or cheese.
These themes are often called starter themes because they permit you to take the basic framework of the theme and customize it according to your preferences, which is why they are sometimes referred to as starting themes.
Page builder plugins are taken into consideration when developing some blank themes. Their fashion is nothing more than uncomplicated. To put it another way, the theme will act as a base for the page design, which will be built with the help of a page builder plugin.
Below are some free examples of blank WordPress themes you can use as a starting point.
Premium WordPress Themes With Embedded Page Builder Plugins
Many WordPress themes offer a greater range of premium customization options and include page builder plugins as standard inclusions. These topics are completely functional and developed to their greatest potential.
They include a plugin that acts as a page builder, such as Elementor, in order to simplify the editing process for users who are not developers.
eCommerce Themes
Themes designed specifically for online shops are known as “eCommerce themes.” WooCommerce, the most widely used WordPress eCommerce plugin, is usually integrated into eCommerce themes.
Themes With Live Customizer
The WordPress Live Customizer is utilized by the vast majority of themes when it comes to the process of personalizing your WordPress site’s theme.
You are able to adjust the colors and fonts, as well as upload a custom logo, and add a header image, among many other customization options.
WordPress Themes With Advanced Theme Option Panels
Lastly, provide themes that come with integrated, well-developed theme options panels.
Alternatives like trying to manage margin and padding on individual pages as well as around particular elements, adding custom scripts to the header or footer, or even developing new CSS are typically found in such theme options panels.
For example, you could manage the margin and padding on pages and around particular items.
5 Reasons Why You Need a Custom WordPress Theme
They’re Unique
What’s the point of having a website if it doesn’t stand out from the crowd? However similar your product or service may be to other services, there will always be differences in the way you do business and the kind of customers you serve.
This is especially true when it comes to the size of your company and the types of people you are trying to reach.
Custom WordPress themes allow your brand and unique selling propositions to be exposed to your audience in the most effective manner.
They Perform Better
WordPress themes that were created eight to ten years ago are still used by companies today.
Numerous WordPress themes are outdated, slow, bulky, and unsatisfactory themes. However, they were okay when they were first developed but are no longer suitable for today’s web users or search engines.
With custom WordPress themes, you’ll get a site that’s up-to-date, functional, and pleasing to the eye – something that your customers will appreciate, as will search engines.
Mobile-Responsive
Responsiveness to mobile devices is vital for modern websites. Your WordPress site must be mobile responsive, as Google has implemented its Mobile-First policy for SEO.
However, responsiveness alone is not sufficient. The manner in which your website adjusts to mobile resolutions is vitally important to your users.
You can modify how your website responds to mobile resolutions with a custom WordPress theme. The manner in which your UI modules reorganize and display in a mobile interface can improve your mobile user experience and, consequently, your website’s success with both desktop and mobile consumers.
It Strengthens Your Brand
Your brand’s vision can be supported by a custom WordPress theme, which you can design in accordance with that goal.
As a consumer, how often have a company’s marketing materials, such as brochures and advertisements, been completely different from its website? A lot of time, I’d say.
Brand identity and consistency are essential, and a custom WordPress theme can ensure that your website is in sync with the rest of your marketing materials.
Limitless Enhancement Options
In certain cases, pre-built, ready-to-use themes aren’t meant to accommodate future changes.
If your existing WordPress theme does not allow you to offer jobs, promote and sell products, or provide downloads, you will need to either change your theme or have a web professional alter your current theme.
To avoid this issue when using a custom WordPress theme, you don’t need to tweak your theme or hire a web developer to come up with a solution.
Custom WordPress Theme vs Child WordPress Theme
You might be wondering why you would want a custom WordPress theme when you can just create a child theme instead. The fact that the development of the child theme can still require the addition of code is one of the problems with this technique.
If you are following a typical project schedule, this shouldn’t be a problem for you. However, if you are working under a strict deadline, you will need to increase the pace at which you work.
If this is the case, then the most effective strategy for you to utilize in the future is to design a unique custom WordPress theme without having to use any code.
Is it Really Necessary to Customize Your Theme?
A custom WordPress theme can dramatically alter the design of your website and help you showcase your own distinctive style. What distinguishes you from the throng?
Have you ever noticed that the top websites share a common design? What distinguishes them from one another? How can you quickly identify them based on their distinctive appearance?
The answer to all of these questions is to customize your WordPress theme. These leading websites have well-tailored websites that give them a particular touch and enable them to stand out as a distinct brand.
Thus, customizing a WordPress theme is not just about designing or adding functionality; it also helps to market and manage your business.
However, you may occasionally encounter themes with poor construction, poor design layouts, terrible color combinations, or that are not adequately optimized, which can impact website speed.
There is not a single theme that is 100% perfect and meets all of your requirements. The only option available is to customize them to your specifications.
Using the WordPress Admin Screens to Customize Your Theme
Changes to the design that are simple and quick to implement may be possible through administrative interfaces.
The Customizer gives you access to a wide variety of customization options for your theme, the specifics of which are determined by the specifications of your theme.
Customizing Your Theme Via the Customizer
The WordPress Customizer is the simplest way to modify a WordPress theme.
This can be accessed in one of two ways:
- You can customize your site from the admin menu once you’re logged in to your site.
- In the administrative interface, select Appearance > Customize.
You will be taken to the customizer page once you click on it.
