Powerful web management technologies like WordPress have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for businesses thinking about starting a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before blogging and the development of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to get a site for your business, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean waiting around for many weeks, even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how WP themes can help your business save money, and how WP themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Evolution In Web Design
More businesses are benefiting from a great change in web design that started a number of years ago. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what used to happen before WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a web development firm or web site designer. Next, the actual “web design” had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with someone with web site design skills going over things of the website such as the layout, colors, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the design elements and codes scripted into your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together 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 worked the way it was supposed to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web templates allow the design of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website designers to service business clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were developed that could provide clients with expanding custom settings, such as the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editor applications developed, web templates also began to transform into website templating “systems” that permitted users to manage the design elements of their site.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes drive website templating systems much further.
The WP theme system controls and unifies the design aspects of the web site. It allows you to add a “skin” to your site much like a web template system does but also provides users with more control over the management and customization of template settings.
As the official WordPress site 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 the above states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WP theme is that how your web site looks to site visitors externally in no way affects how your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your site as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website 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 and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your WordPress site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WordPress site with no web coding knowledge required. Just pick a theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Because WordPress is open source software, web designers from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great WP themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of WordPress site owners.
WP themes vary from minimal-looking, to quirky designs that are quite breathtaking and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, WP themes can be purchased fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Go To Work In No Time
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial web developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all of your blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can replace the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you need without modifying your blog settings.
- Many themes come with additional features and settings that allow you to easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets you upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing any unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WP CMS.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display the site on a range of devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
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 web site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
I hope this post has given you a good understanding of WordPress themes, what themes are, how they help your business save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your web site.
In the next article on basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great themes for your website or blog.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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