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.

WordPress For Business - An Overview Of WP ThemesAdvanced web site management technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for non-technical website owners.

This greatly benefits individuals or businesses thinking about getting a website that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.

Before “blogging” and the introduction of powerful content management systems, if you needed a professional website, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting for many weeks, sometimes even many months!

WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how WP themes save you money on website design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.

Website Design Revolution

More website owners will benefit from a tremendous change in web design that started a number of years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.

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

The first step would be to meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional web site designer going over design elements of the web site such as the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.

Every page of your site then had to be individually created with all the elements and codes inserted into your page content. All the pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.

Themes - An Overview

(image source:adobe.com)

Only after everything had been tested and worked how it was intended to (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the website considered as being completed and ready for delivery.

The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A website template allows design elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped to make creating websites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website designers to service businesses with smaller marketing budgets …

WordPress Themes - An Introduction

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

As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, web templates started being developed to offer clients with various customization features, like color palettes, the ability to pick different styles and header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.

As websites and website editor software evolved, website templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that let website owners and web designers manage the visual elements of a web site.

And then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new website revolution …

Themes - An Introduction

(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 expand website template systems one step further.

A WP theme controls and unifies all of the design areas of a website. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management and customization of all template settings.

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 quote states, a unique feature of WordPress is that how your web site looks to visitors externally in no way affects the management of your content.

Basically, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.

This is huge! Why?

Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any WP theme you like, and completely modify the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!

Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site without requiring website code editing knowledge. Just pick any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and customize elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …

Understanding WP Themes

Because WordPress is open source software, web designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.

This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.

The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WordPress themes at $0 cost …

A Basic Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)

As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider range of applications.

WordPress themes range from functional-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and would typically cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are really inexpensive.

You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of themes here:

Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!

(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)

Benefits Of Themes

Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web design:

Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time

WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.

WordPress Themes - An Introduction

Additionally …

  • WordPress has a large community of commercial website developers who make thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
  • Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
  • A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can swap WP themes as often as you want without deleting your underlying content of your blog.
  • Many WordPress themes come with built-in functionality and settings that let you easily customize your site’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
  • Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
  • WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within your admin panel.
  • WP themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite affordable.

Responsive WordPress Themes

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

A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …

WordPress Themes - An Overview

Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load a site on all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional display elements.

Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of website design.

Hopefully, this post has given you a clearer overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize a site.

In the next article in the article WP beginners on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WordPress themes for your blog.

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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)

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