Custom Wordpress Design

[TheTourVan]

We reached out to someone on here that had been recommended, but have not heard back after a few days, so wanted to see if others have gone the custom route for their Wordpress design.

We are using a paid theme, but its slow, far too busy and now that our Xenforo migration is done, we need our home page to look just as good.

For those that have gone the completely custom route, are you glad you did? Anybody or firms you or TAZ recommends? Time is of the essence since its renewal season for us, and we want it to be great, but we know its a pretty major undertaking.

Hopefully the smart minds at TAZ can assist here with ideas.

 

[TheTourVan]

Wanted to bump this one up. We thought we may have found a person, but lack of communication and kind of vanishing act made that not happen.
So to any admins or owners out there that have gone the completely custom route, would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[\o/]

WordPress theming is a moving target, sadly. While most of it is "upwards-compatible" (so themes from 2.x might still work unless they use deprecated functionality), new API hooks and replacements for existing functionality are intruduced rather regularly. I, personally, would not want to spend my time dealing with this.

 

[zappaDPJ]

WordPress theming is a moving target, sadly. While most of it is "upwards-compatible" (so themes from 2.x might still work unless they use deprecated functionality), new API hooks and replacements for existing functionality are intruduced rather regularly. I, personally, would not want to spend my time dealing with this.

I can only comment from somewhat limited personal experience but this hasn't been an issue for me. I've been running a custom theme for many years and I'd guestimate the number of necessary updates required because of WordPress updates to be less than 1 in 3 years.

 

[\o/]

Sure, if you don't need additional functionality, everything is fine. I remember having to change one of my older themes when WordPress suddenly was able to display nested comments though.

 

[TheTourVan]

I can only comment from somewhat limited personal experience but this hasn't been an issue for me. I've been running a custom theme for many years and I'd guestimate the number of necessary updates required because of WordPress updates to be less than 1 in 3 years.

Can you share more about your custom theme or who designed it?

 

[zappaDPJ]

Can you share more about your custom theme or who designed it?

Many, many years ago I bought an off-the-shelf theme from rockettheme.com which I personally customised over time. Unfortunately it had issues with a reliance on insecure plug-ins such as the TimThumb PHP image resizer and others. The theme was visually and functionally exactly what I needed so I employed a coder through my ISP (who I run a support forum for) to replicate the theme. That was some while ago and I've usually been able to update WordPress without issue.

One thing I've just remembered, I wasn't able to update beyond 4.9.11 because of the new editor. It's still on my 'to do list'.

My advice would be to look around for an off-the-shelf theme that offers a framework within which you can achieve your objective either by yourself or by employing a designer.

 

[overcast]

These days many people make use of the page builders like Divi and Elementor. Much quicker on designs.