The development of content publishing systems like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is great for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of starting a website that they can manage themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of easy-to-use content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional website built for your business, you typically would have to wait until both the website development and website design processes were fully completed. This could mean weeks, even sometimes months of waiting for the work to be done!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we look at what themes are, how themes save you and your business money on web design costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
The Evolution Of Website Design
More businesses today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a business, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly go over how things used to work in “traditional” web development before WordPress was introduced:
First, you would meet with a website developer or designer for a brief. Then, the “web design” itself would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with someone with web site design skills discussing areas of the web site like the, colours, styles, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be hand-coded with the elements and codes inserted into the content. All pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked the way it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the web site considered as being finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of web design was the introduction of “web templates”. Web templates allow presentation elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped make web site creation faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web designers to expand their services to include business clients with less money to spend on marketing …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses began choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates were introduced that offered various customization features and options, like color palettes, the ability to pick different formats and page layouts, etc …
As web sites and web editing applications evolved, web templates also began to evolve into website template “systems” that let website owners and web designers customize their site’s design components.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along 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 drive the concept of a website template system one step further.
A WP theme controls every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site in a similar way that a template system does but also gives you more control over the management, presentation and ability to customize all template settings.
As WordPress 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, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that how your web site appears to visitors does not affect the way your content is managed.
Basically, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the appearance of your site as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any WP theme you like, and change the entire look, feel and design of your website in seconds, whenever you choose … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring any website code development skills. Just choose any WordPress theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like headers, layout, styling options and more in less than a few minutes …
As WordPress is distributed as open source software, thousands of web designers can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of great WP themes are made available to WordPress users. WP are generally distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of great website templates at $0 cost …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more users turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now starting to create themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes vary from minimal-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and could normally cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most themes are very inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries that include many examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator account 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 community of professional website developers who, collectively, make thousands of excellent WP Themes available to WP users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all of your blog’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to change the “look and feel” of your templates as often as you want without affecting your site’s information.
- Many themes provide additional built-in features and options that allow you to easily customize the site’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables you to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from the admin panel.
- Themes allow WordPress users to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are normally quite inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many theme developers are now developing “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, iPads, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can scroll, read and load the site on all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When purchasing WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well on all of your visitors’ devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards of website design coding.
Hopefully, this overview has helped you gain a clearer understanding of themes, what themes are, how they can help you save money on web development costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your web site.
To learn where to find great themes for your blog, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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