Advanced content management platforms like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for non-technical users planning to start an online presence that they can easily manage.
Before blogging and the development of user-friendly CMS software, if you needed a professional business web site, you typically had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, even months of waiting!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we take a look at what themes are, how WP themes help you and your business save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes let you easily customize your site.
A Revolution In Website Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, are benefiting from a great change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a small business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it can save you a lot of time and money on website development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things used to work in “traditional” website design before tools like WordPress were developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a web site developer or designer. Next, the “web design” itself had to be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional website designer discussing elements of your web site like the layout, colours, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all your elements and scripts coded around your page content. All of the pages were then assembled together into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and worked the way it was supposed to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site considered to be completed and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templates”. A web site template allows ”look and feel” elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having template elements helped to speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site development agencies to work with businesses and clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more website development companies began using “template-based” web design services, templates started being created that could offer expanding customizable options, like the option to switch colors, styles, layouts
As websites and website building applications developed, website templates also began transforming into web templating “systems” that let website owners customize their web site’s visual aspects.
And then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was introduced and helped to kick off a new online publishing 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 push the idea of a web templating system much further.
A WP theme controls and unifies every aspect of your web design. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a website template system does but also provides users with complete control over the management and ability to customize template settings.
As WordPress explains in its official web 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 states, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your site displays to site visitors is kept independent of the management of your content.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your website as often as you want without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such great news for small businesses?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website design to be completed. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and then modify the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website code programming knowledge necessary. Simply choose any WP theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
As WordPress is open source software, hundreds of web design companies all around the world can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WP are generally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great themes completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from corporate-looking, to designs that are visually beautiful and could normally cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium WordPress themes can be purchased very cheaply, especially when you compare the price to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to create it from scratch.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing various examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over using tools that require traditional website design:
Easy To Install
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WordPress site’s admin area.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers and development companies who contribute thousands of professional WP Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent look across all the site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap themes as often as you need without disturbing your site’s underlying information.
- Many themes come with built-in features and options that enable you to customize the theme’s layout, style and design properties to create a unique look to suit your preferences.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that allows you to upgrade the theme to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically quite affordable.
About Responsive Themes
Many theme designers are now developing “responsive” WordPress themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically resize to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and load a site on a range of devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to have installed additional display elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site works across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design coding.
Hopefully, this overview has helped you gain a better understanding of WP themes, what WP themes are, how WordPress themes help you save money, and how themes make customizing web sites easy.
In our next blog post on understanding basic WP features, we show you where to search for the best WP themes for your 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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