How to Get a Pro Design for Your WordPress Website

In WordPress, how your site “looks” is controlled by the “theme”. A theme is a computer program written in the PHP programming language that runs on your site as part of the WordPress platform.

Keep reading for your guide to understanding how to get the best custom design for your WordPress theme.

Settings vs Code

Your theme contains PHP code. It contains the prograwoms needed to display your site, as well as the WordPress page templates that control things like the comment fields and full-width vs sidebar templates. This code renders HTML and CSS to control how your site looks.

Compare this to a “plugin”, which is also a bunch of PHP code. A plugin generally doesn’t control how your site looks but adds “functionality”. The lines sometimes become blurred, and there are plugins that control appearance and themes that add functionality. The other difference between plugins and themes is that you can activate many plugins but only one theme. This makes sense because you only want your site to “look” one way.

PHP code sets up the starting position of your site. You can then add “settings” which customize your site. Things like the “site title” are stored in the database, not the in PHP code of the theme itself.

A theme should work on multiple websites.

Premium WordPress Themes

WordPress is an open source project, and anyone can create and sell products related to it. Because of this, there is no one to control the ecosystem, the way Apple controls the App Store. In WordPress, no one controls anything. Premium themes are an example of that!

There are tens of thousands of free themes in the wordpress.org repository. They are readily available directly from the WordPress admin screen under “appearance”. You should definitely use a free theme.

It is a total myth that free themes are not as good as premium themes. In fact, quite the reverse is true! Free themes in the .org repo have been vetted by the community of PHP developers that help create WordPress.

The vetting process checks for all kinds of the things that premium theme developers don’t have to worry about. Security is the #1 priority. Free theme developers have to use secure best practices. Premium theme developers have no restrictions on what they do because they are not part of the WordPress organization.

Another restriction free theme have is that they cannot collect information from the website unless it explicitly informs the admin what it’s doing. Premium themes routinely track data and report back to motherships with this information. You’re better off using a free theme!

Outsourcing

There are millions of WordPress developers and designers. The competition is fierce for design. If you shop around, you can definitely find a designer to help you cheaply.

Check out marketplace sites like freelancer.com or upwork.com. You will have access to a global workforce. Designers make anywherefrom $7.25 – $20 an hour.

You can get designers for very cheap who will do a great job. One of the beautiful things about WordPress is that everyone knows how to use it, all around the world. A designer in another country knows all about how themes work, even if he doesn’t understand local culture. Graphic design is something that transcends culture.

A person who can’t speak English can still create a beautiful theme for an American company.

Sandbox It

When you are going to make changes, it makes sense to sandbox your site. Sandboxing means creating a “development server”where you can make changes to the site withoutshowing them publicly.

By doing this, you can roll out changes to your site safely, without worrying that a freelancer is going to break the site. One of the easiest ways is to simply create another “development” site. Then use the Duplicator plugin to copy your entire site to the dev server. Be sure to select “Discourage Search Engines” in the Reading section of your admin settings on the dev server.

Once you have a full-blown copy of your site working on another domain, you can give access to any freelancer you want without worry that they will screw anything up. If they do mess up the development server, just reset it and repeat the process with another freelancer. You can set up a dev server100% for free on many platforms like Amazon or Cloud9.

Set Up a CDN

Buffering is the death of your website. Your users expect high-quality video AND fast loading times. Set up a content delivery network, or CDN, and you’ll have a lot less to worry about.

A CDN is a system of servers set up across the globe, each one loaded with your site’s files.

Normally, your WordPress site would be hosted on a single server. Everyone who tried to access it would get there the same way.

With a CDN, however, each user connects to the closest server. CDNs improve the user experience. There’s no point in splashing out on a flashy design if your load times are slow.

Be Bold

You’ve picked your theme, hired your designer, and set up your dev server. Now it’s time to be flexible. You want your website to be as attractive as possible. You want it to stand out. For this to happen, you need to be willing to test new ideas. Don’t panic if something goes wrong; that’s why you’re using a dev server.

A professional WordPress design is within your grasp. You just have to reach for it.