Should I implement my own custom theme

Question

I am new to WordPress, my graphical designer provided me a new design for our web-site and I wonder what is the best way to integrate the design into WordPress.

I assume that:

• I can adopt some theme and start modify the CSS via the editor (according to my design)

  Or

• I can build my own custom theme which will trigger some PHP development

Are my assumptions correct? I guess there is a much simpler approach, appreciate any feedback

Thanks!

Answer 1

I've been building themes for 4 years and from my experience build the design provided by your graphical designer from scratch would be better solution. It helps you understanding the whole structure of your theme.

Also modifying existing theme to suit your new design can take longer time, since you're required to learn the basic structure of the theme and all of the codes and functionality.

I would use existing theme as a guideline for creating my own theme when working with some PHP codes.

Answer 2

Start modifying other themes is well to begin with and understand the structure of wordpress. Once you already have an idea of how it works, you can start from scratch.

In my case I use what are called themes blank. Which they are themes to modify to your liking. I particularly love BTS theme

There are others like HTML5 Blank Theme, Roots, Underscores, Bones, and more... It's just a matter of searching google.