I want to offer WordPress web design services, but I’m stuck on which tools to use for building websites.
There are tons of WordPress themes on ThemeForest, but it’s hard to tell which one’s the best, I’ve done some research and many say these themes make the website slow.
Alternatively, I could get licenses from Kadence or Astra, which are both popular. But would have to make my clients pay for their recurring licenses after the work is done, and I guess some of them won’t like it.
I’ve also heard good things about Bricks Builder, but I’m worried it might be tough to learn after playing around with it.
Any advice on which option to go for? I’d really appreciate your thoughts!
Please, Please do some basic research.
If a theme is slow, a huge part of Learning WordPress is learning how to Optimize WordPress, if you think out of the box, it’s going to happen for you
Then, no.
Learn Security
What kind of clients ?
You might need to learn scaling a
Any abstract implementation- something simplifying the representation and or implementation of code – is going to reduce performance in comparison. The former has to be adaptable and interopable with a variety of implementations and use-cases, the latter works entirely around you. WordPress is going to introduce speed and performance degradation you wouldn’t expect of bespoke code 🤷♂️
There’s you much you can do to increase speeds at many stages but much depends on your expectations and implementation. If your critically dependent on themes be prepared to cycle through choices and the first not being all you needed.
If you’re planning to offer web design services to others don’t use theme forest because their themes only give you a single site license… meaning you won’t be able to use them for your clients without purchasing another license.
You’re better off picking a free theme or a theme that’s not sold on theme forest at all.
Take a few courses about theme building, learn about what WordPress does well at. Learn about custom post, taxonomies, and some basics of the code base.
This will get you creating sites that have some useful functionality, and give you the ability to make better choices when selecting themes and plugins.
You should get into Gutenberg, and look into custom block development.
Think a builder like Bricks is a very good option and worth the learning curve. There are others of course, but at the end of the day you’ll need to build your skills with something up-to-date with latest trends that also offers the maximum possible level of customization to implement the disparate needs of customers.
Have a look at divi and elementor.
On themeforest the one I know that is good is Avada. One time license cost with tons of features to build any site you want is hard to beat. It may be a bit bloated, but its latest theme/builder is more performant. The team behind it solid and they are coming out with their biggest update yet this year – switching to block system which will speed things up quite a bit.