Powerful web site management platforms like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for business users.
This is great for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start or build a website that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use CMS solutions, if you needed a website, you typically 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 months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes save you money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
Web Site Design Revolution
Website owners are benefiting from a revolutionary change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what used to happen before CMS solutions like WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web development company or website designer. Next, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This required spending time with a professional web site designer going over elements of the site like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your site then had to be individually created with the elements and codes scripted into your page content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the site considered to be finished and ready for delivery.
The next stage in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Website templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of ready-made templates helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web development agencies to expand their services to include smaller business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates were designed that could offer various customizable features and options, such as the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor tools evolved, website templates also started to transform into website templating “systems” that permitted website owners to control the visual aspects of their website.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new 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
WordPress themes expand web templating systems one step further.
A WP theme controls and unifies the design elements of your website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a website template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize all template options.
As WordPress has stated in its official 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 above, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that the way your website appears to site visitors does not affect the way your website works internally to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify 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 your website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you like, and then completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no web code programming knowledge required. Simply pick a theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, web design companies anywhere in the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress 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 (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are quite spectacular and could typically cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to develop it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WP themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing 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 WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to change WordPress themes as often as you need without disturbing the settings.
- Many WordPress themes come with built-in functionality and options that allow you to easily customize your site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside the admin panel.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally quite affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many theme developers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display your site on different device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
We hope the above article has given you a clearer understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help you and your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize a site.
In the next blog post in the article series on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website.
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