The development of website publishing technologies like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly improved web design and web development for business users.
This is great for non-technical users that want to own a digital presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Before blogging and the development of user-friendly CMS technologies, if you wanted a professional web site, you typically had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we will explore what WordPress themes are, how they save your business money on website design costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your site.
The Evolution Of Web Design
More businesses today are benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things worked in “traditional” web design before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a web development company or web site designer. After that, the design would be decided upon. This involved spending time with someone with web site design skills going over design elements of your website like the, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and scripts coded into your page content. The pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked how it should (and looking how a client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed to be completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website designers to expand their services to include small business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development agencies using “template-based” websites increased, templates were developed to offer clients with various customizable settings, like the ability to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing tools developed, web templates also started to evolve into web templating “systems” that enable users and website designers to control the visual elements of their website.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new digital 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme drives website templating systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies all of the design areas of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a website template system does but it provides you with more control over the management and customization aspects of template options.
As explained in the official WordPress site …
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 WordPress is that the way your web site appears to site visitors on the outside is a separate thing from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your website is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built simply and start with any WordPress theme you like, and then completely edit 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 replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web code development skills required. Simply choose a theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WordPress are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are simply breathtaking and would normally cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries that include various examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of WordPress Themes
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
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme designers and design companies who contribute thousands of professional WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you replace WordPress themes as often as you need without disturbing your underlying content of your blog.
- Many themes come with additional features and settings that allow you to customize your theme’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load your site on a range of devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site works across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design and coding.
I hope this basic overview has given you a better understanding about WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how WordPress themes can help you save money, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your web site.
In the next blog post in our article WP newbies on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best themes for your website.
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
***