The introduction of content management tools like the WordPress CMS has truly simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits businesses planning to start a web presence that is relatively easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of advanced CMS solutions, if you needed a website, you would have to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what themes are, how they can help your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize your site.
Website Design Revolution
Website owners are benefiting from a change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you are a business owner, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, here’s what typically took place before applications like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website developer or web site designer for a brief. After that, the design of the site would be discussed and agreed upon. This required time being spent with someone with web site design skills discussing areas of the site like the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with the elements and scripts coded around your content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was performing how it was supposed to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web site template allows the presentation of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped to speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also allowed web site designers to service business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development companies choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates were developed that offered a number of custom options, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and website editing tools developed, web templates also began evolving into web template ”systems”, letting users manage the design elements of a web site.
And then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off 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:
The WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme drives the concept of a web templating system even further.
The WP theme system controls the design aspects of your web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site much like a template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of the site’s template features.
As WordPress has explained 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, one of the unique features of the WP theme is that how your site displays to site visitors is managed separately from how your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you change the design of your website as often as you like without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your site is built with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WP theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code programming skills required. Simply pick any WordPress theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, thousands of website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WP themes range from functional-looking, to exciting designs that are simply breathtaking and would easily cost hundreds to many thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when compared to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing stunning examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits & Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using applications that require traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial theme designers who, collectively, contribute thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% 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 site’s content. This means you can change the “look and feel” of your website as often as you want without modifying the site’s information.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional features and options that allow you to customize your site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Themes
Many WP theme developers are now developing WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. computers, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load your site on most device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site works on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design coding.
We hope the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next article in our article series for new WP users on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to search for great themes for your blog.
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***