The development of content publishing systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for non-technical users thinking of building a website that they can easily manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you wanted to build a site for your business, you typically had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting for many weeks, even months!
The development of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
The Evolution Of Web Site Design
More website owners today have benefited from a great change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s go over how things worked in “traditional” website design before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website development firm or designer for a brief. After this, the design had to be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with website design skills discussing things of your web site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all your design elements and scripts coded into your content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the website considered to be finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped to speed up the web development process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site designers to service small business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development agencies began adopting “template-based” websites, templates were designed that offered expanding custom options, such as color palettes, the ability to specify different page layouts or styles, etc …
As websites and web editor software developed, website templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that allow website owners and web designers to control the design components of their site.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new web 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 website templating system one step further.
The WP theme system controls the design areas of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all 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 quote states, a unique feature of WordPress is that the way your site looks to visitors in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the design of your website as often as you want 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 web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring any web coding skills. Simply pick any WP theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of website design companies anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from professional-looking, to quirky designs that are simply breathtaking and would easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most themes are quite inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of WP theme galleries containing various examples of great WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using web development tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Use In No Time
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you change WordPress themes as often as you want without affecting your blog content.
- Many WP themes come with additional features and settings that let you customize the site’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically within the admin panel.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display your site on most if not all devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design.
I hope that the above article has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize a website.
In our next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find great 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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