Advanced web management tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is great news for business owners planning to start an online presence that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use CMS technologies, if you wanted a professional business web site, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how themes help your business save money, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
Evolution In Web Site Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, have been benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things used to work in “traditional” website development before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a website development agency or web site designer for a brief. Next, the actual “web design” would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with website design skills going over things of your web site such as the layout, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the elements and codes written into the content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file required to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and functioned the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to have been completed and ready to go live.
Then, web design “templates” were introduced”. A website template allows presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of templates helped to make web site creation faster and resulted in lowered production costs. This also enabled web site developers and designers to work with small business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of businesses using “template-based” websites increased, web templates were introduced that could offer various custom features, such as the ability to choose different colors, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing software evolved, web templates also started to evolve into website template “systems” that enabled website owners to control their web site’s visual elements.
Then, WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new website 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 push website templating systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls and unifies all of the design areas of the website. It lets you add a “skin” over your site much like a web template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management and customization of all template features.
As the official WordPress site described 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 above, one of the unique features of WordPress is that how your web site displays to visitors is an entirely separate system from the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your site as often as you like without modifying your website’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 your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your site to be completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and customize the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without needing website coding skills. Just choose any theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional website designers can design themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from simple-looking, to designs that are impressive and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, WP themes are quite inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of theme galleries that include stunning examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing web development tools that require traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial website developers and development companies who contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to WP 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, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can replace WP themes as often as you need without disturbing your site’s underlying data.
- Many themes provide additional built-in features and settings that enable you to customize your theme’s style, layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from the dashboard.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes for the WordPress CMS platform.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on all devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design and web coding.
I hope that the above article has given you a better understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website or 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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