Powerful web site management platforms like WordPress have truly simplified web design and web development for non-technical website owners.
This is great for entrepreneurial-minded people that want a web presence that is simple, easy and inexpensive to manage.
Before “blogging” and the development of easy-to-use content management systems, if you needed to build a professional web site for your business, you had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This could mean weeks, even sometimes many months of waiting for the work to be done!
WordPress themes changed all this. In this blog post, we explain what WP themes are, how they save your business money on website development costs, and how WP themes help you easily customize your WordPress site.
Web Design Evolution
More website owners are benefiting from a great change in web design that started many years ago. If you are a business owner, you may want to know about this, because it can save your business thousands of dollars on web development or website design costs.
Very briefly, here’s what normally happened before software like WordPress were developed:
First, you would meet with a web developer or web site designer for a brief. Then, the actual “web design” itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time with a professional web site designer going over design elements of the web site like the, colours, styles, visual elements, content, etc.
Every page of your website then had to be individually created with all of your elements and scripts coded into the page content. All of the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and functioned how it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site considered as being completed and ready for sign off.
Then, web design “templates” came along”. Web site templates allow presentation elements of the web site to be worked on separately from the page content. Having templates helped speed up the process of developing websites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled web designers to work with business clients and clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of website development agencies using “template-based” web design services increased, templates were developed to offer clients with different custom settings, such as the ability to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website building applications developed, web templates also started to transform into web templating ”systems”, letting website owners customize the visual elements of their site.
And then, WordPress was developed and helped to kick off a new digital 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 drive website templating systems even further.
The WordPress theme system controls and unifies every aspect of your site’s design. It lets you add a “skin” to your entire site much like a web template system does but also provides users with more control over the management and customization of all template features.
As the official WordPress site explains …
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 states, one of the unique features of WordPress is that the way your site looks to site visitors is a separate thing from the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can modify the design of your website as often as you like without affecting your website’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your website for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the website. All e-commerce features, settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer need to spend weeks or months waiting for your website to be done. You can get your business website built simply and get started with any theme you want, and change the entire look, feel and design of your site in minutes, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site without the need of web coding knowledge. Just pick a theme you like, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and modify elements like header images, page layout, styling options and more in minutes …
Because WordPress is distributed as open source software, professional website designers can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WordPress themes can be downloaded by WordPress users. Themes are usually distributed as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) WordPress themes.
The WordPress team maintains a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to access thousands of excellent themes for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider audience of WordPress users.
WordPress themes vary from professional-looking, to designs that are visually breathtaking and would easily cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most premium themes are very inexpensive to buy.
You can view several theme galleries that include stunning examples of great WordPress themes in this page:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Benefits And Advantages Of Using WP Themes
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over using traditional website design:
Really Easy To Install
Themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free theme directory at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial website designers who make thousands of quality WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, menus, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your digital content. This means you can change themes as often as you need without modifying the underlying content of your website.
- Many WP themes come with additional built-in functionality and options that allow you to customize the site’s layout and design properties to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many WP themes are built using a framework that allows users to update themes to newer theme versions without losing any unique customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, import, install and update WordPress Themes automatically inside your dashboard.
- WP themes lets you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically very affordable.
Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating themes that incorporate “responsive” design.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, smart phones, etc.) …
A responsive theme is also optimized for each platform. Users can scroll, read and load a site on most device platforms without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional browser tools.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, it’s a good idea to choose a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly across all of your visitors’ devices, but 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 and web coding.
Hopefully, the above article has provided you with a good overview of themes, what themes are, how WP themes can help your business save money, and how WordPress themes make customizing your web design easy.
In our next article on understanding basic features and functionality of WordPress, we show you where to search for great WP themes for your blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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