Building Websites From Scratch as a Freelance WordPress Developer

As a Freelance WordPress Designer, something I pride myself on is that no two sites are the same. WordPress is a crowded space full of sites build on pre-built themes which can speed up the process, but leave a lot of sites looking the same. As someone who prides themselves on their web design and web development process, I like to do things differently.

Whenever I take on a new website project, the last thing I want the web design to be limited by is what a pre-built theme can deliver. Knowing that the full array of functionality and a full spectrum of design is at my fingertips is incredibly freeing. It also allows me to utilise some of my friends who are freelance designers and not have to limit or restrict their work or creativity.

When it comes to developing, I’ll use a boilerplate for structure and develop on top of that. For those who don’t know, a boilerplate theme has all the basic structure of a WordPress theme with no additional design or functionality. It’s a bare-bones skeleton that save you having to generate literally dozens of files – but that’s it. The boilerplate themes I tend to use are Underscores_ or BlankSlate. Early on in my development journey I also used HTML5Blank but it’s been a while since I used that. They’re all functionally very similar, but I find Underscores_ to be my personal favourite. It’s got some great compilation features that set it apart from other options.

WordPress Theme Development used to be about how good your templates were. Nowadays, WordPress Development is almost all about the blocks. Since the introduction of Gutenberg what seems like an age ago, WordPress sites and themes are increasingly drag and drop, and whilst there have been drag and drop builders for almost as long as I’ve been building sites, the fact that it’s baked-in to WP makes it a much more pleasant experience for developers and clients alike.

Developing blocks is a relatively fun experience and whilst the official documentation involves React, the likes of Advanced Custom Fields Pro (my personal favourite plugin EVER) allows for these blocks to be created, developed and deployed in the most user-friendly way possible.

As a freelance wordpress developer, I get to take full charge over my process, but that also means I need to have everything locked in, so using a responsive browser is essential for ensuring that all my sites ship with the optimum level of usability on all display experiences. Using tools like ResponsivelyApp lets me see a website in multiple views at the same time and interact with them all simultaneously, ensuring that the experience is seamless across all devices.

But as great as that is, it’s still no match for the real thing. Testing on as many actual devices as possible is important for understanding the tactile experience on touch devices as well as the real world speed of your digital product. Sometimes testing on an emulator on a powerful desktop can feel smooth, but then testing it on a phone or tablet will let you know that you need to go back into your code and tidy things up.

Is it a more lengthy approach than using a pre-built theme? Yeah, of course it is, but as a freelance wordpress developer, I want to be proud of the sites I build and to ensure that I’m putting out quality over quantity. I can proudly say that no two of my sites are the same and that I know the code that went into building each of them.