The development of flexible web site management applications like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for business users.
This is terrific news for entrepreneurial-minded people planning to run a website that is easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the development of sophisticated CMS applications, if you needed to get a professional website for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could mean waiting around for weeks, even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, you will learn what WP themes are, how themes help you save money, and how themes make it easy to customize your WordPress site.
A New Development In Web Design
Website owners are benefiting from a revolutionary change in website design that has been going for many years now. If you own a business, you may want to learn more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Very briefly, this is what used to happen before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a website development firm or web designer. After this, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required time being spent with a professional website designer discussing elements of your web site like the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be individually created with all the elements and scripts coded into your page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and functioned how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered as being completed and ready to go live.
The next step in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Website templates allow design elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped make the process of creating web sites faster and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed web site development companies to service businesses with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development companies started choosing “template-based” websites, web templates started being created that offered clients with various customizable features and options, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editing applications evolved, web templates also started transforming into website templating ”systems”, which allowed website owners and website developers to customize their web site’s visual components.
Then, 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes push the idea of a web template system much further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web site design. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site much like a website template system does but it also also gives you more control over the management, appearance and ability to customize all template settings.
As per 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 a WordPress theme is that the way your site appears to visitors in no way affects your site’s functional aspects (e.g. content management and functionality).
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the look and feel of your website as often as you want without modifying your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without having website coding knowledge. Simply pick any theme you like, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress lets you change your website design and modify elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, commercial website 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 WP users. Themes are generally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent web templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Free WordPress Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of uses.
Themes range from bare-looking, to designs that are visually spectacular and would normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view several theme galleries that include many examples of great premium themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional website design:
Quick & Easy Installation
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial web developers who contribute thousands of high quality WordPress Themes available to WordPress users. Thousands of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all of the blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This means you can swap themes as often as you want without changing your blog’s underlying settings.
- Many themes provide built-in functionality and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WordPress themes allow users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite affordable.
About Responsive WP Theme Design
Many theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design protocols.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and 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 navigate, read and display your site on all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional display elements.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your 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, practices and techniques of web design and web coding.
We hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes help you save money, and how WP themes make it easy to customize your website.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website or blog, click here:
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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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