When developing a theme for a customer, the task is far from just sitting down and writing the code. A crucial part of the process takes place before the development itself, with the preparation and planning phase. As we detail this below, our philosophy is that you only pay for your unique ideas.

Planning before execution

The framework that we use for all our projects is Bootstrap 4. Right at the beginning we use a specification to determine the purpose of the WordPress theme, our graphic designer prepares the web design in psd. Right after this, our front-end developer creates the sitebuild in html and scss. The final stage of the planning exercise is that we compose the WordPress system based on standards, this helps us to be able to modify the content dynamically even at a later stage. An extra emphasis is put on the usability of the admin interface, the particular details are built up to reflect this (marking the menu options with icons, metaboxes with the editing of meta fields). We need to keep in mind the most needed functionalities that are requested by our customer. At the same time, database optimization is also crucial as the page response needs to be fast. Given the fact that WordPress was designed to handle text primarily, post types need to get a special attention. These are designed together with metadata and taxonomy.

On the contrary to most of our competitors, we develop a lot of open-source solutions. Years of experience in the field of WordPress development enabled us to upload several free of charge themes that can be used for our later tasks. This enables us to tell our customers that they will in fact only pay for their extra requirements.

Development reflecting factory standards

Once the planning phase is completed, we upload our tasks to Trello, to be able to weigh the separate tasks and remain agile. First, we work with the obligatory elements of our Kanban board, we create the basic files (style.css, index.php, functions.php). After this, the system is broadened by the rest of the template files. If the basic functionality and outlook is ready, we create the functions (e.g. Filter/search list of post types). The final step is the creation of the theme customizer – with the help of this the client can modify the theme based on their preference (header images, header colour, font type, etc.). As it can be seen, one of the purposes of a theme is that the customer can use it to personalize their page – to set backgrounds and positions, just to mention a few options.
What is important to note is that our development is based on WordPress standards If we upload a free theme on wp.org, it is checked by the review team, who also develop the core application. As these standards are high, their acceptance on the page guarantees the competence and professionalism of the developer.
In order to give real life examples reflecting the above, let us share some of our works here:

Lana Site – a basic and free WordPress theme
Lana Pet – a more complicated theme of ours.