Should a Web Design Module at Uni Allow You To Use Themes Form Online?

[Jax]

Hi, whether you remember me or not is not important. but what is, is the fact I am studying Web Design at University, for those that are unaware of the system in Britan. University is the last stage of education and is optional.

The problem I have is that I am now "Learning" WordPress to design and build an e-commerce website. However, it has been made clear to me that we're taking themes built online and editing them to suit our needs. My problem with this is that we are not actually "designing" the website, we're just using other people's work and for me this is wrong, especially as we are supposed to study the subject.

This is not the fault of my lecturer but the fault of the examining body.

So my question is; Is this okay? I mean in industry many use themes they have either built or bought, but to study I prefer to make my own.

Your comments count.

 

[LadyAnna]

You can learn a lot from examining and repurposing an existing theme.

I'd say it is about not inventing the wheel all over again, it would be much more time consuming if you didn't have a starting point. As far as I know most themes are build upon something else (the themes wordpress are shipped with most likely).

You're still designing to some level. Whenever I have made a theme I have laid out the design in photoshop and then taking the various elements and changing the default theme to match and suit my needs.

I'd never dream about trying to start from scratch and code the php part of the theme as well as the actual visual aspect of it. For one, I don't know wordpress engine well enough to properly loop through the database and get my content to actually display in the first place, also it would take for too long to populate all files that wordpress theme consist of this way.

What I'd do in your case is trying to find a theme that basically is just the framework with as little applied style as possible and start from if you really want to be doing the "whole thing".

 

[Ashish92]

depends on the duration of your wordpress course I would say if you are getting more than 3 months for it then it should be a complete from scratch design

 

[Jax]

Thanks for getting back to me. I just wanted to open this debate up to you on here.

 

[Sharon]

I can understand your concern about using an existing theme and redesigning it to fit your needs. It doesn't feel entirely original. It does actually happen in the designing world as well where come designers use existing PDF files and change certain layers and effects to create something new...essentially not starting from scratch.