Flexible web publishing systems like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start a digital presence that they can fully manage by themselves.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful and effective content management systems, if you needed to get a website built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting around for weeks, sometimes even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, we look at what WP themes are, how they can help you and your business save money, and how themes help you easily customize your WP site.
Web Design Evolution
More businesses are benefiting from a great change in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a small business owner, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is how things used to work in “traditional” web development before solutions like WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. After that, the actual “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This meant spending time with a professional website designer going over elements of your web site like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be individually created with the elements and scripts coded around your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was performing the way it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to be completed and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A website template allows the design of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to make site creation faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web developers and designers to service businesses with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development firms choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates were introduced to offer different customization settings, such as the option to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor software developed, web templates also began evolving into website template ”systems”, letting users and website developers customize their website’s visual elements.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new online publishing revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push the concept of a web template system much further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates all of the design areas of a website. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization of template settings.
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 the above states, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WP theme is that the way your website looks to visitors externally is managed independently of the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing any website code programming skills. Simply choose any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, hundreds of web designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from minimal-looking, to designs that are visually stunning and could typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased very inexpensively, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WP Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional website design:
Fast Installation
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of commercial website designers who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without affecting your underlying content of your blog.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in features and options that allow you to customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, 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 downloading 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 across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design coding.
We hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing websites easy.
In our next article on understanding basic WP features, we show you where to find great 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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