Custom WordPress Themes – Make WordPress Your Own
Having been online since 1989, I’ve seen many programs come and go, ranging from free to very costly in price. However, one of the most complete, powerful, expandable and adaptable is, without a doubt, WordPress. Whether or not the initial developers could have envisioned the great success of this amazing software, it has become one of the most used programs on the Internet.
Although the functionality of WordPress is easily modified by the use of any number of the thousands of plugins available (many free), one modification that any user would surely want to make to their site(s), would be the use of custom WordPress themes. This is an area where you usually get into spending money, and quite often, a great deal of money. Custom WordPress themes normally don’t come cheaply.
If you’re well versed in CSS and XHTML, at a minimum, you can develop your own WordPress themes, but most people don’t have the knowledge, or the desire to become developers.
Since the appearance of your website(s) is so important, especially to new visitors, you should at least consider trying to find a suitable free theme for your site(s). Remember though, there may also be hundreds, or even thousands of other users opting for the same theme.
If you do decide to have a custom WordPress theme designed, just be prepared to spend a great deal of money, and even more if you want the theme modified for use on other sites.
So, by using WordPress you can easily have a website that ranges from a simple blog to a subscription site, and everything in between, but just remember that the look of your site may very well determine if a visitor stays around long enough to see what the content of your website offers.
There is an old saying that goes, “you only get one chance to make a good first impression,” and with the highly visual aspect of Internet media, and specifically websites, never before has images become more important in making that first impression. Whether you opt to spend the money necessary to have your theme(s) custom designed for each of your sites, learn to code them yourself, or maybe decide to use one of the software theme/template programs available to make your own, it is highly recommended that you use some method of utilizing custom WordPress themes to make WordPress your own.
It is well worth it to put in the extra effort to have visually attractive sites, especially when using those sites for marketing purposes.