Want a Truly Custom Site at WordPress? Then Go Elsewhere
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I posted the following to WordPress staff member Ben Huberman two days ago, on January 29, got no response so hoping someone else might chime in. I’m still hoping I’m wrong but WordPress’ silence in the matter suggests I’m right:
Ben,
Here’s the marketing language I keyed on when I dropped my 30 bucks on “Custom Design:”
“With the Custom Design upgrade you can make your blog look and feel exactly the way you want. Customize the fonts in your theme with ease, apply a custom color palette and background pattern, or dive into CSS to make all the presentational changes you desire.”
I don’t find what I should have found there, a giant caveat that says I’ve got no real ability to customize. In fact, this language is very misleading, as I am apparently not going to be able to make my blog “look and feel exactly the way I want,” nor will we get to “make all the presentational changes we desire.”
I’m working with a firm that put together a pretty simple website for me, but they designed it themselves. So are you telling me now that even if I pay $120, my website still has to conform to whatever limited number of themes you folks dreamed up?
I feel misled, to put it bluntly, but I very much hope I’m either misunderstanding, or I might be eligible for a full refund of my $30.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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You are entitled to a refund, providing it is within 30 days of purchasing the upgrade . See http://en.support.wordpress.com/upgrades/#refunds for instructions on how to get the refund.
I have read through the description of the custom design upgrade, and I think it could be more explicit. Though it does say:
The CSS editor is a more advanced option for those who know CSS or who are interested in learning it. If you don’t know CSS and want to learn, you can get help in our community CSS Customization support forum. For more information about working with the CSS editor, please read the Editing CSS help page.
I think that this makes light of the effort that someone non-technical would have to put in to learn this. I see that they have now chaged the wording to remove the “With the Custom Design upgrade you can make your blog look and feel exactly the way you want”, but they could be more explicit and say.
- Novice users can easily change the fonts anc colours
- Those with experience of CSS can make extensive changes to the appearance of the site.
I guess you decision is whether to make minor changes, get a refund and use the default look, or invest a lot of effort in learning .css.
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Well, it depends. What, exactly, do you want your blog to look and feel like? It may indeed be possible here, but not if you take a typical WP.org development approach, ie hire someone to design it without telling them you can’t edit the php, you can only edit the CSS here at WP.com. A competent designer should be able to work within that framework, but not if you don’t tell them ahead of time it’s at WP.com or if they don’t know the differences between the types of WP.
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If you do want a complete customisation there is the Sandbox theme, which is designed as a blank canvas.
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One other thing to remember:
You don’t need to learn all of CSS to do a major overhaul of your blog. You only need to figure out a few basic commands and there are volunteers and WP employees who will help you in the forums if something goes wrong along the way. (I got a lot of help…)
I won’t say it’s quick, but it’s definitely not the time commitment you’d expect from dealing with a programming language.
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Thank you, everyone, for the good answers back. A little more about my situation:
I started working with a website developer in early December, told them at that time I wanted them to build my website in WordPress, as I had an account here. The developer eventually built my site in their own WordPress account, I was happy with it and told them to move it on over. The developer then said they couldn’t upload the custom template to my WordPress account, either in the Editor role, or even after I set them up as an Administrator. He then proposed that I hand over my domain login info and let them host my site.
So is there some higher level of WordPress customization I need to purchase, or does it make sense that a developer can’t move a site they created in WordPress to someone else’s WordPress account, or is something else going on?
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Just to add a bit of info, there are differences between WordPress.com service and self-hosted WordPress.org installs, summarized here:
Looks like there was a miscommunication between your developer and yourself. A good WordPress developer should at first make everything clear and know the distinction between WordPress com and org, and explain that to clients to avoid misunderstanding like this. They unfortunately didn’t do that.
Nevertheless, it will not be possible to install custom theme here on .com. If you still want to go with your custom design, your option is to install WordPress and host it yourself, on which you will be able to do all the customization you want.
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