Flexible website publishing platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have truly improved web design and web development for business owners.
This is a great thing for businesses wanting to start a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful CMS technologies, if you wanted to get a professional site built for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, we explain what themes are, how themes can help you save money on web development costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your website.
A New Development In Web Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, will benefit from a revolution in website design that started several years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to know more about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened before tools like WordPress were introduced:
The first step would be to meet with a web development agency or designer for a brief. After this, the design itself had to be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional web designer going over design elements of your site such as the layout, colours, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all the elements and scripts coded into your page content. All the pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it was supposed to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been completed and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web template allows presentation elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. Having template elements helped make website development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site developers to expand their services to include small business clients and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development companies started choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates were introduced that offered clients with a number of customizable options, like color palettes, the ability to specify different content styles and elements, etc …
As web sites and website building tools developed, website templates also began evolving into web template “systems” that let website owners and web designers customize their site’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” tool called 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
A WordPress theme pushes website template systems one step further.
A WordPress theme controls all of the design areas of the web site. It lets you add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management 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 stated above, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that the way your web site appears to site visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you change the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site 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, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use 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 completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website code editing skills necessary. Just choose a WordPress theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, web design companies from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great web templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WP themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are visually beautiful and could easily cost thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most WP themes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits & Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Ready To Use In Minutes
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of commercial web designers and design companies who make thousands of quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you want without modifying the settings.
- Many WP themes provide 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 WP themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load the site on most device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of web design coding.
Hopefully, this article has given you a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how they can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WordPress themes make customizing web sites easy.
In the next article on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to find the best themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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