Don’t Be Afraid to Embrace Themes

As you investigate designs for your website, you will undoubtedly run across plenty of websites with pre-built themes. These themes are usually built for content management systems (CMSs) like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, but there are still HTML themes being made.

Your initial response might be one of distrust. Why would you pay someone thousands of dollars to just install a ready-made theme and call it your website? This reaction is understandable, but unwarranted.

One of the main advantages to choosing to use a CMS is exactly this kind of extensibility. Themes are a great way to standardize the construction and operation of your website. They include many features that may otherwise have to be developed from scratch with a totally custom design. In this way, starting with a theme can cut development time drastically.

Themes and the CMSs that use them are also built using development standards that any web design shop or developer should know. Let’s say you bring in a new designer a couple of years from now or hire an in-house web team. They won’t have to take time learning the intricacies of a one-off custom setup.

Finally, just because you and your designer pick a theme doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it. The theme can be regarded as a starting point, a framework from which to develop your own site with its unique look and feel.

Think of it this way: every time Volkswagen comes out with a new car, they don’t reinvent the car from scratch. They take what they already know, mix in elements of previous models and designs, and end up with something new and different. When it’s time for a new web design, your design shop will work up the theme, apply it, and your website is magically refreshed with all the same content still in place.

It is important to note that there are free and paid themes. Free themes are fine, and are often quite useful. For a larger, more enterprise-level website, you should probably consider a commercial theme. These paid themes usually offer ongoing support and updates as new web technologies are developed, again decreasing development time on your end.