The development of web site publishing systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly simplified web design and web development for users.
This is a great thing for businesses planning on getting a website that they can fully manage.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you wanted to build a professional web site for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we explore what WP themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your WP site.
A New Development In Website Design
More website owners today will benefit from a great change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you own a business, you will want to learn about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what used to happen before WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. After this, the actual design of your web site itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web designer going over areas of your web site such as the layout, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of your elements and codes written into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was working how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to have been completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of templates helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website developers to work with small businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, templates started being created that provided clients with a range of customization options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing software evolved, website templates also started to transform into web templating “systems” that let users and website developers manage the design components of a website.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new business website 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 improve website template systems much further.
The WP theme system controls the design aspects of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize template options.
As the official WordPress site states …
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 features of WordPress is that the way your website appears to visitors externally does not affect the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your website as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, 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 site to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then completely change the look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site with no web code development skills necessary. Simply choose any theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial web designers anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from minimal-looking, to elegant designs that are breathtaking and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be bought very cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of great WordPress themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using web building tools that require traditional web template design:
WordPress Theme Installation Is Easy & Simple
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of professional website designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to change WP themes as often as you want without affecting the website’s information.
- Many WP themes provide additional features and settings that enable you to easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right within the site’s administration interface.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most if not all device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will work correctly on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design coding.
We hope that this overview has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how they help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
In our next blog post in the article WP newbies on basic WP features, we show you where to search for great themes for your website.
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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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