The development of powerful website publishing platforms like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) has truly improved web design and web development for business users.
This is great for business owners that want to own a website that they can manage by themselves.
Prior to “blogging” and the development of powerful CMS solutions, if you wanted to build a website for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and website design processes were completely done. This process could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting!
The introduction of WordPress themes changed all this. In this post, you will learn what WP themes are, how they save you and your business money on web design costs, and how WordPress themes make it easy to customize your website.
Website Design Evolution
Businesses are benefiting from a tremendous revolution in website design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a small business, you will want to know about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
Let’s review what happened before WordPress was developed:
The first step would be to discuss your project with a website developer or designer. After that, the actual “web design” itself would be decided upon. This required spending time and money with someone with web design skills discussing elements of the web site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of the elements and scripts coded around the content. All of the pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your website work – script libraries, graphic images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything passed testing and performed the way it was supposed to (and looking the way the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready to go live.
Then, website “templates” were introduced”. A website template allows the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from the page content. The introduction of ready-made templates helped to speed up the website creation process and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web designers to expand their services to include businesses and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of small businesses choosing “template-based” websites increased, templates started being developed to provide various custom settings, like the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and web building tools developed, web templates also started evolving into website templating ”systems”, which allowed users and website developers to manage the visual elements of a website.
And then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along 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 concept of a web template system much further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates the design elements of your website. It lets you add a “skin” over your site in a similar way that a template system does but it gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize template settings.
As the official WordPress site described 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 the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of the WordPress theme is that the way your site looks to visitors is kept independent of the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as often as you like without touching your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have set up WP site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this great for small business owners?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you like, and then completely modify the look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as many times as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no website coding skills required. Just choose any theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more in minutes …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, web design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that thousands of high quality WP themes are made available to WP users. WP are usually distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE theme directory which gives WordPress users access thousands of excellent website templates completely free of charge …
(WordPress.org – WordPress Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for online publishing, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are spectacular and could normally cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to commission. Surprisingly, themes are very inexpensive.
You can view a number of theme galleries containing stunning examples of great themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress themes over using web development applications that require traditional website design:
Easy, Fast & Simple To Install
WordPress themes are really easy to install on your site. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator account and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the themes repository at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving community of commercial theme developers and development companies who make thousands of great-looking, high quality WordPress Themes available to users. Many of these themes are completely free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent “look and feel” across all 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 replace themes as often as you need without changing your blog data.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that let you easily customize the theme’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that enables you to update themes to newer versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, import and install WordPress Themes automatically inside the dashboard.
- WordPress themes allow users to save thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are normally quite inexpensive.
About Responsive Theme Design
Many theme designers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” web design.
A responsive theme allows websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different platforms) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and display a site on most device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that your web site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards, practices and techniques of web design and coding.
I hope the above overview has given you a clearer understanding of themes, what WordPress themes are, how they help your business save money on website development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize a WordPress site.
In the next blog post on understanding basic WP features, we show you where to find the best WP themes for your blog.
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***