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<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<li><strong>Age Matters</strong>: 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.</li>
<li><strong>Developer Bias</strong>: 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.</li>
<li><strong>Configuration Bloat</strong>: 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.</li>
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<p>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.</p>
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