Are Custom WordPress Templates for You?
Having a custom-built site with all the bells and whistles, implemented by an expert development team, is the ultimate reverie when it comes to building or redesigning your organization’s website. An alternative to this, however, is having a digital agency build you custom WordPress Templates you can implement yourself. Both options have benefits and drawbacks, but we argue for the many upsides of using custom templates.
Customizable
Anyone can buy a pre-made WordPress template. They have hundreds to pick from, but when it comes to customization your options are severely limited. You are stuck with the styling, layout options, and elements pre-built into your chosen template. But when a digital agency builds you a custom WordPress template, you have complete control of the look, feel, design elements, layout options, and other features. Expert developers can build you one-of-a-kind features that wouldn’t normally be seen with a pre-built WordPress template, which might include changing or rotating background images, unique search functions for returning the most relevant results possible, or integration with third-party plugins. Want a unique calendar function, an exclusive blog space, or stylized membership portal? Any of these features, and many more, can be built and assimilated into your custom template. The options are endless.
At WDG, we work with many clients who opt to go this route, allowing us to master the process. The latest of these projects can be seen on the recently launched Centrus Energy Corp site. For this project, our talented website designers created an interesting and compelling home page design that was fully implemented by our in-house development team. For interior site pages, our development team built Centrus a custom WordPress Template. User-friendly template pages were created and loaded with interchangeable landscapes and selectable features. The template was built using Advanced Custom Fields implementation (ACF), as well as flexible content layouts which offered the client the ability to make significant customization to each page as they input their content. Customizations like column orientation, page structure, rotating header images, social media integration, body images and background selection, and the addition of slideshows and videos were made available. Our case study is a great example of how custom WordPress templates can be used in highly customized manners.
Easy to implement
Whether your implementation team consists of users who have limited-to-no development experience, or you have an in-house developer, filling in the blanks on a custom WordPress Template is extremely user-friendly. WDG builds custom templates with the user in mind, and all updates are made on a browser-based dashboard. You won’t need any coding knowledge to customize your site pages, and you can add elements, amend the layout, insert photo galleries and videos, and much more with ease. When it came to creating the template for Centrus Energy, our development team went one step further and built in a visual style guide. With the visual style guide, the Centrus administrators inputting the site content could see what the published page they were working on would look like in real time.
Tons of support
WDG offers plentiful support options when it comes to custom WordPress Templates. The templates are simple to use, but for those who need a bit of assistance or just a confidence boost, we offer complete training sessions. One of our senior developers will sit down with your team and go over the exact implementation steps, and we are happy to offer as many sessions as is needed. Beyond training, WDG has a client-first approach, and whenever questions or glitches or arise, we will be here to help. Another big benefit of using a custom WordPress Template is that there is a huge community of users and supporters. Being an open-source platform, the WordPress society is quite expansive. With message boards, forums, and community mediums, there is never a shortage of helpful advice. So when it comes to filing in your site’s content and completing the blanks, you can be confident that you will have a seamless experience completing your custom WordPress Template.
Reasonable
Having a complete website designed, developed, and implemented by a trusted and experienced digital web agency can be pricey. Opting to use custom WordPress Templates can save you quite a bit. Because the development team needs only to build you one template, as opposed to numerous interior site pages, the savings are extensive. Content implantation can also be a time-consuming and tedious step, so taking this on in-house further reduces the cost of your website design/redesign. The results will consistently be an attractive, compelling, and successful website that is focused on achieving your business goals and KPIs; the price difference will be quite measurable. So for organizations with a tighter project budget, custom WordPress Templates are a great option.
Interested in learning more about custom WordPress templates for your own site design? Contact us today!
