Comments on: How WooThemes beats custom design & development

By: Iflexion

Iflexion — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:16:07 +0000

I think it depends on the objectives of a project and its use.
So, I’m deeply convinced that personal blog, fan site, or small project may look quite good with your themes. But great projects with perspective future based on profound ideas require only custom work.

By: web design

web design — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:37:56 +0000

wow these look so awesome.

By: Deutsche Online Apotheke

Deutsche Online Apotheke — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:27:23 +0000

Thank you very much your articel helpt me a lot.

By: Web Design

Web Design — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:07:04 +0000

Great article!! I Just want to say that I love to read your posts! Keep up the good work.

By: My Response: How WooThemes beats custom design & development | AaronHalford.com

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:43:48 +0000

[...] to [Source] and [...]

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:29:30 +0000

I think a lot of designers, myself included, have waited a long time for wordpress theme resources that are well made and inexpensively priced. For example, the sandbox theme and it’s themeshaper modifications are widely adopted as quick starting points for wordpress development because of their cost and well designed code base.

Some people may say design with a theme isn’t design at all. However, I don’t consider using a theme “cheating” any more then I’d consider using a “paid stock image”, “Wordpress as a CMS”, or “PHP as a scripting language” as cheating.

Websites have grown up from their static html based forms into something beautiful – a merge of all types of dynamic web technology. Especially for small time studios, the time to cost ratio for “from scratch design” would make developing complex wordpress sites for their clients a minuim wage job at best.

Also lets be realistic, a lot of the basic coding behind many of the current generation of Wordpress themes is quite similar. Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to?

Granted, I expect anyone using these themes to create divergent sites to have at strong grasp of the basic wordpress codex and wordpress site structure. Designers jumping in blindly to any CMS will not get very far – theme or no theme.

Thank you for the themes.

By: Josh Farkas

Josh Farkas — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:57:17 +0000

About five years ago I realized there were two sets of designers in the world:
- Group A felt design was about hand-crafting everything so it all was their own. They were focused less on getting things done, but more on ensuring they were overcome with the artistry of building it all.

- Group B was able to accept that there is a world of sensational resources out there, and your ability to know of them, choose from them, and put them together in inspiring combinations is the real art of design.

I’m a firm Group B designer. Do Group A’s create their own fonts for every project? Do they always shoot their own photos? Is scanning a texture that is “yours” that much more important to the success of your project? Is custom development beneficial to the business owner who just wants to see things get done?

That is why I love WooThemes. You provide a sensational foundation for a rockstar website. Thanks guys.

By: The Popularity of Fresh News | Magnus Jepson

The Popularity of Fresh News | Magnus Jepson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:30:34 +0000

[...] I wansn’t shocked, as I’ve seen this growing trend a long time now. As discussed on the latest post on WooThemes, it is becoming very popular for web designers to use a template to cut production [...]

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:56:40 +0000

@Matt & @Justin – Thanks for confirming our feeling in this regard; we definitely think that our offerings are extremely valuable to designers / developers who decide to take on smaller projects (especially considering the budget constraints from their clients).

@Carl – I think you hit the nail on the head there. ThinkVitamin was in need of a recharge, but Carsonified couldn’t prioritize enough time to justify a custom design.

By: Justin Shattuck

Justin Shattuck — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:23:28 +0000

Woo has caused our business at JTW to improve, it fills in the financial gaps when we are not working on larger projects. I can’t say thanks enough. Typically, we start with discussions of a wootheme, then they end up wanting to hack away at it for ages.. all the more business in the end.

Kudos!

By: Magnus

Magnus — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:10:16 +0000

Thanks for those inspirational words Matt!

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:24:16 +0000

As a partner in a small, 3 man firm, I can tell you that WooThemes has been an invaluable resource for us. Why do we use these themes instead of custom designs? It’s simple. Our clients need services quickly and within their limited budgets. Many of them are small businesses and are focused on running their operations not how cool their website is. With WooThemes, we can focus on the actual design changes to the already built theme and code as opposed to going through a costly development process which could increase our hours on a project. Plus, we can still give them the functionality and “coolness” that they really didn’t expect to get within their budget.

For us, it’s all about satisfying the customers needs and it’s paid off for us because of WooThemes and the approach to development we’ve taken.

So, thank you Adii, Magnus, and Mark for being such professionals and producing such quality work. You’re not only running a great business but you’re helping many others striving to reach higher levels as well!

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:43:22 +0000

@Rowan – It isn’t surprising. Carsonified has other projects they need to worry about. Projects that clients are paying them to complete. ThinkVitamin isn’t exactly the reason they are in business. They wanted to launch a new design and they wanted to do it quickly with as little work as possible. I’m not surprised at all. ThinkVitamin’s content is what is important. Not a custom designed template.

By: Rowan Gillson

Rowan Gillson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:11:12 +0000

Great pitch their Adii, you bring some valid points to the table. Although I highly respect the quality and calibre of the themes that come from the Woothemes stable, I’m quite surprised that ThinkVitamin chose to go with an out of the box theme despite their own obvious talents.

By: Chris Rowe

Chris Rowe — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:51:51 +0000

So why doesn’t everyone do it? Because not everyone is a top notch designer / coder therefore have to outsource the work anyway. Yea they could save a bit of money, but for that bit extra they could have as much freedom with a theme as they wanted.

By: Fox Norman

Fox Norman — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:10:48 +0000

There is a reason why Woothemes has made the impact it did. I use the themes and they are easy to modify. With great functionality and great color schemes bundled with most of the themes, it easy to adapt a “download” way of web designing. Lots of times projects don’t grant enough money or worth to start from scratch.