The introduction of powerful web management applications like WordPress has truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting to start a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people wanting to start a web presence that they can fully manage by themselves.
Before blogging and the development of user-friendly CMS software, if you needed to build a professional website built for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your website.
A New Development In Web Site Design
Businesses will benefit from a great change in web design that has been going for many years now. If you own a small business, you may want to learn about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or website design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web site development firm or designer. After this, the actual ”look and feel” of your website itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This meant time being spent with someone with web design skills going over elements of the site like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be individually created with the elements and codes inserted into your content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned how it should (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed as being finished and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Website templates allow design elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. The introduction of template elements helped make site creation faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled website development firms to work with small businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development firms choosing “template-based” web design services increased, templates were developed that provided clients with different customizable settings, such as color palettes, the ability to pick different page layouts or header, footer and navigation elements, and so on.
As websites and web building tools developed, web templates also started transforming into web templating ”systems”, allowing website owners to control their website’s design elements.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to start a new business 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:
WordPress Themes
WordPress themes expand web templating systems further.
A WordPress theme controls every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” to your site much like a template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, appearance and customization aspects of the template features.
As the official WordPress site 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 the above states, a unique feature of WordPress is that the way your site looks to site visitors is controlled separately from the way your website works in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that WP themes let you modify the look and feel of your website 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 WP website has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site without the need of website code programming skills. Simply choose a WP theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, page layout, typography and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that thousands of great WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Free WP Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from corporate-looking, to designs that are quite beautiful and could normally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes are really inexpensive.
You can view several WP theme galleries that include stunning examples of WordPress themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Fast & Easy Installation
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your admin account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of professional website designers who contribute thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This means you can replace WordPress themes as often as you like without affecting the underlying content.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional built-in features and options that enable you to customize the site’s style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically right inside your site’s administration interface.
- Themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WP themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally very affordable.
Responsive WordPress Themes
Many WordPress theme designers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and load your site on most devices without having to resize anything, or requiring website owners to install additional themes.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design.
Hopefully, this article has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WP themes are, how themes can help your business save money on web design costs, and how themes let you easily customize a website.
In our next article in the article WP beginners on basic WordPress features, we show you where to search for the best themes for your website or blog.
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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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