Flexible website publishing systems like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This greatly benefits businesses thinking of starting a web presence that they can manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the development of user-friendly CMS applications, if you needed to get a professional web site built for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting around!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they help you save money on website design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
A Revolution In Website Design
Businesses will benefit from a great change in web 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 your business thousands of dollars on website development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what used to happen before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. Next, the design had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time being spent with a professional web site designer going over things of the web site like the layout, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with the elements and codes written into your content. The pages were then assembled into a web site 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, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and performed how it was intended to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web site template allows the ”look and feel” of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped make the process of building websites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website developers and designers to work with small businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web development companies started adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being designed that could provide clients with a number of customizable features and options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing applications developed, website templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that let website owners and web designers control the design elements of a site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along and helped to start 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
WordPress themes push the concept of a website template system even further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site similarly to what a template system does but also gives you more control over the management, presentation and customization of your template options.
As per 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that how your website appears to site visitors is an entirely separate system from the management of your content.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without requiring web design skills. Just pick any theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WordPress are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes vary from bare-looking, to designs that are spectacular and could normally cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see a number of WP 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 using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Fast Installation
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin 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 site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial web designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This allows you swap themes as often as you want without affecting the site data.
- Many themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to easily customize your site’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically within the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load your site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your website displays well on all devices, 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 and coding.
I hope this overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize a site.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website, go here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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