Whether you own a WordPress site or want to redesign an already existing one; you would prefer to incorporate different ideas to make your site look authentic and search engine-friendly; isn’t it?
So, you look for themes. And, you have particular ideas and information regarding the theme of your WordPress site. In this blog, we’re going to talk about five reasons why custom themes are NOT good for WordPress sites.
What Are The Five Reasons that Turn Custom Themes into Bad Ideas for Your Website?
We receive daily inquiries regarding themes, especially custom themes when it comes to WordPress websites. They mostly revolve around issues with the WordPress websites and why a particular theme is not working or will a custom theme be better.
Here are our top five reasons that we explain to a client why custom themes can be a bad idea for WordPress websites:
- It Can Be Problematic with Plugins
- A Custom Theme Might Not Be Well-Coded
- You Have to Invest Extra Money to Keep it Updated
- It Might Be Vulnerable to Security Threats
- No Help From User Community
Let’s look at these five reasons in a little more detail below:
1. It Can Be Problematic with Plugins
At WP-Bridge, we work to fix most common WordPress issues such as conflicts between themes and plugins. Millions of website users use commercial themes across the globe because they are released after thorough testing and ease of integration with top WordPress plugins by website owners and theme developers.
Basically, custom themes are not usually tested with all plugins and when you have to try them on your site, it might break your WordPress site badly. Well, a new inclusion of ‘Gutenberg Editor’ in WordPress 5.0 marks a visible change in how WordPress post and page editing will be ensured, most importantly ensuring that your theme is compatible.
On the other hand, custom themes are normally not updated to work with Gutenberg that leads to major issues. Actually,commercial theme developers test their plugins to check the Gutenberg compatibility but when it comes to custom themes, you can face disappointment.
2. A Custom Theme Might Not Be Well-Coded
When you buy a theme for your WordPress site – what do you do when you face a problem? To Report an issue to its developers, correct.
What would happen if your custom theme starts to show signs of technical glitches? You know your custom theme and whoever developed that theme. In this situation, a bug or any vulnerability can manipulate and can affect your site’s performance and so much more.
So, it indicates that a custom theme might not be well-coded and can turn into a nightmare for you and your WordPress site.
3. You Have to Invest Extra Money to Keep it Updated
Custom themes are a burden on your pocket. You have a budget for initial development of your custom theme but when it comes to code updating and regular checking and rewriting by developers, you will have to invest extra money to keep it updated. And, if you will not update it, you can leave it open for bugs, security vulnerabilities and different kinds of incompatibilities.
In this regard, we would like to mention an important thing that ‘your website should be compatible with the last version of PHP’. PHP 7.2 is currently the recommended version for WordPress and it is not available with the old version of PHP.
So, if your theme is not updated and compatible with PHP 7.2, you will start experiencing instant face-off with technical problems for your website because the PHP version of your site is not updated to 7.2.
Another thing that comes to haunt theme developers is ‘WordPress core updates’. Because whenever a new WordPress version is released, developers can use its Beta and Release Candidate versions to test its effectiveness for already-installed themes and plugins to ensure that they work well with WordPress updated versions.
If your custom theme isn’t currently updated by the developer (who wrote it), your website will be vulnerable and won’t be able to work well enough once WordPress update is out.
4. It Might Be Vulnerable to Security Threats
When a WordPress website owner buys a commercial theme. She has to pay money for support and updates because these updates are mission-critical for infallible security of her WordPress website. So,whenever a security threat shows up, theme developers update code to correct the vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities can be minor and they can be major depending on the situation.
In the case of custom themes, you can’t get rid of vulnerabilities from a theme code unless it’s checked regularly by the custom theme developer. This is the reason that a custom theme is most likely to be vulnerable to security threats. Therefore, you should hire a professional custom theme developer to keep your site free from security threats.
5. No Help From User Community
Big and popular WordPress themes such as Elegant Themes, Theme Fusion, or Hello have their community support by users where they come up with tips and tricks to help each other. They have groups on the different social media platforms where they engage with their users in groups, posts, live video streamings and so much more to solve their technical issues.
Custom theme seems miserably failed with respect to community support. Next time, when you have to sort out a problem regarding a theme on your WordPress site, you’ll have to reach out to the original developer because unlike commercial themes, custom themes lack community support, and that very badly.
Having community support is indispensably effective for all stakeholders (website owners, developers, users, and the community). In certain cases, custom theme developers perform unethical practice of overcharging their customers for trivial changes in themes. On the other hand, you can ask your query in communities by popular and authentic WordPress themes to save your hard-earned.
Final Words: Why a Custom Theme is Bad Idea for Your Website
Custom theme development isn’t an expensive thing. You can get all relevant features and functionalities incorporated into your site’s theme. When you combine all hidden costs together, the overall cost of theme development goes through the roof. So, commercial themes come to the rescue of digital businesses. But, commercial themes have their own pros and cons.
In this article, we talked about five reasons why a custom theme can be a nightmare for your WordPress website. We discussed the following reasons:
- It Can Be Problematic with Plugins
- A Custom Theme Might Not Be Well-Coded11
- You Have to Invest Extra Money to Keep it Updated
- It Might Be Vulnerable to Security Threats
- No Help From User Community
Trust the process – this article will enable you to avoid technical problems in the custom theme development process. Partner with our professional WordPress specialists for round-the-clock WordPress maintenance.
From uptime monitoring, WordPress technical audits to speed optimization, you will get complete solutions at WP-Bridge.com. Check out our plans and enjoy!