WordPress Themes Explained

This tutorial explains what WordPress themes are, what makes WordPress themes unique, and the benefits of using WordPress themes to improve the design of your website or blog.

Themes - An IntroductionAdvanced website management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly improved web design and web development for non-technical users.

This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people that want to own a digital presence that they can fully manage by themselves.

Before blogging and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you wanted a professional business site, you normally would have to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting for the work to be done!

WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how WP themes save you money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your website.

Web Design Revolution

Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a change in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.

Let’s briefly go over how things worked in “traditional” website design before WordPress was introduced:

The first step would be to discuss your project with a web development company or web site designer. After this, the design itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with a professional website designer discussing design elements of your website like the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.

Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and codes inserted into the content. All the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.

Themes - An Overview

(image source:adobe.com)

Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being finished and ready for delivery.

Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web site template allows the presentation of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. The development of ready-made templates helped to make developing web sites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site development companies to work with business clients and clients with smaller budgets …

WordPress Themes - An Overview

(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)

As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates were created that provided various customizable features, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different content styles and page layouts, and so on.

As web sites and web building applications evolved, website templates also began transforming into website template ”systems”, enabling users to control the visual components of a website.

Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new web revolution …

A Basic Guide To Understanding Themes

(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)

To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:

The WordPress Theme

WordPress themes improve web template systems even further.

A WordPress theme controls and integrates all of the design areas of your website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all template features.

As the official WordPress site explains …

A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A Theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).

(source: WordPress.org)

As the above states, one of the unique features of the WP theme is that the way your site appears to site visitors in no way affects how your content is managed.

In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the appearance of your website as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.

This is huge! Why?

Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!

Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without needing any website code development skills. Simply choose a WordPress theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …

Understanding WordPress Themes

Since WordPress is open source software, thousands of web design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.

This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.

The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …

Understanding WordPress Themes

(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)

As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.

Themes range from professional-looking, to dynamic designs that are stunning and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, WP themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.

You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of great WordPress themes here:

Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!

(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)

Themes – Benefits

Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional website design:

Installation Is Easy, Simple And Fast

Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP admin’s “Theme” section.

Understanding WP Themes

Additionally …

  • WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
  • Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
  • A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you need without modifying the site’s information.
  • Many themes come with built-in features and options that enable you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
  • Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you update themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
  • WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within the site’s administration interface.
  • Themes allow users to save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.

Responsive Themes

Many WP theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WordPress platform.

A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …

A Newbie's Guide To Understanding Themes

Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.

Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly on your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of website design.

I hope that the above overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing web sites easy.

In our next blog post in our article WordPress beginners on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website or blog.

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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group

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