Hi! I'm looking for some conceptual/workflow help with how to approach WP design.
I used to work with wordpress as a side gig, eventually I moved my sites to a service called Carrd. Carrd was great, it took a lot of work to make anything look bad.
I've just switched back to wordpress, I want to do more complex stuff with a lot more pages and data, but I'm finding wordpress design tools to be kinda "clunky" for customizing the site style. Stuff looks good by default but anything outside of default starts to look weird.
I was wondering if you've collected any tips/principles on good design with WordPress's tools. Also if anyone has used both Carrd and WP I'd love to hear your thoughts and experience.
So far all I've come up with is:
- use rem wherever possible for nice consistent proportions
- use a 3 colour pallet (that's both pretty basic advice, and weirdly hard to do less than 4 colour designs with the 2024 theme)
But that's just not looking right, and often feels like I'm figthing WP structure and theme.
I keep writing CSS to compensate, but I that feels very fragile, and often WP is working very hard to override the CSS I'm writing.
I'll add some screenshots of my tests so far, they look …fine? but very awkwardly laid out with lots and lots of problems I can't seem to work around.
Your problem isn’t WordPress, it’s the theme(s) you’re using. The free WP themes are very limited in styling functionality. Looks at themes like GeneratePress and Astra. Practically unlimited design options.