Flexible web publishing systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to start a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you wanted to build a professional site built for your business, you normally had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This could take weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they save you money on web development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your WP site.
A New Development In Website Design
More website owners today are benefiting from a tremendous change in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you will want to learn more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things worked in “traditional” website design before WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site development company or web site designer. Next, the actual design of the web site itself would be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional web designer discussing areas of your site like the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and codes written into the page content. All pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was working how it was intended to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped make building web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website developers and designers to service business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, web templates started being developed that could provide various customization features, like colour palettes, the ability to specify different styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, page layouts, and so on.
As websites and website building software developed, web templates also started to transform into web templating ”systems”, letting website owners control the design aspects of their website.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off 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
WordPress themes expand the concept of a website template system further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management and ability to customize the 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, a unique and revolutionary feature of a WordPress theme is that how your web site looks to visitors in no way affects the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you change the appearance of your website as much and 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 your site 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 the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without having web design skills. Simply pick a WordPress theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, page layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, web designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU 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 website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from professional-looking, to clever designs that are quite beautiful and would normally cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most premium themes are fairly inexpensive to buy.
You can see several WP theme galleries that include various examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using website development tools that require traditional web design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme designers and design companies who contribute thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to swap themes as often as you want without deleting the underlying content.
- Many themes come with additional features and settings that enable you to customize your site’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within the admin panel.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site displays well across all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design.
I hope the above overview has given you a better understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your web site.
To learn where to find the best themes for your blog, visit this post: Where To Look For Great Premium And Free Responsive WordPress Web Templates Online.
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