I was reading this article by the hilarious and talented Speider Schneider this morning about using free WordPress themes to build portfolio sites for designers, photographers and other creatives. I started putting my response into the comments, but it turned into a book pretty quickly, so I moved it over to the blog instead.
He has a lot great points in the article about why WordPress as a content management platform is a good idea for designers. I’m a huge propenent of traditional designers moving to the WordPress framework because I’ve personally found it to be an invaluable tool in designing for both myself and clients.
I completely agree with what he says about building for your users and not the client or other designers, why an awesome plug-in architecture makes WordPress so powerful, and how in a perfect world the best sites are created by a team of people with expertise in everything from coding to copy writing to branding (although let’s face it…that team is usually you, a thesaurus and a crapload of internet tutorials to help you fake your way through the stuff you don’t know).
But the idea of using a premium theme (or, even better, a premium theme framework) is a single throwaway line about how they’re available. As someone who has worked with WordPress for a few years now, I would *strongly* recommend coughing up a few bucks for a commercial theme framework when it’s time to build your professional portfolio site.