I’m Getting Closer!

May 21, 2008

Live from six flags over Georgia

For most people, purchasing a template for your site saves money through reducing programming and graphic arts costs.

For a developer, it may save money if you don’t do the artwork yourself, as you save yourself from having to pay an artist, but it ends up costly in terms of changing an already-designed theme around.

When I started out with this redesign project, I wanted to try a lot of new things—purchasing my first theme (instead of custom-designing) was one of them. The thing about purchasing a theme is that it has pros and cons. As I said before, one of the pros is reducing costs through skipping a graphic designer and/or decreasing your development time. One of the cons is that I am a perfectionist and I’m using someone else’s work.

Which gets me back to right now … I am basically going over every single page of this theme I purchased to make the code 100% up to my standards in terms of structure and functionality. While that’s nice for someone like me, what it means is that the project also took me twice as long as it would have, had I just written it from scratch, because I not only have to make it mine but I have to get inside someone else’s head to understand each section and function in the code.

To add to that delay, I am also experimenting with a new version of Wordpress (2.5.1) and new plugins (such as wpSEO and this Flickr Photo Dropper plugin where I’m finding all these deliciously random pictures for my posts), learning as I go, and having to reformat all of my old posts to work with this new theme and structure.

So, while I am getting closer, I am still working on it … and I will have a full list of add-ons, plugins, techniques and so forth when I am done, in case you feel crazy enough to spruce up your own existing blog.

Greater Lessons

What can the non-programming entrepreneur learn from this?

You may save on graphics costs by buying a template, but you may also end up paying increased development costs to get a custom site out of a template.
You have to watch out who else is using your template. I happen to be using one that is popular in the sports arena, so I am unlikely to find another business blogger using it. I like the theme, and it had Tom Brady on the demo, so I was sold.
Buying a template does not mean you are stuck with what you have. A well-designed template is modular and can be easily changed around to suit your needs. Also make sure the template you are choosing validates, or you will be spending a lot of time bringing the code up to par.
Quality templates are available for around $50-150 for the bootstrapping entrepreneur who is trying to get launched without a large cost upfront. I found some nice ones in the Revolution Theme family and over at BlogOhBlog. (I also found many, many bad ones which I will not be naming here.) For a bit more, you can find someone to help you tweak your purchased design to your needs.

photo credit: DeaPeaJay