Hand Coded Themes vs Page Builders
Released - July 26th, 2022
If you are going to kick-start your project of creating a website for your business, blog, or an agency, this post titled Hand Coded Themes vs Page Builders will help you out to take the right approach.
It is always critical to decide whether you should opt for a Hand Coded Theme that you can modify for your website or a Page Builder that will allow you to sketch your design and develop it for your website. Both the options let you build and customize your site exactly in the form and appearance you want it to be. However, a hand coded pre-built theme differs in many respects from a CMS like Page Builders in terms of usability, cost, accessibility, manipulation period, authority, credence and security etc. That is to say that, each of the options has their own advantages and drawbacks to consider before you initiate your project.
There is no straight Yes or No for a particular option, but you have to analyze your situation according to some factors and find out which option deems more convenient to you. Here, we have discussed both the pros and cons of each of the alternatives, so that you can compare them to make your own approach towards creating your website. Before we dive into the respective advantages and disadvantages of Hand Coded Themes vs Page Builders, let’s talk a bit about their functions.
Website Themes are ready templates that can be customized to create your website. Themes generally fall into two types – Site Templates and CMS Themes e.g. WordPress Themes. These themes or templates are widely used to create websites for companies, corporate agencies, personal portfolios, blogs, ecommerce business etc. The website for the respective authority can be created by just replacing the demo contents i.e. images, videos, text and articles etc. with their own authentic ones. A well-documented hand coded theme can be further customized and developed to any extent to suit the purpose of the website.
A page builder, on the other side, is a content management system that allows you to create your website from scratch. You can design every element of the website – starting from the header section, creating the main content, to the footer section. Every single page is to be created anew with the page builder. Thus, designing the core features, the website for a business, agency, company or an individual can be built with a convenient page builder. To know further about the popular page builders, check out Best 5 WordPress Drag and Drop Page Builder Plugins.
The following is an in-depth discussion comparing the advantages and drawbacks for both the Hand Coded Themes and Page Builders according to some catalysts in terms of authority, usability, accessibility, extendibility, durability, time-frame, affordability, and security.
1. Authentic: The website created with a Hand Coded Theme is authentic in design and offers the complete authority to the owner. The theme elements are easy to update with the unique contents of the author. The further customization of the theme features is flexible to suit the site’s purposes, resulting in an authentic brand website.
2. Extendable: The source files of a Hand Coded Theme are usually cleanly coded and well documented, allowing you to locate specific functions to edit or add a new one. Moreover, the Hand Coded Theme functions can be improved to a great extent with the integration of other tools. Available plugins related to your features or services can make your website more functional.
3. Secure: The website created with a Hand Coded Theme is generally considered more secure as there are fewer possibilities of partnerships or shared authority. The more you subscribe to third-party services, the more you risk your site safety. A Hand Coded Theme is less likely to require additional services from third-party websites; hence secure.
1. Developer-only: A Hand Coded Theme can be manipulated by a developer only. As the source files are just bunches of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript etc., a person with no coding experience is unable to edit them. Though a few customizations can be accomplished with the basic coding knowledge, greater changes can only be performed by a professional developer.
2. Costly: The cost of producing a Hand Coded Theme or purchasing it from the marketplace is comparatively higher. There is also an additional cost for developing it for the original website. Still, there are lots of free or low-price yet dynamic ready themes out there online that can be availed for the creation of a website.
3. Time-consuming: To start with creating templates, adding features, fixing bugs and errors, getting it ready for retina screens, and finally developing it to the end website is quite a long way.
1. Quick-start: With a page builder, you can instantly start creating your original website with genuine contents. You do not have to put much effort in designing the demos. You will have to create the layouts for the different pages first, though.
2. Easy-to-use: Page builders offer the most convenient drag and drop feature to easily create different sections and arrange the elements in the most flexible manner. Making different layouts for multiple pages has never been easier. Maps, forms, and other contact features are also easy to deal with in page builders.
3. Affordable: Most of the popular page builders come with low subscription fees with attractive plans.
1. Limited: The page builders limit the functionalities of the website in many respects. Lots of features are bound to the framework and hence are not always extendable. Introducing custom UI elements turns out tricky at times.
2. Heavy-weight: A page builder usually comes with lots of additional features that you might not use in your website. But, the respective files for these unused functionalities come packed with the source files. Consequently, page-loading of the website becomes slower, for there are heavyweight files in the server.
3. Insecure: The websites created with page builders are prone to hacking, since they are integrated with various third-party programs. They may also require subscriptions to the third-party services claiming shared authority. This all risks the site’s security to a large extent.
Hopefully, the above discussion on Hand Coded Themes vs Page Builders will guide you to make the correct decision. We can’t just suggest a specific option for you. You just analyze your condition in the context of the catalysts, that we have discussed in the pros and cons of both the hand coded themes and page builders, and make the choice for yourself.
