Powerful website management platforms like WordPress have truly improved web design and web development for web users.
This is great for businesses planning on getting a website that they can manage by themselves.
Prior to blogging and the development of advanced CMS solutions, if you needed a business website, you typically would have to wait until both the web development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean waiting around for many weeks, sometimes even months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this post, we explore what WordPress themes are, how themes save your business money on website development costs, and how themes make it easy to customize your site.
Evolution In Web Site Design
Businesses are benefiting from an evolution in web design that has been going for several years now. If you own a business, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Let’s briefly take a look at what used to happen before WordPress was developed:
First, you would meet with a web developer or web site designer for a brief. After that, the actual ”look and feel” of the site would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved time and money being spent with someone with web design skills discussing elements of your site such as the, colors, formats, page elements, content, etc.
Every page of your web site then had to be hand-coded with all the design elements and scripts coded around the page content. All pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together 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 was functioning how it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the site deemed as being completed and ready for delivery.
The next phase in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “web templating elements”. A website template allows ”look and feel” elements of the web site to be worked on separately from content on the page. The development of templates helped speed up the website creation process and resulted in lowered costs of production. This also allowed website developers and designers to expand their services to include small business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses started choosing “template-based” web design services, web templates were developed to provide clients with a number of customization settings, like color palettes, the ability to select different styles, formats, elements, page layouts, etc …
As web sites and website editor tools evolved, web templates also began to transform into web template “systems” that allowed website owners to manage their website’s design components.
Then, WordPress was developed and helped to start a new content management 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 take web templating systems further.
A WP theme controls and integrates every aspect of your web site design. It lets you add a “skin” to 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 features.
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 the above quote states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that how your web site looks to visitors is an entirely different thing from the way your content is managed.
In simple terms, what this means is that a WordPress theme lets you change the appearance of your site as often as you want without affecting your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if WP site has been configured for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your site. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but the site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you want, and then modify the entire 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 install a theme on your site without needing web code development knowledge. Simply choose any theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your website design and customize elements like headers, layout, style settings and more with just a couple of mouse clicks …
Since WordPress is open source software, website designers can create themes specifically for the WordPress CMS platform using the WordPress template system.
This means that thousands of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WP users. Themes are usually distributed for FREE under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (i.e. paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As more businesses turn to WordPress for publishing and managing their content online, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
Themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are simply stunning and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most premium themes are fairly inexpensive.
You can view several WP theme galleries containing many examples of great premium themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits Of Using WP Themes
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
WordPress themes are quite easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WordPress themes directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WordPress admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a thriving online community of professional web developers who make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WP users. Many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent look across all the blog’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you replace WP themes as often as you want without affecting your blog’s underlying content.
- Many themes provide additional built-in features and options that let you customize the theme’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your needs.
- Many themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to a newer theme version without losing any customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically from the admin panel.
- WordPress themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on web design costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite affordable.
Responsive WP Themes
Many WP theme developers are now creating “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust the web layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different platforms. Users can navigate, read and display a site on all devices without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser elements.
Note: When searching for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across 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, practices and techniques of website design.
Hopefully, the above article has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how themes can help you save money, and how themes allow you to easily customize your WP site.
In the next article in the article WP newbies on helping you understand features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for the best themes for your blog.
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