Development of a unique site is quite expensive, available not for every company, not to mention beginner businessmen. The development itself and, moreover, the programming of unique modules will not be cheap at all. According to the company Goal Europe, the cost of one person-hour developer in America is about $ 40-60, in Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg) from $ 20 to $ 30, in Ukraine this figure is kept at $ 20-25 (Kiev), and in regions does not exceed $ 15 per hour. In addition to the developers, you need at least a UI / UX designer.
The cost of an experienced UI / UX design is comparable to the cost of a qualified developer. Each designer has his own style: someone loves clean and lightweight interfaces, someone tries to maximize the functional website with all sorts of graphics, and some believe that there is nothing better than flat and stubbornly promote this design direction. This article will discuss how not to get lost in all the nuances and develop a functional and effective website?
But today, in order to start your business on the Internet, you do not need to order the services of such expensive professionals as developers and UI / UX designers. A great alternative to the development of an individual site is an adaptation of the template site. It is much cheaper, easier and faster. But how to decide which system to work with and which template to choose?
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There are a lot of templates written for various content management systems CMS (eng. Content management system), such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magenta and others. According to the resource
builtwith half of the sites on the Internet are made on the basis of WordPress.
Why WordPress?
It's very simple - there is no specific reason, here the sum of factors plays, such as:
- ease of use
- free use
- system convenience and scalability
- extensive documentation
- large community of support
- constant system update
- many different plugins and templates
- diversity of application
- adaptability for mobile platforms
- SEO friendly
- and many other benefits
Among the main advantages of the WordPress platform are:
Absolutely free CMS system
To install WordPress you just need to download the free system from the
official website or from any other source and install it in one click. By the way, ease of use is another important feature, since the platform is aimed at novice users.
Many plugins
WordPress features can be expanded with free or paid plug-ins. Moreover, connecting the plugin you get constant updates and support. For the relatively low cost of paid plugins, you can constantly maintain the technical component of the site at the proper level by updating WordPress itself and plugins. Among the most common plugins for wordpress:
- WooCommerce - plugin to create an online store based on WordPress.
- WPML is a popular plugin for creating a multilingual website.
- Contact Form 7 - plugin for creating contact forms.
- NextGEN Gallery - plugin for creating and managing galleries.
- Yoast SEO - plugin to optimize SEO site data.
There is a huge variety of other free and paid plug-ins, some of them can be found on the
official WordPress site .
Adaptability
Almost all the available templates for WordPress are responsive, which means that they will look great on the screens of any mobile device or tablet. This is very important for the end user, as traffic from mobile devices is growing day by day. I don’t really want visitors to leave the site due to the fact that they can’t get the correct display of information on their phone. In addition, if you develop a unique website, the developers will definitely take extra money to work out adaptability.
SEO friendly
In addition to adaptability, additional costs in the development of a unique website will be pulled by SEO optimization, or the developers will not pay enough attention to this important aspect at all. But when using a template, this is almost a mandatory component, or at least you can use one of the many existing SEO plug-ins.
Huge support community
The prevalence and popularity of WordPress entails positive nuances: a lot of necessary information on a large number of free resources dedicated to this platform. In addition, WordPress itself provides excellent documentation.
List of WordPress forums and blogs:
- wordpress.org/support
- wordpress.com
- wordpress.co.ua
- wpcafe.org
- www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress
- www.wp-info.ru
- wordpressinside.ru
- oddstyle.ru
- www.wpbeginner.com
- ithemes.com
- forums.envato.com/tags/wordpress
- www.wp101.com
Many relatively inexpensive developers.
Even if WordPress cannot be put on its own, you can always find an artist. Due to the fact that to install and adapt the WordPress template, you often need not a high level of qualification, respectively, the number of such developers is much greater than highly qualified specialists. Moreover, the cost of an hour of work is also relatively not high.
Paid and Free Templates
As for the templates, the so-called themes, their diversity amazes even the brightest imagination. Today, there are many marketplaces with thousands of various WordPress templates. Among the market leaders are such resources as:
Marketplaces
The unequivocal leader among the resources with WordPress themes is
Themeforest , both in the number of templates and in their quality. The total number of WordPress templates on the market is approximately 6.5 thousand.
And the constant increase in requirements for templates allows you to keep the bar at a very high level. The themeforest moderators are focused on the visual component of the template, the visual wow effect is important. Some templates have awards from prestigious design competitions, such as:
But at the same time, template functionality and code purity are also important parameters for getting a template on themeforest. Accordingly, the complex of high requirements to the goods placed in the catalog allows maintaining the quality at the proper level. Here is
an example of a long and painful process of approving a WP template on themeforest.
Free or paid templates?
Definitely among the free templates are very decent. However, if the task is to make a stylish and functional site, then the recommendation is to choose among paid templates. The average cost of paid topics is from 29 to 64 dollars. However, for the money in most cases, some paid plugins are included. The most commonly used plugins in paid themes are
Visual Composer and
Slider Revolution . Only the cost of these two plugins is already equal to the cost of the paid template. And some premium themes include many more plugins. Besides, for the money spent on the template, first-class support was provided: technical support specialists will help to deal with various
questions that have arisen . Customization options for paid templates are quite wide. For example,
multi-topic topics are perfect for a corporate website of a large company, as well as for a personal portfolio site. And, of course, there are narrowly focused templates tailored for specific areas of activity: for example, websites dedicated to
wedding topics , or
websites of law firms .
Installing WordPress TemplatesInstallation of the themes does not require special knowledge and takes very little time. There are two ways to install a new template.
Method 1
- First you need to download and unzip the archive with the template on your computer
- Using a file manager (for example Total Commander or Finder), upload the theme folder to the wp-content / themes directory.
- Go to the control panel of the site and in the WordPress menu, select the option "APPEARANCE" -> "TOPICS". A new template should appear in the list.
- Next, you need to select a new topic and activate it.
Method 2
1. Go to "APPEARANCE" -> "TOPICS", at the top of the page, go to "Install Themes"
2. Next, under the menu that appears at the top, you need to follow in the "Download"
3. And there already download the desired topic.
Note! The subject should be in the zip archive.
The conclusion is simple: WordPress templates are an excellent alternative to developing an individual website from scratch, especially for those who have a very limited budget. However, the lack of money is not the main argument in favor of the template, there are many positive aspects of using WordPress themes.