Do you use a free or paid WordPress theme?

[Marky Zuckbergy]

Hey guys, I have seen a ton of nice and beautiful WordPress themes before. I've even pirated some. Haha! (until somebody told me that my site could get hacked. That's why I discontinued piracy. Now, I'm just using a free theme. It's quite alright. I don't have anything bad to say about it. I have no porblem using a paid them either. What about. you?

[pandandesign]

Well, I used to use the free WordPress theme until I have discovered a theme that I had to pay for it. I really liked the theme, therefore, I wouldn't mind spending the money because I thought it would be great to attract more visitors. However, I much prefer getting a free theme because if it is hosed on the WordPress server, then I wouldn't recommend to pay for a theme because you don't own the site.

[Chieflets]

some times it pays to pay for theme as you also get support if you run into trouble and save massive times on frameworks.

also bear in mind what you see as display is not what you are getting you will need to add your own photos and contents and set it up with widgets etc you just get basic wp theme and you build from there.

Chieflets

[OhioTom76]

I use a commercial (paid) Wordpress framework known as the Headway Theme. It installs as a theme, but it is more like a theme building tool, right within the Wordpress admin interface. I like it because it is very intuitive, especially if you are used to creating sites in Photoshop and Dreamweaver, but don't know enough about Wordpress to convert them into a Wordpress theme. I've actually sat down and learned how to create the Wordpress themes from my layouts, but the whole process is so time consuming, I prefer to use Headway as a head start on all my projects, so it was well worth the money.

It has two main parts to it, a "Grid Mode" and a "Design Mode". The Grid Mode is basically the "drag and drop" part of the theme editor, where you wireframe out your web site and block out what areas will contain what. This is very high level placement of things. Then, you jump over to "Design Mode" where you can go through each element of your design and customize it's appearance via a series of panels and controls. When you get to a point where you need to do some more specific customization, the theme makes it very easy to add your own custom CSS as well, and even pre-fills the CSS selectors for you.

[nelsonrichard]

For the time being I am using a free word press theme. I would like to get the premium one too in near future. Thanks for sharing the information.

[Chieflets]

I use a commercial (paid) Wordpress framework known as the Headway Theme. It installs as a theme, but it is more like a theme building tool, right within the Wordpress admin interface. I like it because it is very intuitive, especially if you are used to creating sites in Photoshop and Dreamweaver, but don't know enough about Wordpress to convert them into a Wordpress theme. I've actually sat down and learned how to create the Wordpress themes from my layouts, but the whole process is so time consuming, I prefer to use Headway as a head start on all my projects, so it was well worth the money.

It has two main parts to it, a "Grid Mode" and a "Design Mode". The Grid Mode is basically the "drag and drop" part of the theme editor, where you wireframe out your web site and block out what areas will contain what. This is very high level placement of things. Then, you jump over to "Design Mode" where you can go through each element of your design and customize it's appearance via a series of panels and controls. When you get to a point where you need to do some more specific customization, the theme makes it very easy to add your own custom CSS as well, and even pre-fills the CSS selectors for you.

I think days of hard coding from scratch are pretty much gone, I still do it for people using specific programs and the 960 grid or blueprint framework etc., Although I find using WordPress as cms is better suited if people want to amend their own stuff down the track, I also believe it ranks better too.
Before you rush out and buy that good looking theme with all those fancy pictures layout, you need to be warned that's a display of what that theme can look like and the content like pictures are not included etc.

You still need to know your css and java, php because I have never seen any theme that I have created for client straight out of the box
Although you are paying for the them or so to speak frame work is does not mean it is bug free, a good theme developer will keep up to date with release of bugs and WordPress revisions.

People get frightened when they hear $2k + for website allot of hours go into getting site to function correctly. There is allot hard coding as well involved depending how big the site is and contents needed etc + dealing with the clients changes which may require re-writing the code again.
You may need a graphic artist for photos, you may need content writer, wed developer, wed designer etc all these mount into the cost factor.


Example

When building a house
You have painter, house decorator, tiler, kitchen cabinet maker etc

but you deal with one person running the project

at the end of the day any one can build a basic webpage on wordpress and few plugins, when it come to modification of the framework to suit your need well do some home work on css, php, jquery, java, xml, json, photoshop etc

or just pay for it



Chieflets

[OSIRUS]

People get frightened when they hear $2k + for website allot of hours go into getting site to function correctly.

Indeed a lot of hours go into a good website

about 5 years ago a web designer I know used to charge people about $3500 for a local small town business website

at least $1000 - $1500 upfront ....... said to purchase web space & domain names & initial preparation time, & the balance on completion

(& never putting the website "live" ..... until they paid the final payment ...... i.e, like changing the name of something ... so it is not accessible from the domain name address ...... but still available for demonstration purposes)

But really big company websites could spend a great deal more money than this (I would like to know the highest price paid for building a website .... ?)

[Philquad]

if you use free wordpress themes, why are you advertising a website business that uses php?

sydney water come close

[WhiteOx]

sydney water come close

Whoever got that job hit the jackpot.

[webhostau]

Free wordpress themes are great. Choose carefully and test the site on the mobile phone also. Some free themes update too often.