1. Build from Scratch
Developing a theme from scratch means writing all the code – HTML, CSS, PHP and jQuery functions. This path provides the most opportunity for customization, as well as a great opportunity to learn. However, it requires a lot of time, effort and skill. Since WordPress goes through frequent updates, keeping a custom theme up to date takes additional time for regular maintenance. Building a theme from scratch is a good choice for theme developers who wish to market their themes to WordPress site owners or other developers. Large commercial websites that still use WordPress for content management also often have themes developed for them, either in-house or outsourced to a development team. Building a WordPress theme from scratch is also a good choice for someone who wants to learn the whole process from start to finish. For whichever reason chosen, it is the most time and code intensive, creative, test-driven theme development path.
2. Use a Framework
Building a theme using a prebuilt framework means having a solid structure upon which to ‘hang’ your design elements. Professionally developed frameworks can be free, or have a membership fee or purchase price. The advantage of using a framework is that it is faster to build a theme, as much of the development work has already been done for you. A well-built framework will also help create a quality site that is easier to maintain, as the framework developers will work to keep the theme up to date. The main disadvantage is that a framework is a complicated piece of software that often has its own significant learning curve. And, if you end up not liking it, it’s not that easy to switch to another one. Not only will you be faced with another learning curve, your design elements will have to be built again on the new one. Some of the best framework themes are not cheap, either. However, building themes with a framework is a good choice for professional WordPress website developers who want to be able to quickly build quality sites for their clients with the least amount of time and effort involved. It is also a good choice for a do-it-yourselfer who wants more customization than a typical out-of-the-box WordPress theme offers, but who doesn’t want to dive into too much code.
3. Use a Starter Theme
Using a starter theme gives the base structure to begin your unique design. The rest can be customized from there. The main advantages are that it takes elements from both the framework approach as well as building from scratch, so it’s faster to build but easier to customize. You don’t have to learn a complex framework, but still get to learn how the pieces of a theme fit together and build out much of it yourself. Using a starter theme is a good choice for both professional developers who don’t want to re-lay the groundwork for every custom theme built, as well as new developers who are learning how to build themes for the first time. Either way, a good starter theme will help get things off to a good start and eliminate a lot of the bugs and headaches which come along with coding a theme from the ground up while still getting it all to sync nicely with WordPress code. A starter theme gives a good foundational base while still allowing plenty of opportunity to develop and apply your coding chops.