Custom WordPress Themes - Are They Really Better?

By Karina Popa  |   Submitted On March 15, 2016

  

Theme Consistency

All WordPress themes are unique and built by different developers using various approaches. Though the core pages are common to every theme, there is little consistency when it comes to the way themes are coded and structured.

There is a huge difference in terms of CSS mark-up, HTML structure, PHP code and naming conventions to functions. So, it can be time-consuming to perform simple tasks like tweaking column widths and styling comments.

For this reason, it is about time to develop custom themes.

Come Up With a Unique Theme

Even if you have the coolest blog or most useful website out there, it will get lost among the crowd if it looks like hundreds of thousands of other websites.

WordPress dominates almost 20% of the online world and surely, a lot of people will be able to identify the default "twenty" themes from a distance. When your site lacks individuality, people are less likely to be impressed. There is a greater chance that they would not link to you and would probably not come back. Custom themes allow you to create something unique and come up with what you really like.

Faster development

Once you have your first WordPress theme, you will surely want to make your own framework. You need a set of files, functions, styles and structure to use as a foundation for your WordPress project. This will depend on the coding methodologies as well as preferences you are familiar with, which you won't need to make out. Updates, changes or inclusions to your WordPress themes will be a lot easier.

Boost speed

Know how optimized your off-the-shelf theme is. While it is perhaps good, it isn't impressive enough and, probably, you want it to look as impressive as possible. Your theme could still be using older functions like query_posts() rather than get_posts(). While these two querying functions basically work the same way, the first one is more database intensive. When you are in the driver's seat, you will be able to handle inquiries, optimize your code and if you want to, do the fine tweaking. This way you can let your theme work to your best advantage.

Better Handle on the SEO

While there are a number of decent plugins in the market for this, you would certainly like to have full control over aspects pertaining to SEO on your site. SEO is essential to every stage of web development, such as how the website is coded and structured. With custom theme development, getting an on-page SEO from the very beginning is definitely easier as compared to changing the code or structure on an off-the-shelf theme by the end of a project. For instance, when you want to come up with custom excerpts to be used for Meta descriptions or tweak the Meta titles using the page type, a custom theme makes it a lot easier.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Karina_Popa/1432444