Bespoke websites.
We plan, design and build bespoke sites for clients that want their websites to work harder.
Our focus is on website performance, and we actively help our clients to simplify their websites so they are:
- Simple to navigate
- Visitor-focussed
- Technically optimised
- Easy to manage
- Not overly reliant on Javascript
- 100% accessible
Customised content editing.
We mainly use the Gutenberg editor to manage content on the sites we build.
We don’t only build a bespoke theme; we create a custom editing environment for your content around custom Gutenberg blocks.
Everything is built for a purpose, so your site does everything you need it to do without bloating it with unnecessary code.
Rather than loading endless code to recreate the front-end in the admin, we keep things lean and efficient which makes adding and editing content simple.
Every block we build is endlessly customisable for your content needs, and standard blocks, such as content columns, are all included.
All styling (CSS) is taken care of in the stylesheet, so again, there’s no need to worry about the size and colour of content – it all outputs perfectly on the front end to the previously approved design.
There’s nothing we can’t build with these blocks.
Spinks On Site.
Complete site rebranding, redesign and bespoke WordPress build for this innovative recruitment business.
No-nonsense and jargon-free.
Website design projects can be complicated affairs, but we keep things simple.
We’re a creatively-led web design agency. This means the team you’ll work with are able to communicate clearly and will explain every stage of the project to you.
You won’t be dealing with a team that only speak HTML – our web designers explain everything we’re doing and make our web design projects straightforward – no matter how complicated the project.
Open-source
WordPress is free. Whilst our services are not, once you’ve paid for your new site, it’s 100% yours.
We don’t retain any ownership of the code or theme and we keep everything open and accessible to you.
Nothing is locked down, you’ll be able to get at everything and change whatever you want (or get us to do it via a support plan).
We do this purposefully to be as open and accessible with the sites we create; as we don’t pay for WordPress, we don’t think we (or any web agency for that matter) should then try and lock you out of editing and managing 100% of your new website.
Some recent bespoke projects
Cost-effective.
Some people are often quite surprised by what we can do with even the tightest budget.
We’ve invested heavily in our own theme and premium plugins.
Our web designers have spent 100s of hours developing and perfecting a lightweight, optimised starter theme that we use on everything we build.
Whilst web design projects can be complicated, this is only necessary if the brief demands it.
Many of the people we work with need a simple site that is easy to manage – and we deliver a lot of these.
Whatever you want, get in touch or call us on 01295 266644 – if you can be upfront about your budget, we can tell you exactly what we can do within it.
Ball-parks
If you are looking to commission a new website project, just send us an outline of what you need and what you want to achieve, and we’ll quickly send you a ballpark estimate.
Which approach is right for you?
Here at Toast, we mainly design and build bespoke WordPress websites. However, we offer a more off-the-shelf approach using the Divi page builder for clients with tighter budgets.
The Bespoke Approach.
A bespoke site is built from the ground up to do exactly what you need it to do. All the styling and content modules are custom built, so you can quickly edit, add and manage all your content without worrying about styling, spacing, arrangements and responsive CSS.
This is our preferred route for all site builds.
Get a bespoke siteThe Page Builder.
Some clients prefer a more hands-on approach to their websites. In these instances, we use Divi to build out the website. This means that our clients can manage and edit everything on the site – from margins and padding to typography and responsive CSS.
Note that we only recommend page builders for small websites.
Get startedWhat makes bespoke WordPress better?
Getting what you need (want) with a bespoke WordPress site.
The main issue with off-the-shelf themes is that at some point, no matter how small your website is, you are going to have to bend into something due to the limitations of the theme.
The reality for most businesses is that they can only bend so much before they break, so starting out with a bespoke theme mitigates the risk of having to start again and gives you a website platform where you can get exactly what you need.
What does bespoke mean when it comes to WordPress?
Generally, a bespoke site uses a barebones theme to build your site. Just as there are off-the-shelf complete themes, there are also off-the-shelf starter (bare bones) themes.
These include Bootstrap, Underscores, and HTML5Blank. These are great themes to build on, but they do ship with a lot of code. For example, the Bootstrap main CSS file is over 8000 lines of code. Whilst you may think this isn’t a lot, it does mean you are loading a lot of superfluous code if you use one of these.
Here at Toast, a bespoke theme is one that is virtually empty to start with.
This is the page template for our starter theme. Just seven lines of code here, so it’s incredibly lean, and we only build in what’s needed.
So a bespoke theme is basically something that contains the minimum amount of code, CSS and JS in order to work.
Anything that is then added to this theme is put there because your site needs it to be there.
Bespoke WordPress design and build FAQs.
Below are answers to some common questions about bespoke WordPress builds. If you have a question not covered here, contact us, and we’ll reply.
Does bespoke WordPress cost more than an off-the-shelf theme?
The short answer to this is yes; there is more upfront cost building bespoke to start with, but there is often less cost moving forward.
As a bespoke site should be built to allow you to edit everything on the site without the need to call the developers, the ongoing costs of maintaining your site will be reduced.
Framework sites have a huge learning curve – you have to learn the page builder and understand the code, so what can seem more cost-effective at the start can often cost you more money in the long run.
With a bespoke build, everything is intuitive as your site is built for you and your content; you don’t have to constantly pay developers as you can manage everything easily and quickly.
Do bespoke sites contain complex code?
Sometimes, but this depends mainly on the agency building the site. Here at Toast, we work within the core WordPress code and use the hugely popular ACF plugin to build custom content blocks for your site, so any WordPress developer worth their salt can look at the work we’ve done and understand it.
We have a policy of not building websites that lock our clients into our agency; we consider this unethical as we use WordPress, free software supported mainly by volunteers.
To this end, if we build you a bespoke WordPress site, it won’t contain code that’s designed to be complex.
Do bespoke sites cause issues with plugins?
Unlike bulky, off-the-shelf themes, a bespoke theme plays nicely with plugins due to the fact that it does not load lots of JS and other code.
In fact, you are less likely to encounter plugin conflicts with a bespoke build than with any other theme framework.
So if you want to install WooCommerce, for example, you are not going to experience any issues, and the process will be quick and simple.
What about theme updates?
WordPress has something called the Codex, which is the repository for the core code. This core code must remain stable and consistent, as over 40 million sites use it.
As we develop solely in line with the codex, your bespoke theme continues to work across WordPress updates without needing to update the theme.
The only points to note outside of this are PHP upgrades, where certain PHP functions become depreciated, but on a well-built site, this is rare. Due to the complexity of large theme frameworks (off-the-shelf themes), this issue is unfortunately common.
Do you own the final site?
Yes. Once our bills are paid, the site and theme are yours. We retain no ownership of our code; you are free to do with it as you will.
Most clients we work with continue to work with us after the site goes live, as we provide WordPress support and SEO services. If you are our retained web customer, you’ll also benefit from free licences on some of the crucial plugins we (and most agencies) use.
There is no ongoing subscription for sites built using our bespoke WordPress theme.
Are bespoke WordPress sites harder to optimise?
The opposite is true here: due to the lean way a bespoke WP site is built, it’s easier to optimise than most other WordPress installs.
Our bespoke theme also has the advantage of targetted CSS and JS, which means the page only loads the resources it needs to load, keeping the payload small and making it easy to optimise every page of your site.
