WordPress: The most important lesson I've learned

WPRipper

WPRipper

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I am a WP developer for over 8 years now.

In the beginning, I was clumsy, confused, and always running for the 'best theme for...'.

Fast forward, for personal projects, I never use bought themes, for various reasons. Instead, I have created a Master Theme, coded by hand, with no builders and no helping plugins.

Clean, fast, modern theme, built for readability, with a lot of features done either with PHP or jQuery (there are a lot of snippets and plugins out there).

The lesson I've learned?

There is no best theme for ___ something ___.

Stop wasting your energy by chasing themes and plugins and then figure out how to use them.

If you can't code a theme by yourself, find a clean and fast one, tweak it a bit, and use it every time.

You'll thank yourself later for this decision.
 
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yes, there is one: Weaver Xtreme

I keep recommending this theme to everyone like a maniac because it really is the best WP theme ever due to the sheer amount of customization options. Sure, this theme is not for the faint of heart or for lazy bums like myself, but... I've caught the bug of using this theme 10 years ago and I can't make myself stop using it anymore

If you're not easily scared by 100s of settings and customization options you can use Weaver (which is free, by the way) to turn the entire internet into whatever you want. And yes, despite of the high customizability it's still fast and clean.

This theme had saved me so many times that I can't recommend and praise it enough, especially since I never had the measly $149 to pay for a lifetime license, so I kinda feel guilty for making use of it so extensively and want the return the favor somehow, which is why I keep recommending it to everyone.

So yeah, there is actually such a thing as the best WP theme, but... being able to code one yourself is even better, I will admit this. But how many WP users can actually code a theme? Very few when compared to the gigantic ocean of newbies and non-coders. And for all these people there are themes like Weaver :)
 
Facts, that's why I'm trying to learn web coding. WordPress themes can be hit or miss.
 
The thing is some themes do provide more options/layouts that are kinda required in some niches/websites,
take as an example a news website, it will be much harder to tweak a blogging theme that works pretty well for all kinds of other websites, to create a news/magazine layout

The idea of having a set theme for most of the websites and not keep searching for a niche-specific made theme is right,
but it's not always the case
 
Your content on the website is the key to get traffic. Undoubtedly, a new design will look attractive but in the long run, consumers are there to get to the content you are putting into it. If that is good and easy to access, they will come back again and again.
 
I found it vital that when it comes to choosing a theme, you should pick from a good selection you already worked with. Themejunky, or solostream for example. Saves so much time snaffling around.
I hope to start work on a master theme early next year! Thanks for the inspiration.
 
Agree that there is no best theme for something. But still the best theme for me is the one made by myself. I tested many templates, none is as fast as the one we can make ourselves
I am attaching an example of the results I have in my last template I made.
 

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There are no bests but there are recommended ones tried and trusted by others in the same niche.
 
Is there a framework you'd recommend for me? I think I will pick Roots with Sage, but those suckers go hard on me trying to pull money out of my pockets by providing very limited support.
 
crnack said:
Is there a framework you'd recommend for me? I think I will pick Roots with Sage, but those suckers go hard on me trying to pull money out of my pockets by providing very limited support.
Click to expand...
I have used Materializecss (about half of the framework) with Underscores theme.

I don't know if that helps.
 
WordPress: The most important lesson I've learned

Make sure you don't check this box:

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crnack said:
Is there a framework you'd recommend for me? I think I will pick Roots with Sage, but those suckers go hard on me trying to pull money out of my pockets by providing very limited support.
Click to expand...
I recommend Sage, I use it myself and it's a great framework.
 
When I was a beginner, I started looking for most popular theme. It didn't take long for me to realize that those multi-purpose themes are performance killers. Most of the best & top lists for themes & plugins mislead beginners into choosing terrible themes.
 
Im pretty happy with Astra, clean, fast and lots of options.
 
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