Advanced web management platforms like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of running a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we explain what themes are, how they save your business money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Evolution In Web Site Design
More businesses today are benefiting from a change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things typically worked in “traditional” website development before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website development agency or web designer for a brief. After that, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This required time being spent with a professional web site designer going over areas of the website such as the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your elements and codes written into your content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to be finished and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Web templates allow the design of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web developers to service businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development companies began using “template-based” web design services, templates were designed to provide clients with expanding customizable features, such as the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and web editor applications developed, web templates also started to evolve into website template “systems” that let website owners control their site’s visual aspects.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to start 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
WordPress themes push web templating systems much further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but it also also provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the template options.
As WordPress puts 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, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your site displays to visitors externally is managed separately from how your site is configured internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the look and feel of your website 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 your website has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such great news for small business owners?
Because when your site is built using WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site without having web design skills. Simply choose a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, web design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes range from professional-looking, to exciting designs that are simply spectacular and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial web designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to replace WordPress themes as often as you need without affecting the site’s underlying settings.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in functionality and options that let you customize the site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load your site on different device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners 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 the content and layout of your site will display correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
I hope that this overview has given you a better understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes can help you save money, and how WP themes make customizing websites easy.
In the next article in the article series on basic WP features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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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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