Powerful content management applications like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits non-technical users planning to run an online business presence that they can easily manage themselves.
Before blogging and the introduction of user-friendly CMS solutions, if you needed a professional website, you typically had to wait until both the web development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this article, you will learn what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money on website design costs, and how themes let you easily customize your WP site.
Web Design Revolution
Businesses, especially small businesses, have benefited from a tremendous change in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you are a small business owner, you will want to learn about this, because it could save your business thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what used to happen before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site development agency or designer. After that, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This required spending time and money with a professional web site designer discussing elements of your site such as the layout, colours, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and codes scripted into the content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files required to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed how it should (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the web site deemed to have been completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Website templates allow ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The development of templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website development companies to service business clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began choosing “template-based” websites, templates were introduced to provide various customizable features and options, like the ability to switch colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor tools developed, website templates also began evolving into website templating ”systems”, enabling users to customize their site’s visual elements.
Then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was developed 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:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes push the idea of a website templating system much further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies all of the design areas of a web site. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but also provides you with more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize your site’s template options.
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 stated above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your website displays to visitors is a different thing from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the design of your site as much and as often as you want without touching your website’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any WordPress theme you want, and completely customize the look, feel and design of your site in a few minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no web code programming knowledge required. Just pick any WordPress theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your entire site’s web design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of website designers all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are generally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider range of applications.
WP themes vary from professional-looking, to quirky designs that are simply stunning and would normally cost thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, most premium themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can see a number of theme galleries containing various examples of WordPress themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Fast & Easy Installation
WP themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of professional theme developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of great WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This allows you swap themes as often as you like without disturbing your underlying content.
- Many themes provide additional functionality and options that allow you to easily customize your theme’s style and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that lets users upgrade themes to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from the site’s administration interface.
- WP themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are typically very inexpensive.
Responsive Themes
Many WP theme designers are now developing WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load your site on most if not all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner 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 website displays well on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of web design and web coding.
We hope the above article has given you a clearer overview of WP themes, what themes are, how WordPress themes help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your site.
To learn where to find great themes for your website, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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