What is a custom WordPress theme?

The WordPress edit screen can vary significantly from website to website. Some display the Classic editor, some show the newer Block editor, and some use page builders like Cornerstone and Elementor. Others offer a combination of all of the above. If you’re new to WordPress, or if you thought you knew WordPress but suddenly find yourself with an unrecognizable interface, the shifting landscape of WordPress content editors can be confusing. And what’s available is often either inadequate to provide the level of customization you want (the Classic and Block editors) or displays so many options that you don’t know where to start.

A custom WordPress theme, on the other hand, simplifies the editing process while providing everything that you need, because it’s designed specifically for your website. For example, Free State Beer needed a template for their beer pages. They requested options that no standard page builder could easily provide: a selection of unique icons for their containers, along with animated thermometers showing the levels of hops and alcohol content for each beer. With a custom WordPress theme, the “Beer” page template included exactly those fields:

Edit Screen

Live Site

This ease of editing simply wouldn’t be possible without a custom theme, and this is just one example of many across the entire website. The only plugin used here was “Advanced Custom Fields”, which is the endlessly customizable framework of the theme.

Want to learn more?

If you think a custom WordPress theme might be right for your project, visit the Contact page, or email ginny@backup.volumefad.com.