The development of advanced web management systems like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses planning to start an online business presence that is simple and easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of advanced content management systems, if you needed a professional business site, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, even many months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how themes help your business save money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your site.
Evolution In Web Site Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a change in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a small business, you will want to know about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on web development or website design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website development company or web site designer. Next, the actual design itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional website designer going over design elements of the web site like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and scripts coded around the content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and 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 was performing the way it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed as being finished and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” came along”. Web templates allow the presentation of the website to be created separately from the page content. The development of templates helped make website development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development companies to expand their services to include small business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being created that could provide clients with a number of custom features, such as the option to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website building software evolved, website templates also started to transform into web templating “systems” that permit users to control the visual elements of a web site.
And then, 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
A WordPress theme pushes web template systems one step further.
The WordPress theme system controls every aspect of your website design. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site in a similar way that a web template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of all template features.
As WordPress describes 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 the above states, a unique feature of the WordPress theme is that the way your site displays to site visitors does not affect your site’s content management aspects.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have set up WordPress website for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is powered with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you like, and edit the entire 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 replace any theme on your site with no web code development skills required. Simply choose a theme you like, upload it to your site 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 minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of web designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WP users. Themes are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are breathtaking and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of great themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of quality WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to change WP themes as often as you want without deleting your website’s information.
- Many WP themes provide additional functionality and options that enable you to easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will display correctly on all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design coding.
I hope that the above article has given you a better overview of themes, what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how WordPress themes allow you to easily customize your site.
To learn where to search for great WP themes for your website or blog, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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