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I’m a web designer and got a project of building custom WP theme. Since I have never done that before, I thought to take help from YouTube tutorial. I successfully built one using ACF plugin to make data dynamic but what I came across is there is more than one ways to make custom themes. I was wondering what is the most efficient way to build a WordPress theme.
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In my case, I work with ACF, Elementor Pro and Dynamicooo for Elementor.
This combination allows me to create a simple workflow and gives me the latitude to customize the designs based on clients and budgets.
It is really nice to build custom post types, use ACF to relate the content and Elementor to build dynamic templates and rules.
Mostly because website maintenance has to be simple, the worst is coming back to a custom site and trying to remember how things are put together.
Using a child theme from Hello Elementor you can build anything. I found also [skelementor.com](http://skelementor.com) if you need help with foundation blocks in your layouts.
Good luck
It depends on what kind of theme you are building. A theme that allows for full-site editing will be very different from a theme that doesn’t allow for it.
The most efficient way to build it depends entirely on your skill set and what you mean by “efficient,” but no matter your approach, you should follow the [WordPress coding standards](https://developer.wordpress.org/coding-standards/wordpress-coding-standards/).
I recommend using ACF. You will be able to add custom fields, post types, categories, and blocks with relative ease.
Leveraging theme.json is a good start.
You could start with a boilerplate and modify it. Something like 10Up’s [WP-Scaffold](https://github.com/10up/wp-scaffold).
For something less intimidating, you can always start with a child theme and only modify what’s needed from an existing theme.
How far are you willing to go with this original theme idea??
I mean you could pick a theme any them then build what is referred to as a child theme from that theme and do all sorts of coding stuff with that. Everything will be great except when wordpress or one of your plugins updates and it breaks something somewhere on a page that doesn’t get much attention and these issues accumulate until your site is broken. Then you fix your child theme until in a couple of weeks this happens again.
This is okay if you are one of those people who love doing the fixing and exploring things. I like to refer to them as (whatever you call beings that are like gods but not quite godlike) nerds.
Fortunately for people like me these nerds have developed these magical things called page builders. There are lots of them out there. They allows mere mortals to look pretty cool and create their own designs or themes and the nerds make loads of money keeping the smart bits working no matter what the folks at wordpress decide to do.
After figuring out how the page builder of your choice works you will be able to call yourself a designer and whip up original designs in no time.
Personally I am moving away from Elementor to Divi both of these page builders are old and have loads of support and supplemental plugins.
If you are familiar with creating a front end with HTML and CSS, I recommend you download the blank theme and create it yourself. This way, you have complete freedom in structuring the website to your needs. On the other hand, if coding isn’t your forte, go with Elementor-pro, it is a great tool to create a theme of any kind. WP-bakery is another option it is also a good theme builder.