The development of content management systems like WordPress has truly simplified web design and web development for website owners.
This is great news for individuals or businesses planning on getting a digital presence that is simple and easy to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed to get a professional website built for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could take weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, we explore what themes are, how they save your business money on web development costs, and how themes help you easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Web Site Design
More website owners have been benefiting from a tremendous change in web design that has been going for several years now. If you are a small business owner, you will want to know about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what happened before CMS systems like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web development firm or website designer for a brief. After this, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional website designer going over elements of the site such as the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all your elements and codes scripted into your page content. The pages were then assembled together into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and performed the way it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed as being completed and ready for delivery.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. A web template allows presentation elements of the website to be worked on separately from content on the page. Having ready-made templates helped to make the process of website creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website development firms to work with smaller businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web development firms adopting “template-based” web design services increased, web templates were created to provide different customizable options, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web editor software developed, web templates also started to transform into web templating ”systems”, letting website owners and website designers manage their site’s design elements.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new content management 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 take website template systems even further.
A WordPress theme controls all of the design aspects of a website. It lets you add a “skin” to your site much like a website template system does but it provides you with complete control over the management, appearance and customization of the site’s template options.
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 stated in the quote above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that how your web site appears to visitors externally is kept independent of how your website is configured in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that WP themes let you change the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up your site for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, 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 site to be completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you like, and then edit the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site with no web code programming skills required. Just choose any theme you like, install it on your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your entire site’s web design and modify elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are normally distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE directory of WP themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
WordPress themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are stunning and could easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can view several theme galleries containing many examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of WP Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing website building tools that require traditional website design:
WP Theme Installation Is Easy, Simple And Quick
Themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional website designers who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This makes it possible to replace the “look and feel” of your website as often as you want without deleting the site’s underlying information.
- Many WordPress themes provide additional functionality and settings that allow you to customize the theme’s style, layout and design elements and create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to update the theme to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your site’s administration interface.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive WP Themes
Many theme developers are now creating WordPress themes that incorporate “responsive” functionality.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically resize to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display a site on all device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
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 your web site works across all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of web design.
We hope this post has provided you with a better overview of WordPress themes, what themes are, how themes help you save money, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your website.
To learn where to find great WordPress themes for your blog, see this page: Where To Get The Best Premium And Free WordPress Web Templates On The Web.
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