The introduction of flexible content publishing applications like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has effectively simplified web design and web development for web users.
This greatly benefits businesses that want to own a website that is relatively simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed to build a professional web site built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean weeks, sometimes even months of waiting around!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this article, you will learn what WP themes are, how they save you money on website design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your site.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More website owners today have been benefiting from a tremendous revolution in web design that started a number of years ago. If you own a business, you will want to learn about this, because it can save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over what happened before applications like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a web development agency or designer. After that, the design of the web site itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This required time being spent with a professional web site designer discussing elements of your website like the, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your design elements and scripts coded into the page content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your website work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and was performing how it should (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to have been completed and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web site template allows the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to make the process of developing web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also enabled website development companies to expand their services to include smaller business clients and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were introduced that offered various customizable features and options, like the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web building software evolved, web templates also started transforming into website templating ”systems”, letting website owners control their website’s visual aspects.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress came along 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:
About WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme expands web template systems further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies all of the design aspects of the website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a website template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, presentation and customization of the template options.
According to 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 the above quote states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that how your site displays to visitors does not affect the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website 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 you have configured WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and then change the entire look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you want … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WP site without requiring any web code editing skills. Simply pick any WP theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, thousands of website designers from all over the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WP template system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. WP are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of uses.
WordPress themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are breathtaking and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought fairly cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include various examples of WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing applications that require traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional web designers and design companies who contribute thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to users. And many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you like without deleting your underlying content.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in features and options that let you easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to upgrade themes to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very affordable.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme designers are now developing themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load your site on a range of device browsers without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site works on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
I hope this overview has given you a clearer understanding about themes, what themes are, how they can help your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize a website.
To learn where to find the best WordPress themes for your website, go here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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