Customising a WordPress Theme to Build my Site, Bad Idea?

by Goldar

Posted: 5 years ago 7 replies

WEB DESIGN

As a non coder I've been exploring my options to get my site off the ground.

One idea is to modify an off the shelf WP theme to produce a workable product. My goal would be to get an off the shelf theme like this:

https://www.appthemes.com/themes/clipper/

In the ball park of:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/

In terms of UI/UX; the needed features would be ability for a user to upload content, upvotes, plus some basic forum functionality, comments profiles etc.

What am I missing?

#bad #build #customising #idea #site #theme #wordpress

BrianOtt 5 years ago

Without coding you may have a tough time doing that. You may be able to download enough plugins to make it work as you want but it will probably make your site fat and slow.
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- Goldar 5 years ago
  
  Thanks for the info, I'm definitely going to outsource this.
  
  The next question is whether a developer would be happy to customize a theme for me or will they want to build something from scratch??
  
  Thanks
  
  Reply
  
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ruige hond 5 years ago

Looks like a developer will have to build the specific functionality largely from scratch, but some of Wordpress' native stuff can be used I think. This can be independent from a theme ie you can still use a theme as well as the functionality. The question is whether you want that. Probably using a good framework such a site is built faster without Wordpress. I think you need to find a developer with good knowledge about / experience with an appropriate framework. Still a pretty large project.
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eze008 5 years ago

The layout of both themes are very similar. Some CSS customization get get it looking even more alike. The other concern would be the functioning of the site. Are you planning to have the site also function like the example site?
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CharlesBriggs 5 years ago

If you use default styles in the template, it will be fine
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Dean Fields 5 years ago

I think you are on the right track. I recall one of my customers using Clipper theme and I was impressed with it. It seems very popular and there should be no problem finding someone on fiverr or freelance.com for some customization. But out of the box Clipper is already very nice.
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