The introduction of advanced website management systems like the WordPress CMS has truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This is a great thing for individuals or businesses planning to build a website that they can easily manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed to get a web site built for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean waiting for weeks, even many months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a small business, you will want to know about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what used to happen before a CMS application like WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site development firm or designer. Then, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required time being spent with a professional web designer going over things of your web site like the layout, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with your design elements and scripts coded around the content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templates”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped speed up the web creation process and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site designers to service small business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, templates were developed that could provide clients with various customization settings, like colour palettes, the ability to pick different menu styles and content styles, and so on.
As websites and web editing software developed, website templates also started evolving into web template ”systems”, letting website owners customize their website’s visual aspects.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed and helped to start a new web revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme pushes the idea of a website templating system even further.
A WP theme controls the design elements of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but it provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize the site’s template features.
As per the official WordPress 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 in the quote above, a unique and revolutionary feature of the WP theme is that the way your web site appears to site visitors is kept independent of how your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that you can change the design of your site as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your site in seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring web code programming skills. Just pick a WP theme you want, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WP users. WordPress are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WordPress themes range from simple-looking, to jaw-dropping designs that are quite breathtaking and would normally cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WP themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can see several WordPress theme galleries that include many examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Themes
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing web building applications that require traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of professional website designers who make thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layouts, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your blog’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your site as often as you need without changing your underlying content of your web site.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in features and options that let you easily customize your theme’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- WP themes allow WP users to save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load a site on a range of device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of web design coding.
We hope that this overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of WP themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your web site.
In the next blog post on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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