Advanced web management systems like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This greatly benefits entrepreneurial-minded people planning on getting a website that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful content management systems, if you wanted to build a web site for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, we will explore what themes are, how WordPress themes save your business money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your website.
Web Site Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a revolutionary change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you may want to know about this, because it could save you a lot of time and money on web development and website design costs.
Let’s go over how things used to work in “traditional” website development before a CMS system like WordPress was developed:
First, you would meet with a website developer or web designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web design skills going over areas of your site such as the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with the elements and scripts coded into the page content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your website work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” were developed”. A web site template allows the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to make creating websites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website designers to work with smaller businesses and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began using “template-based” websites, web templates started being designed that could offer a range of customization features and options, like the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor software developed, web templates also began transforming into website template ”systems”, letting users manage their web site’s visual elements.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new content management revolution …
(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
A WordPress theme expands the idea of a web template system even further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template settings.
As the official WordPress site described it …
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 stated above, a unique feature of WordPress is that the way your website displays to visitors on the outside in no way affects your site’s content management settings.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WP theme lets you modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your website has been set up 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, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site without requiring web design skills. Just pick a WP theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional web designers from all over 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 WP users. Themes are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from functional-looking, to stylish designs that are simply breathtaking and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought quite inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing many examples of WordPress themes in this post:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional website design:
Really Easy To Install
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your site as often as you need without deleting your settings.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize the theme’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive WP Theme Design
Many WP theme developers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme enables 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. computers, iPads, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website works on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and web coding.
Hopefully, the above article has given you a better overview of themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes help you save money on web design costs, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In our next article in the article series for new WordPress users on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WordPress themes for your blog.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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