The Pros and Cons of buying WordPress themes (templates)

Without a doubt, WordPress has become the most used CMS (content management system) platform on the web because it’s easy to use and easy to set up. Without much knowledge, almost everyone can install their own WordPress website using free or purchased pre-built WordPress themes. But is it all too good to be true? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using purchased WordPress themes (templates)?

Pros of using purchased WordPress themes

1. Easy to set up. It just takes a couple of hours to set up a nice looking website without knowing any programming language, but a little of web and internet knowledge is required. The theme includes the mobile responsive programming which will save you a good bit of money.
2. Cheap. On websites like Themeforest.net you can buy a very professional looking template for only $50 and if you are know how to set it up, that’s all you will pay for your website template.

Cons of using purchased WordPress themes

1. Load Time. Pre-built WordPress themes (templates) often use very fancy animations and cool effects, but all this requires a lot of javascript, which slows down the website. We recently worked on a daycare and nursery school in Jacksonville website that was very cool and fancy to look at, but it was taking 20 seconds to load! SEO experts say if the site takes more than 5 seconds to load, you lost 25% of your audience. We ended up, trashing the entire theme and recreated the site from scratch. The site now loads in 4 seconds, somethings can be still done to improve it, but now it’s much faster than before. By the way, Google is down ranking mobile websites with a slow load speed.
2. Personalization. With the pre-built themes, you are stuck with their theme design. Usually, good templates let you change some aspects of the design, but you are dependent on what they let you do. If something is not an option of the theme, it can be very hard to add to implement because themes always use very complex programming code. In other words, if you thinking of buying a theme and make radical changes it, don’t. It usually takes less time to create a website from scratch then try to figure how to change a pre-programmed theme, not mentioning that when they release an update you won’t able to update because you modify the code. Changing the template will break the mobile responsive and content management part of the website as well.
3. Longevity. If you really need to buy a WordPress themed (template), make sure it is built by a well-known and trustworthy company because WordPress has constant updates and themes need to follow the new updates. Therefore, the theme design companies need to release updates compatible with the new version of WordPress. I worked in the past on two websites using a purchased theme. The company who built the two themes went out of the business, so the themes are left to their own. At the moment, the websites are still working, but it’s just a matter of time before something will start to malfunction and at that point, we will see if we can fix it or we need to reprogram with a new template.
4. Bugs. Sometimes we find that some themes are buggy. They don’t work properly. Always research the theme and its developer to see if they have good reviews and if the developer responds to support questions.

That’s all about The Pros and Cons of using purchased WordPress themes (templates), and if you are thinking of building your new website we’d be happy to chat with you and answer all your questions to make your business be a success! Contact a professional website development firm today.