In starting up WordPress CMS websites I’ve found many people have difficulty with existing WordPress themes and plugins just not delivering exactly what they envision their website looking like. Oftentimes a theme can be tweaked a little here and there to achieve the desired results, yet if more than a few colors or other basic WordPress theme features (such as sidebar on the other side) need to be changed, it’s usually worth starting from scratch and having a custom WordPress theme designed.

With simple changes like moving the sidebar or changing the layout, customizing an existing WordPress theme can be the simplest route. If, however, you have a list of specs that cannot be achieved through plugins or you have difficulty getting plugins to work it’s usually worth calling on a professional web designer to create your WordPress theme and/or configure WordPress plugins to perform the way you want them to.

So which type of WordPress Theme seeker are you? If you’re like me and spend a lot of time browsing the WordPress themes at http://themes.wordpress.net there is some great inspiration in terms of design, though to make these themes unique for use on your own website, the very least that should be done is to change the header image. Another relatively easy tweak is to change the colors. When the colors are HTML and CSS generated this is as simple as altering the HEX color codes in the theme’s style.css file. If the colors come from background images things get a little more complex, but someone fluent in Photoshop can quite easily go in and alter the colors to your liking.

Usually, I peruse the WordPress Theme Site to get inspiration for various design elements. The free WordPress theme sites are great for offering a wide variety of frequently updated themes. I make notes as I go along… ooo, I like how they positioned those sidebar items on this one… wow, the way this other theme has post icons is really fresh looking, etc. Then I sit down to decide how to work the various elements I like into a custom WordPress theme.

For functionality inspiration I like to browse premium WordPress theme sites. Of course there are many plugins that handle advanced functionality, yet it’s amazing what some theme authors accomplish using the capabilities of WordPress and perhaps an open source script or two. Magazine style WordPress themes are prime examples of creative use of WordPress template tags.

I recommend a similar process for clients. My reasoning is if you’re going to be happy with your site you may as well do a little comparison shopping to get a good idea of what is available and what might best suit your site. Browsing some premium WordPress theme sites is likely to give you some ideas about the functionality your site would benefit from. This is particularly true if you plan to use WordPress as a CMS rather than as a traditional blogging system.

Check out the ‘How to Have a Custom WP Theme Designed‘, or use the theme request form to start the custom theme design process.