Flexible web publishing platforms like the WordPress CMS have truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is fantastic news for businesses wanting to start a web presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Before blogging and the development of powerful CMS tools, if you wanted to build a site for your business, you would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website design costs, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Revolution
More businesses will benefit from a tremendous revolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Let’s go over how things worked in “traditional” web development before tools like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to meet with a web developer or website designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This required time and money being spent with someone with website design skills going over elements of your website like the, colors, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and scripts coded around the content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed how it was supposed to (and looking the way a client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next stage in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to make web site creation faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web designers to service businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began adopting “template-based” web design services, templates started being introduced that provided a range of customizable options, like color palettes, the ability to specify different menu styles and header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As web sites and website building applications developed, web templates also began transforming into web templating “systems” that permitted website owners to manage their web site’s design elements.
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 the concept of a web templating system even further.
A WP theme controls and unifies every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site much like a web template system does but also gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of template options.
As WordPress describes in its official web 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, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your web site appears to site visitors on the outside is a different thing from your site’s content management settings.
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 like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your website in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without the need of web code development knowledge. Just choose a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like header images, layout, typography and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Because WordPress is open source software, professional website design companies can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP template system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WordPress themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from professional-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are beautiful and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, themes are quite inexpensive to purchase.
You can view a number of WordPress theme galleries that include various examples of WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing web development tools that require traditional website design:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme designers and design companies who make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This allows you swap WordPress themes as often as you like without modifying the site’s settings.
- Many themes provide additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize your theme’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes allow WordPress users to save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WP CMS platform.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display your site on a range of devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
Hopefully, the above overview has given you a better understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how themes make customizing sites easy.
In our next blog post in the article WordPress newbies on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best WP themes for your blog.
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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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