Buying WordPress Custom Themes Isn't Always Faster

I'm working on my first WordPress site for a local organization. After studying up on WordPress for a while, I thought I'd get off to a fast start and buy a custom theme. That was just the beginning of a whole lot of pain. I learned that not all custom themes are created equal ... and some can barely claim to be compliant with the latest standards they advertise.

It all started when I simply wanted to vertical align the site title in the header. It was pushed against the top instead of the center. When I went poking through the theme files, I found a tremendous tangle: templates with more PHP than HTML, custom CSS frameworks, piles of JavaScript libraries. 

After working with Angular and Vue.js, I'm pretty familiar with concept of templates and MVC (model, view, controller). This theme was blurring the lines to a degree that made it extremely difficult to fix. After a few hours of trying to understand how the developer organized everything, I just gave up.

The dashboard was just as bad -- a hodgepodge of options and configurations that made it possible to customize your theme only if you were willing to pay the price of admission and spend a lot of time walking the labyrinth. After a few hours of playing around, I just gave up.

I love playing around with software and learning how it works, but I also plan on passing this site off to someone else to maintain. I'm well aware of just how little patience people have for crappy interfaces -- they don't want to be clicking blindly to make basic changes.

So I decided to start from scratch and build my own theme based on a Bootstrap theme I purchased (for a whole lot less). I'll cover that in a separate post. Hers's what I've learned setting up my own theme and reflecting on the disaster WP custom theme I bought.

• Age Matters: The custom theme I bought said it was compliant with the latest: WordPress, HTML5, CSS3, etc... The thing is it had been patched over time. My theory is the theme was patched over time to keep it up to standards, but really what was needed was a re-write from the ground up to truly leverage the new advances that make it easier to read.
• Developer Bias: I'm pretty sure the initial developer for this theme loved PHP above all else. So he (or she) preferred generating html through code instead of allowing html to do the talking.
• Configuration Bloat: I've looked at a few of WordPress themes now and a common trend is packing in too many dashboard options. Since the WP dashboard is a little kludge to begin with (especially after adding few plugins), I think a developer needs to prioritize keeping it as clear as possible.

All that said, I've really enjoyed digging into WP. Their documentation is fantastic and there is a vibrant community around it. I'm really excited to see how WP incorporates JavaScript libraries into Gutenberg.