The problem with ready-made themes
WordPress has plenty of good themes, but every one I tried had the same annoyances:
- Too many features: dozens of modules and hundreds of toggles when I need three
- Hard to change: adjusting one spacing value moves ten other things
- Slow: to cover every case, they load everything
What writing it myself gave me
The first draft took two days longer than installing a theme. What I got in return:
- A page weight under 200KB, including the font
- Every class name meaning exactly one thing
- Changing the layout does not break anything else, because nothing else depends on it
And crucially: when something looks wrong, I can find the cause in minutes, because I wrote the CSS.
The uncomfortable part
A theme's generality is precisely the opposite of what a personal site needs. A theme has to work for a bakery, a law firm and a photographer. You are one person with one specific story.
Using a theme means accepting that 90% of what loads is for someone else.
When I would still buy one
If the site is a business tool rather than a statement — an online store, a booking page — a theme is fine. Buy the commodity, spend your time where you actually differ.
Writing your own is only worth it when the site itself is part of what you are showing.
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