A loose WordPress.Com web site may be a extremely good preference, but one in every of the most important reasons now not to use a loose WordPress.Com web site is that you’re no longer allowed to upload a custom subject. You can’t even pay them to permit you to do that.
If you want a custom subject, or to use a topic you purchase some other place, you may need to installation WordPress on some other host. But if you’re no longer pretty positive yet, let’s see how WordPress.Com may nevertheless meet your theming desires.
What Is a WordPress Theme?
People regularly appear burdened about what a “subject” clearly is. This is comprehensible. Although many software program packages use the time period “subject,” the way topics paintings can range appreciably.
The primary precept to analyze is that, both in WordPress and in each other CMS, subject matters are code. Parts of the theme manipulate the apparent functions of the way the site seems, such things as fonts and colorings.
But different elements dig deeper into the guts of the website online. A topic controls how the bits of content material are arranged at the web page. The subject matter controls which bits of content material are shown.
The subject, in short, is powerful code.
Even a simple subject is just as powerful as a plugin. Some issues have such a lot of more functions that it’s tough not to think of them as collections of plugins.
No Custom Themes on WordPress.com
For this motive, WordPress.Com doesn’t will let you upload custom topics. Period. (Unless you get their Super Duper Blow Your Mind Millions of Readers Refinance Your House Hosting Plan, which appears geared in the direction of largish organizations.)
Sorry. No custom topics. From their point of view, custom subject matters, like plugins, are too volatile.
But Many Free, Customizable Themes
However, they do provide over 2 hundred free subject matters. Here’s the vital component — a number of those topics include admin monitors which offer insane amounts of factor-and-click on customization.
By the time you are carried out clicking, specific websites with the identical theme can look completely one of a kind.
The “Custom Design” Option
And if it truly is now not sufficient, you could purchase the custom design alternative.
Wait, did not I say you could not add a custom subject?
Yes. You cannot upload your personal PHP code. But with “custom design,” you may tweak a topic together with your (comparatively harmless) CSS code.
(Actually, do not tell, but you could additionally embed custom CSS free of charge, at least on a particular web page, with
<style>Tags.)
If you haven’t any concept what PHP or CSS are, do not be anxious. Instead, ask your self: how flexible is your imaginative and prescient of your web site?
How Flexible Is Your Vision of Your Theme?
If you are open to flipping through some unfastened subject matters, you most in all likelihood can try a loose WordPress.Com site.
If you’ve got already designed an in depth mockup of your home page, or employed a clothier, WordPress.Com can be a waste of time.
A talented coder/dressmaker is probably capable of construct your imaginative and prescient in the constraints of the to be had issues and, in all likelihood, the custom layout alternative.
But you would possibly sooner or later (or fast) want something that truely is not possible with out building a custom theme. And a custom topic manner no more WordPress.Com.