But I do have something I want to document, and it’s the answer to the question about how custom the sites I build are. So without further ado, here’s the answer:

At the very least I heavily reskin themes to match the clients brand and personality. Good example is The Vegan Vine and Wicked Good Wines, both of which are based on a theme called The Station.

Sometimes I do less reskining than that, if the client likes the theme “as is.” Like Comity Designs which is based on the theme Nova. We did make changes to the size/placement/effect of the navigation that most people probably wouldn’t even notice, so that’s as close as I get to leaving a theme intact. The client fell in love with the them, though, and it’s basic enough that there wasn’t much to change anyway.

The advantage of themes is they package stuff up for you, the disadvantage is it’s difficult to add containers of content or fundamentally alter the layout. If you compare Zack’s sites to the themes he based them on, you’ll see that content has just been plugged in to predefined “slots.” Efficient and effective until the client says “Oh wait I’d like that over there instead.” Then you crack into the code.

So these days I build sites with a flexible theme framework called Headway that gives me complete control over what goes where. And lets me create pages the assemble posts however I want them. From big complex sites like Clos LaChance which you saw yesterday, a single page site called Fun Wine Sale that pulls together a bunch of posts, the History page of Willow Glen Charm and the Sponsors page of Lincoln Glen Little League which is how I think the directory of Willow Glen businesses should be built.

I think WGBA needs the latter, but that’s how I build all my sites these days…just too much easy flexibility to not capitalize on.: