As WordPress continues to gain popularity as a CMS, increasing numbers of people are using WordPress to run their blogs and ‘regular’ sites of all kinds. There are a great many (and constantly growing) free WordPress themes that you can start with and tweak to your liking. Many people start with a free theme and once they’ve setup their site and tested things out for a while, they decide it would be nice to have this or that part of the theme changed, or want a whole new theme. If you’re thinking about hiring a professional designer to design a custom WordPress theme (or edit a theme), there are some basic theme elements to consider, as well as steps to take in order to have a smooth interaction with a designer.

Gathering Experience

Over the years I’ve been a designer of custom WordPress themes I’ve learned some useful things about the design process, like what makes a good WP theme (in terms of style and function), and how to have a smooth interaction between client and designer. I decided to put together this series of articles for those of you thinking about having a custom WP theme designed by a professional designer/coder.

As professional WordPress designers we’ve learned how to streamline the custom WP theme design process by starting with a request form where you can outline your WP theme project. The theme request form helps you answer basic questions about your custom theme and project details so that you can be clear about what you want. Feel free to use it as a guide for contacting other web designers with your project, or send your custom theme request to us and we’ll get back to you with a web design proposal.

What’s in the Series

Besides covering the basic things to look for and request from a designer when hiring a WordPress theme designer, I’ve included some ‘nice to have’ custom theme features that I’ve discovered to be very useful for site administration and expanding upon the core features of WordPress. If you’re thinking about having us design your theme you can also find more information about our policies regarding each aspect of custom WP design throughout the this series, or use the custom WP theme request form which covers all the theme design components discussed in this series.