The introduction of flexible web site management applications like WordPress has effectively simplified web design and web development for business owners.
This greatly benefits non-technical users thinking of starting a website that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated CMS technologies, if you needed to get a website built for your business, you would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how WordPress themes can help your business save money, and how themes let you easily customize your WP site.
Web Site Design Revolution
More businesses will benefit from an evolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you own a business, you may want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
Let’s briefly review how things worked in “traditional” website development before WordPress were introduced:
First, you would meet with a web development firm or website designer for a brief. Then, the actual ”look and feel” of the site would be decided upon. This involved spending time with someone with web design skills going over areas of your website such as the layout, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with your design elements and scripts coded around your content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and was functioning the way it should (and looking the way a client had wanted it to look), was the website considered to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next phase in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows the presentation of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The development of templates helped to make the process of site creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed website designers to expand their services to include businesses with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses using “template-based” websites increased, templates were introduced that provided clients with various customizable features, such as colour palettes, the ability to pick different menu styles, formats, header, footer and navigation elements, layouts, and so on.
As websites and web editor applications developed, web templates also started to evolve into website template ”systems”, which allowed website owners and web designers to customize their site’s design aspects.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress came along and helped to start 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes expand the concept of a web template system much further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize all 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 in the quote above, a unique feature of WordPress is that the way your site looks to visitors on the outside is a separate thing from your site’s content management settings.
Basically, what this means is that themes let you modify the design of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WordPress website has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this important?
Because with WordPress, you no longer need to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and get started with any theme you like, and edit the entire look, feel and design of your site in mere minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your site with no website coding knowledge necessary. Simply choose any WordPress theme you want, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like header images, page layout, style settings and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website designers all around the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (i.e. paid) themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of excellent WordPress themes at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Theme Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now starting to develop themes for a wider range of users.
WP themes vary from corporate-looking, to creative designs that are quite breathtaking and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes can be bought quite cheaply, especially when you compare the cost to what you would have been charged if a website designer had to build it from scratch.
You can view several WP theme galleries containing many examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using traditional web design:
Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers who, collectively, contribute thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all of your site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your web site’s content. This allows you replace themes as often as you like without disturbing the site information.
- Many WordPress themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that let you customize your site’s style, layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically right inside your dashboard.
- WP themes helps you save hundreds of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating WP themes that incorporate “responsive” design standards.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically resize to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and load a site on various devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will display correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards and practices of web design.
We hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how themes can help your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes make customizing your web design easy.
In the next article in the article WordPress newbies on understanding basic WordPress features, we show you where to find the best WordPress 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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