Best Practices to Design Site Mock Up Using Wordpress Rather than Wireframes?

[Kingalan1]

We are in the process of redesigning our real estate website.

Our designer/developer is very quick and confident on Wordpress. He suggests designing directly on Wordpress and bypassing  wireframes and a mock ups. He is very confident in his Wordpress abilities.

Is it a mistake to take this approach? He has also asked that we select a real estate theme at this point. I would think that the theme would be selected after the wireframes and mock ups get done.

But there are certainly different approaches. Are there  best practices for  redesigning a webiste; any suggestions? Are there significant risks/disadvantages to bypassing wireframes/mock ups?

Thanks, 
Alan Rosinsky

[Roman-Delcarmen]

From my point of view, there's no a big difference between work on a design tool or directly in the browser.

My opinion that is not an efficient way of work, just think about it.

When you design a website you follow these basic steps

Brainstorm and research you collect all your ideas in a is a single place, change this header, put this form use this layout and so on.

If you do that and made a mistake there is no a big deal with a few clicks you fix the error, you make as many mistakes as you want and try different, ideas, layouts, compositions, banners and so on and then when you have a final version, you just simple code and upload nowadays with so many builders out there you don't need its a very simple process.

But what happens when you realizing that this form, or layout, is not really what you want if you are coding manually it will take 4 times more time if you compare it with fix the error on photoshop.

[WebElaine]

If your developer is asking you to select a theme, it sounds like he wants to work directly on a theme because he's going to create a child theme. By selecting the parent theme first, the structure is already there and he can do some easier CSS tweaks.

If I were you, I would step back and determine whether you are paying him to create a custom theme for you, or just to create a child theme. There are pros and cons to both. The pros to a child theme are that the parent theme should continue to receive updates so your theme is not frozen in time; as accessibility, design, and SEO enhancements go into the parent theme, those will continue to apply to your site. The main advantage of a custom theme is the lightweight code base - your site should load faster as it only contains the elements you need, and not a bunch of extras that you may never use. Depending on how it's coded, a custom theme may also be better for SEO - again because there's simply less code there weighing things down.

If your contract with the developer does not state whether he'll create a brand-new custom theme or just a child theme, I'd take the time to have a quick conversation and get both of your expectations on the table so you can determine what will work best in this situation. If it turns out that a child theme is the best option for you at this time (perhaps due to budget, or due to a desire to have continual updates but not have to pay someone to continually update a custom theme), then I'd have no qualms allowing the developer to work directly in WP on the child theme. It's easier to adjust things on the fly and show a client an actual prototype where they can resize the browser and see all the responsive sizes, and it will save time all around. However, if a custom theme is the way to go, I would ask if he is giving you a truly custom theme or if he's working with some predetermined framework or parent theme and only making tweaks to a child theme. That really is the only reason I can think of that a dev would insist on designing in the code itself rather than mocking things up.