In recent years, newer themes have been adding more and more options for customization, which is a good sign for the future of WordPress. After finding a theme you like, it may be possible to adjust it in order to get the design and layout you want.
Customizing Your WordPress Theme With Page Builders and Frameworks
The vast majority of WordPress themes include customization options, which provide you with the ability to change the appearance and layout of your website by using the Live Customizer.
But others go much further and are meant to be significantly expanded upon and altered in a variety of ways. The term for this kind of structure is “theme framework.”
An additional option is to make use of a plugin known as a page builder, which is a plugin that gives users an intuitive user interface while constructing web pages.
Customizing Your WordPress Theme With a Page Builder
Page Builder plugins are developed to make it simple for you to configure the style of your site by offering an interface that allows you to see the results of your changes as you make them.
After installing a page builder plugin and a theme that is compatible with it, you can then create your website according to your preferences by utilizing the tools that are provided by the plugin.
Although Elementor is one of the most widely used page builders, Page builders allow you to make changes to your articles and pages through the use of an interface that is based on a drag-and-drop interface. This provides you with the ability to visualize how your content will appear and customize the look of each page.
Page builders provide you with a great deal of leeway in terms of the layout and style of the pages you create. A website builder such as Wix can help you transition to WordPress if you’ve worked with it before. They can also help you quickly build your pages if you want a WYSIWYG interface for the content you have on WordPress.
Here are some examples of free and premium page builders for building and customizing your WordPress theme.
Customizing Your WordPress Theme Using a Theme Framework
The use of these frameworks is an alternative to using page builders. These are handpicked collections of topics that are complementary to one another.
There is one main theme, which serves as the foundation for multiple child themes that can be used to customize the main theme to your liking. The primary theme is referred to as the “parent theme.”
One example of a theme framework is Divi, which offers a drag-and-drop interface comparable to that of page builders, in addition to the customization features that allow you to further customize the appearance of your child theme. Divi is an example of a theme framework.
Some more examples of free and premium WordPress theme frameworks are;
Best Practices for Customizing WordPress Themes
You have decided to customize the WordPress theme you are using. It is imperative that you take the necessary steps before making any changes to your website to avoid damaging it, making it more vulnerable to attacks, or losing your code.
Don’t Edit the Code if Possible
Altering the code is a riskier option than using the customizer or one of the other administrative interfaces if improvements can be made using those.
You should only edit the code if you have experience with CSS (for the stylesheet) and PHP (for the other theme files) and you are aware of how to make the edits securely.
Make Your Changes on Local Development Sites
If you are modifying the code in your theme or developing a child theme to make modifications, you should perform the development work on a local development site with your theme installed and a copy of the content from your live site.
As a result, you will have an exact copy of the site on which your alterations will appear to test them. Working on a local site, as opposed to the live site, does not have any bearing on the performance of the live site.
Even if you are going to be utilizing the customizer, it is still recommended that you utilize a local copy of your site for testing purposes. This way, you will be able to publish and test your modifications without having any impact on the actual website.
After validating the changes that you made to your custom WordPress theme, you can then upload it to your production website. Alternatively, you might test it first on a staging site before releasing it to the public.
Here are some Local WordPress development tools that you can use to test themes and plugins, and also new releases of WordPress.
Test Your Changes On a Staging Site
If you have access to a staging site, testing the new theme version there before activating it on your live site is the most sensible course of action to take.
This is owing to the fact that any local site will have some variations from your live site. For example, it will be hosted on a different server, and it is possible that it may use a different version of PHP or any of the other technologies that are used to run your website.
Before you upload and activate your new custom WordPress theme, you need to first make a copy of your live website and place it on your staging server. You are now able to push your adjustments to the live site after conducting rigorous tests on your website to validate that everything is operating as intended.
Make Your Theme Responsive
Your theme should be functional on both mobile and desktop devices if you make any changes to it.
It’s more important than ever to make sure your theme works well on mobile devices, thanks to Google’s mobile-first index and the rise of mobile browsing. When making changes to your theme, it’s important to remember that they must be mobile-friendly or, if possible, mobile-first.
This generally pertains to any alterations you make to the style or layout: For mobile, make sure you’ve added media queries to the new layout so it can be adapted to different screen sizes.
Your search engine rankings and conversion rates will suffer if your theme is not responsive.
Using technology like BrowserStack, you can see how your website looks on various mobile devices, even if you don’t have access to a considerable number of them.
Make Sure Your Customizations Don’t Impact Accessibility
Any modifications you make to your custom WordPress theme must also be accessible to users with disabilities or sensory impairments.
This is not only about ensuring that your website is compatible with screen readers; other factors such as color schemes and font sizes are also crucial for a wide number of users.
If you’re modifying your theme to make the colors brighter or the text smaller, reconsider: this could make it difficult for visitors to read and interact with your site.
Before making any modifications live, utilize an accessibility tester to ensure that your website does not exclude anyone.
Creating a custom WordPress theme from scratch for WordPress might be an overwhelming task. However, you do not need any experience as a developer to change the appearance of your website because some tools and features are already built-in that you can use.
Let’s quickly go over the two ways that you can customize WordPress themes without having to write any code:
- Use the Built-In WordPress Customizer for Classic Themes.
- Install a Page Builder.
Also, before customizing and making it live, do proper testing of the theme.
