Powerful website management tools like the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) have effectively improved web design and web development for non-technical business users.
This is great news for business owners planning to build a website that is relatively simple and easy to manage.
Before blogging and the development of powerful and effective content management systems, if you wanted to build a site for your business, you had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this article, you will learn what themes are, how they help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
A Revolution In Web Design
Businesses, especially small businesses, have benefited from an evolution in website design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you will want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development or web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what happened before WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a web developer or designer for a brief. After this, the “web design” would be decided upon. This meant spending time and money with a professional web site designer going over elements of your site like the layout, colors, styles, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all of the elements and scripts coded around your content. The pages were then assembled into a website using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was functioning the way it was intended to (and looking how a client had wanted it to look), was the website deemed to be completed and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A web site template allows design elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. The introduction of template elements helped make site development faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web site developers and designers to service business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more businesses started adopting “template-based” websites, templates started being created that could provide clients with expanding custom features, like colour palettes, the ability to select different formats or elements, and so on.
As web sites and website editor applications evolved, website templates also began to evolve into web templating “systems” that enable users and web developers to customize the visual elements of a website.
And then, a “blogging” application called WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new business 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:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes expand the concept of a website template system further.
A WordPress theme controls and integrates all of the design elements of your web site. It allows you to add a “skin” over your site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management and customization of template settings.
As stated in 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 above, a unique and revolutionary feature of WordPress is that the way your site appears to visitors in no way affects how your website is configured in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you modify the look and feel of your website as much and as often as you like without modifying 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 settings and product information will remain unaffected, but the site will look completely different.
This is important. Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your web design to be done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WordPress theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your WP site with no web code editing skills required. Simply pick any theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your web design and customize elements like header images, layout, styling options and more with just a few mouse clicks …
As WordPress is made available as open source software, commercial website design companies can create themes specifically for the WP CMS platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – WP Theme Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their digital presence, more designers are now focusing on creating themes for a wider audience of web users.
Themes range from minimal-looking, to quirky designs that are simply impressive and could easily cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to develop. Surprisingly, most WP themes are very inexpensive to purchase.
You can see a number of WordPress theme galleries that include stunning examples of great themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional website design:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing community of professional theme developers and development companies who, collectively, contribute thousands of high quality WP Themes available to WordPress users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to change WordPress themes as often as you want without disturbing your underlying content.
- Many WP themes come with additional features and options that let you easily customize the theme’s style and design properties and create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets users update themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically directly from within your dashboard.
- Themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WP themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive Themes
Many WP theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme allows a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each platform. Users can navigate, read and display a site on all device platforms without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your web site will work correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than most non-responsive themes and therefore probably complies with the latest standards of web design and coding.
I hope that the above overview has helped you gain a better understanding about WP themes, what WP themes are, how themes help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes make customizing sites easy.
To learn where to search for the best themes for your website or blog, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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