As a WordPress web site developer, I hear so many clients say they want to use a free theme because they don’t want to spend money when you can get one for free.  I then explain why a premium theme is a good investment if you believe in your business and Internet success. Premium themes means paid for.  The premium theme companies continue to support their theme by offering updates for new WordPress versions and security fixes.  Most offer technical support for the annual fee.

WordPress themes developed by premium theme framework companies sell a core “parent” theme with “child” themes.  The developement of theme frameworks has been around for about 2 years but with the acceleration of technological changes and swift changes in social media marketing the need for a more flexible and expedient software platform is critical to stay competitive.  In my last post I discussed web sites for mobile and using a good solid premium theme framework can help you move into the mobile Internet more easily.

Premium theme framework companies provide a family of themes.  There is one core theme known as the parent theme.  This theme does not include any styling of colors page layout.  It strictly acts as the middleman between WordPress application software and the child theme.  The child theme has all the styling that you see on the front end (what you see when you look at the web site in your browser or mobile browser).  When WordPress has an update, the theme framework companies have already been testing the beta version of WordPress to make sure their framework themes will function properly.  They update the parent theme to work efficiently and correctly and then the same time a new version of WordPress is released a new version of the parent theme is released.  This ensures that you can update your WordPress site to the new version without fear of your theme not working.

Another differentiating factor in theme framework companies is the ease at which you can build custom web sites.  They offer tools that simplify the build process which saves time and money.

If you use one of these products for your site your theme you can be changed to a new child theme by the same company without a lot of work. The new child theme for instance could be one that is coded with responsive design to easily create a mobile web site.

The theme framework I use is Genesis by StudioPress. This WIC blog theme you are reading was reworked last year by me to use the Prose child theme from StudioPress. StudioPress has been the leader in reworking and building new child themes that incorporate responsive design coding for mobile. This WIC blog theme was built before responsive design was invented but if WIC were to upgrade this theme to the new Prose theme which incorporates responsive design it would only take about 2 hours to transfer.

I believe having a team of coders who understand WordPress working for me to keep my theme up to date with new WordPress changes is well worth the money I spent on my theme framework.

Do you have a free theme or do you have a premium theme on your WordPress site and if so who is your theme company?  Share your thoughts with a comment below.

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