The introduction of advanced web management applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is fantastic news for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of building a digital presence that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of user-friendly content management systems, if you wanted a web site, you normally had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money, and how themes help you easily customize your WP site.
Revolutionary Web Site Design
More businesses today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in website design that started a number of years ago. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things used to work in “traditional” web design before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development firm or designer for a brief. Next, the “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time being spent with a professional website designer discussing elements of the site such as the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and scripts coded around your content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks 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 once everything had been tested and performed the way it was supposed to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being finished and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the ”look and feel” of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web site development companies to work with businesses with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began using “template-based” websites, web templates were developed that provided clients with different customizable features and options, like colour palettes, the ability to select different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, web templates also began transforming into website template ”systems”, which enabled website owners and website designers to control their website’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme expands website templating systems one step further.
The WordPress theme system controls the design elements of your web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a website template system does but it gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization of 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 in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that the way your web site looks to site visitors in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
Basically, what this means is that you can change the design of your website as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WP website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such great news for small businesses?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without needing any web coding skills. Just choose any theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, typography and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WP users. Themes are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are beautiful and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, WordPress themes are really inexpensive.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing many examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional website developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all of the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This makes it possible to swap WP themes as often as you want without deleting your site’s settings.
- Many WP themes provide additional built-in features and options that let you customize your site’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from the site’s administration interface.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on website design costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design protocols.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load a site on a range of device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will display correctly across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and web coding.
I hope that this overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WP themes help your business save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your web site.
To learn where to search for great themes for your website, see this post: How To Find The Best Free And Paid WordPress Web Themes For Your Business Web Site Or Blog.
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