The development of powerful web publishing systems like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively improved web design and web development for users.
This is great news for businesses planning to start a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of user-friendly CMS tools, if you needed a professional site, you normally would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
The introduction of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes let you easily customize your website.
Web Design Evolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from an evolution in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you may want to know more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s how things used to work in “traditional” website design before WordPress were developed:
First, you would discuss your requirements with a website developer or web site designer. Next, the actual design of your web site itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time and money being spent with a professional web designer going over areas of your website like the layout, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes inserted into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and was working how it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to have been completed and ready for sign off.
Then, website “templates” were developed”. A website template allows design elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having templates helped to make creating websites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web site developers and designers to work with businesses and clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were introduced to provide a number of custom features and options, like color palettes, the ability to pick different menu styles or layouts, etc …
As web sites and website editing tools evolved, web templates also began evolving into web templating ”systems”, permitting website owners and website designers to manage their web site’s visual elements.
And then, WordPress was developed 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes take the idea of a web templating system further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates the design areas of your website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site similarly to what a template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template features.
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 in the quote above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that how your web site looks to site visitors is kept independent of your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In plain English terms, what this means is that WordPress themes let you modify the appearance of your site as much and as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if WordPress site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the 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 important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and modify the entire look, feel and design of your website 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 coding skills. Simply pick a theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is made available as open source software, professional web designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are quite spectacular and could normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most themes can be bought very inexpensively, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a web designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view several theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using WP Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using web building tools that require traditional web design:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, make thousands of quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you like without disturbing the website’s underlying content.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and settings that enable you to easily customize your theme’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows you to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside your dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” themes for WordPress.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load a site on all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional browser elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website displays well on 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 website design.
Hopefully, the above overview has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WordPress themes are, how they can help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your site.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your website or blog, visit this post: Finding Great Free And Paid Responsive WordPress Web Themes Online.
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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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